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Found a few marvellous 1970s illustrations of space habitation (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net
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[–] 16 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Even for earth this is way too suburban imo. Does not make sense to have everyone spread out that way for multiple reasons.

Solarpunk development in my view should be as green as our suburbs today but much denser to save on cost, keep people connected, and save room for wild nature.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

    It makes a lot of sense in the "Elysium" sense. A rich resort getaway.

    It wouldnt be all blue and nice sky either, because no atmosphere. Unless they tinted the glass blue I guess but even then you would either have a permanent night or permanent full on solar hyper radiation. Like how would lighting that even work?

    You'd clearly have a roof/floor all over, and it would all be artificial light.

    Oh, and levels. You'd get way more use out of the space by making sublevels. But maybe they have that in the picture it's hard to say. Shit, all that dead space would be filled top to bottom of the torus, why leave all those precious cubics empty?

    If would be DS9, not Rama.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Unless they tinted the glass blue I guess but even then you would either have a permanent night or permanent full on solar hyper radiation. Like how would lighting that even work?

    Assuming the ring is orbiting the sun, you just tilt the ring a few degrees, depending on the width of the ring. At one point in it's rotation, the sun would be nearly directly below your feet and your part of the ring would be unlighted. At such times, the opposite side of the ring would be in sunlight shining from behind/beneath you. That part of the ring would likely appear as a glowing ribbon across the night sky and provide light like the full moon does on Earth. As the ring rotates you to the day side, the sun would appear to rise from over the edge of the ring wall and shine down on your part of the ring. At noon, the sun would be over head, just a few degrees to one side of the opposite side of the ring, which would likely be invisible in the glare.

    Needless to say, the ring base and glass would need to block the most harmful rays of sunlight for that to work.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Agree, for sure. Still, the dream of chill accessible green space is real and should not be ignored. I think low-medium rise, high density with lots of interspersed green spaces is the optimal for cities. I think it can be done such that most land is much greener and more connected than modern suburbs.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    Yeah I think we are largely advocating for the same thing. Central business districts that are all concrete and glass are pretty dystopian. But medium dense cities with car infrastructure replaced by green space would be perfect.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Well, if you assume that the air recycling will be done by plants, you are going to have a need for a huge biosphere and probably for a lot of oceanic biome. If you plan on having an agriculture, if you plan on having pollinating insects, you are going to need a huge biomass.

    You're going to have far more nature than you will have humans.

    This setting usually assumes that you have a fast transport network built in the core infrastructure. So being spread out is less of a problem, especially if you have free electricity through solar panel. That means that moving stuff around on electric motor is going to be basically free.

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