Earth's moon is 2,159 miles (3,474 km) wide, about one-fourth of Earth's diameter. Orbital rings are used extensively in the collaborative fiction worldbuilding website Orion's Arm.[10]. Larry Niven Wiki is a FANDOM Books Community. Dendrochronology is a fancy word for tree-ring dating, where the age of a tree can be determined by the number of growth rings across its trunk. A. Meulenberg and P. S. Karthik Balaji, "The LEO Archipelago: A system of earth-rings for communications, mass-transport to space, solar power, and control of global warming", Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, "Nonlinear Dynamics of Ringworld Systems", "Orbital Ring Systems and Jacob's Ladders - I-III", MegaStructures 01: Orbital Rings & Space Elevators, String Transport Systems: on Earth and in space, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Orbital_ring&oldid=991493266, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Eccentric orbital ring systems – these are rings that are in the form of a closed shape with varying altitude, This page was last edited on 30 November 2020, at 10:17. Not in orbit, but riding on this ring, supported electromagnetically on superconducting magnets, are ring stations that stay in one place above some designated point on Earth. https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/earthsystem/nutshell/space.html In the simplest design of an orbital ring system, a rotating cable or possibly an inflatable space structure is placed in a low Earth orbit above the equator. Thus, any point on Earth can be served by a space elevator. With a radius of 1,079.6 miles (1,737.5 kilometers), the Moon is less than a third the width of Earth. An asteroid or comet would have to venture very close to the Earth to be torn apart by tidal forces and form a ring around the Earth. The electric energy generated in the process would pay for the system expansion and ultimately could pave the way for a solar-system-wide terraforming and astroengineering activity on a sound economical basis. That means 30 Earth-sized planets could fit in between Earth and the Moon. The planet Medusa also has such a ring, called Telstarax, hailing from the Dark Age of Technology, but it is largely plundered and wrecked. The game X3 Terran Conflict features a free-floating orbital ring around the Earth, which is shattered by an explosion and subsequently de-orbited in X3: Albion Prelude. One of the large oceans, known as the "Great Ocean", contains one-to-one maps of all of the inhabited worlds of known space. Paul Birch published a series of three articles in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society in 1982 that laid out the mathematical basis of ring systems. Space Ring Could Shade Earth and Stop Global W A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth … Paul Birch, "Orbital Ring Systems and Jacob's Ladders - II". By precessing the ring once every 24 hours, the Orbital Ring will hover above any meridian selected on the surface of the Earth. Most notably as both Scrith and Twing can be reshaped to pass through thanks to a softening device (Pak) or a cziltang brone per the Ringworld. The Moon is farther away from Earth than most people realize. A body (such as a comet or asteroid) striking with enough kinetic energy may be able to deform the Ringworld floor and punch a hole, theFist of God mountain on the Ringworld was produced by exactly this type of event. The "Other Ocean" has many maps of a single world: the Pak Homeworld. When the velocity of the string exceeds 10 km/sec, centrifugal forces detach the string from the Earth's surface and lift the ring into space. Later in the series the ring also shows space stations mounted on its surface. Recently in Destroyer of Worlds (novel) it was revealed that by combining aspects of the Pak building material twing, itself an incredibly durable programmable substance, with the theory of resonant molecule bonds could produce something akin to Scrith. The manga Battle Angel Alita (1990-1995) prominently features a slightly deteriorated orbital ring. To provide an approximation of the day–night cycle common to planets, Ringworld was also provided with a separate ring of "shadow squares" linked together (by "shadow square wires") in a ring close to the star, rotating at slightly faster than the Ringworld's spin, providing a lot of twilight, as well as a day-night cycle. Scrith, usually written italicized as scrith, forms the walls and floor of the Ringworld. The tensile strength of the material required would be on the same order as the strong nuclear force, according to Niven — since the artificial gravity is the same as normal gravity, the structure is comparable with a bridge with an extremely long span; nothing even remotely strong enough is known to exist in nature. Due to its enormous strength, scrith is impervious to most weapons. This is where weather and … It is true that we have a cloud of debris in orbit, mostly organized into a low earth orbit shell and a ring around and above geosynchronous orbit. In the close of Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise (1979), a reference is made to an orbital ring that is attached in the distant future to the space elevator that is the basis of the novel. In Niven's Ringworld novels, the material—which he calls scrith—is said to have been artificially produced through the transmutation of matter into the required substance. On opposite sides of the ring are two large deep saltwater oceans, placed in counterbalance to one another. The structure is intended to be used as a space station or as a planetary vehicle for very high speed transportation or space launch. In the ring-satellite cycle model, satellites form from the outer edge of the ring, and then migrate outward through gravitational interaction with the ring. The rings visible here are the A ring (at top) with the Keeler and Encke gaps visible, and the F ring (at bottom). The Ringworld is an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit (which makes it about 600 million miles in circumference), encircling a Sol-type star. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Mars has a large orbital ring called the Ring of Iron. Saturn and its spectacular rings, as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope on July 4, 2020. These absorb a huge amount of sunlight energy, which is beamed to the Ringworld as its primary source of power. The ring measures 2.6 million light-years across. Orbital debris, or “space junk,” is any man-made object in orbit around the Earth that no longer serves a useful purpose. Paul Birch, "Orbital Ring Systems and Jacob's Ladders - I". It also absorbs nearly 100% of all other radiation and subatomic particles and rapidly dissipates heat.