[TML] A new tourist ship design

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 13 Jan 2008 at 9:06, Knapp wrote:

> I was thinking last night about taking a sphere of say 500 meters in
> diameter and coating the outside with 1G gravity plates. Then turn
> them on and spill a lot of atmosphere on the ball. Could people then,
> in space, walk on this ball? Would it be safe? Would it hold the
> atmosphere? Would it be nice to sit on the ball and look at the sky?
> Does this work within Traveller rules?

A lot depends on details of how grav plates work. 

But the basic problem is that even with a 1 g surface gravity, you 
can't really make an atmosphere deep enough to be breathable without 
*huge* loss rates. 

Remember, Earth's atmosphere has a surface pressure of 15 psi because 
you've got the equivalent of a column of air a lot of *miles* tall 
pressing down. 

Work out how much air you need for a sphere of air that deep. Then 
work out what the gravity is at the "edge". Compare the escape 
velocity that gives with the average speed of the molecules.

My educated guess is that you'll lose air like crazy.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com