Lydia Conwell
StarkRG@StarkRG What would happen without tall walls? Would the air rush out the sides?
@lydiaconwell Pretty much. Humans need atmospheric pressure somewhere above 356 millibars (5.16 psi, the so-called "death zone" above 8000 m), we get this by having about 10,000 km of atmosphere above us (three-quarters of which is below 11km, but if you only build walls to that height then you'll be losing atmosphere over the edge, you could probably get away with only going to 150km and replenish it slowly). We can also get this by pressurizing a sealed container, which is a lot easier.
@StarkRG Hmm. Something to think about ...
@lydiaconwell I second the recommendation from @DelilahTech regarding Larry Niven's Ringworld which takes place on the interior surface of a a ring surrounding a star. Its radius is about the same as the distance from Earth to the Sun (with a star in the middle), 1.6 million km wide, with walls 1,600 km tall.
@StarkRG There's also the concept of a Dyson sphere built around a star and an episode of Next Generation featured it and it was an episode where Scottie was rescued from being stuck in a transporter for years.
@lydiaconwell @DelilahTech Yeah, it's similar, but very slightly more realistic (no need for artificial gravity)
@StarkRG A Dyson sphere would need artificial gravity? ... That makes sense.
Now I'm imagining people tumbling around the inside of a sphere like they are in a washing machine.
@lydiaconwell
The Ringworld rotates fast enough to create centrifugal gravity. If you did that to a sphere it would collapse from the poles. Even if you had super strong material that would hold a sphere, you'd still only have gravity pointing outward along the equator and it would drop off as you got closer to the axis of rotation until there's no gravity at the poles.
@StarkRG Got it,