[TML] Environmental domes

[domhanai at juno.com]

Hans Henrik Rancke-Madsen wrote:
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?
 
Actually Kim Stanley Robinson handled that concept rather well in the first chapters of "Red Mars." I suggest that in lieu of any pure engineering information you get (this is, after all, science fiction).
 
Cougashika - No one is sick on the first day of school.



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