From: The Butterfly (salsbury_at_bootstrap.sculptors.com)
Date: 04/24/98
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 02:24:53 -0700 Message-Id: <199804240924.CAA19225@bootstrap.sculptors.com> From: The Butterfly <salsbury_at_bootstrap.sculptors.com> Subject: Re: floating houses / floating villages
-Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 17:41:45 -0700 (PDT)
-From: joshua geller <dclxvi_at_best.com>
-
-The Butterfly writes:
- > 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.
Well...that was the point... There ISN'T any such animal, yet.
- > 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?
Ummm...Sort of the reverse of why people climb Mt. Everest? Because
it isn't there?
Why did we spend billions to put a man on the Moon? Where's the
economic rationale for that? There wasn't one. It was a nationalistic pride
thing. There have been lots of spinoff technologies from the act, but they
weren't the economic motivator.
-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
Yeah, but as noted, with airships, bigger is better. And with
geodesics, you can't just inflate it to a larger size. It has to be
designed from the start for a certain size. (I know this, as I spent hours
today playing with models, only to tear 'em apart & restart when I wanted a
different size...)
So if you want a 2-mile diameter one, you have to start building a
2-mile diameter one. And as the theory goes, things smaller than .5 miles
might not float, althought that could be changing with the new lighter
materials nowadays...
And there have been studies that show already that some of the
larger domes that have been constructed weigh less ONCE THEY ARE
CONSTRUCTED than their components weighed before building began. This is
due to the lifting force of the air mass inside the completed dome.
Pat
___________________Think For Yourself____________________
Patrick G. Salsbury - http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
Check out the Reality Sculptors Project: http://www.sculptors.com/
---------------------------------------------------------
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
-Oscar Wilde