[TML] Environmental domes

[Hans Henrik Rancke-Madsen]

An old problem of mine has cropped up again. The TU is littered with 
crummy worlds that nevertheless have sizable populations. Some of them I 
put into sealed caves, some of them I put into arcologies, but some of 
them I like to put under environmental domes, preferrably domes that are 
large enough to have agricultural fields and sculptured landscapes -- maybe
even national parks -- beneath them. I'd like them to be a mile high and 
cover an area the size of a... what's the American equivalent of a shire?

My problem is that I have no idea what the maximum plausible size of such 
a dome is at various tech levels. I've thought about finding out the size 
of the domes we can build on Earth today and then increase the diameter by 
some factor (2? 3? 5? 10?) per tech level, but googling 'environmental 
dome' gives me about 2 million hits, the first score of which are camera 
mounts and hothouses...

Anyone know what we can achieve today and have any opinions about what 
should be possible at higher TLs?



Hans