From: joshua geller (dclxvi_at_best.com)
Date: 04/17/98
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 17:41:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199804180041.RAA04627@shell5.ba.best.com> From: joshua geller <dclxvi_at_best.com> Subject: Re: floating houses / floating villages
The Butterfly writes:
> -From: joshua geller <dclxvi_at_best.com>
> -Reply-To: airships_at_sculptors.com
> -Chris McCoy writes:
> - > If I recall correctly, the Hind.. had a helium lift of 65 tons, and a
> - > hydrogen lift of about 70 tons. If you build a ship that size
> - > today, with modern materials, you would have far more payload.
> -the requirements for a floating town and for an airship for
> -transportation of people and goods are different. I'd scruple to call
> -the floating town an airship; I wouldn't expect it to navigate so much
> -as direct its course with the wind. a sphere or a lenticular hull
> -should be fine; you'd want to make it plenty big. this would be a
> -giant rigid balloon, but not a dirigible balloon. I'd say a two
> -thousand foot sphere or a suacer appreciably larger than this would be
> -the minimum practical size. you'd have flattened ovoids four hundred
> -feet long for tenders; probably at least two of them.
> -really, with airships, bigger is better.
> This meshes EXTREMELY well with the the concept Bucky Fuller put
> forward for "Cloud 9" cities. These were to be gigantic (.5 miles or
> larger in diameter) geodesic spheres with entire cities inside of
> them. They weren't to be standard helium-filled airships, but would
> actually float due to the differential air pressure created by heating a
> volume of air that large. Like a hot-air balloon that's a mile or two in
> diameter...
you know, until someone shows me a half mile geodesic sphere floating
due to the differential air pressure created by heating a volume of
air that large, I am not going to think that there is any such animal.
> -I wouldn't think of something like this outside of the context of a
> -global civilization; food will be brought aboard on the tenders, as
> -will anything else that you need from the outside world. I'd imagine
> -that these would be specialized communities of people working on
> -something that they are as a group interested in.
> -so no hydroponics farm.
> I'd disagree here. And I'll reiterate a design I proposed on the
> GEODESIC list when we were discussing sky-cities back around 1989.
> Imagine a sphere. A really, really BIG one. Using geodesics, you
> can build something incredibly strong, yet extremely lightweight. The upper
> half would have transparent materials to allow sunlight in, and even the
> lower half would have the option, so you had "windows" looking down towards
> earth.
> [description of sphere snipped]
> Let's say it's a 2 mile diameter sphere. At the equator, you'll
> have A=pi(r)^2, or approximately 3.14159 sqare miles of area for
> hydroponics.
so, what's my economic motivation for building this monster in the
first place?
this is the kind of thing that gets worked up to, you know. it doesn't
spring into being like athena from the head of zeus.
best,
josh