For much of its modern history , science fiction has had a particular fascination with engineering , with source and creative person imagining fantastic , monumental social organisation in the depth of space . Here are 10 of them , from fantastically big to unbelievably massive .
1) Space Elevator
annunciate as one of the ways to open up access to space for good and stingily , a blank elevator is an anchored lead that cover into low orbit , allowing a car to convey people and consignment into quad .
First gestate of as early as 1895 , the space elevator is likely the easy ( and cheapest ) to reconstruct , with numerous studies already conducted on the feasibleness of such a anatomical structure . The structure of such a social organization would take super solid material .
Another take on the concept is an Orbital Ring , cook up by Nikola Tesla in the 1870s , which is a monumental bodily structure which circles the Earth , with tethers desex to the land that act as elevators .
Because they ’re incredibly useful for get into space , they come out up in skill fiction often , such as in Kim Stanley Robinson ’s novel2312 , Alastair Reynolds novels Blue Remembered Earth and Chasm City , Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke , and in appearance such as Star Trek : Voyager and Halo : Forward Unto Dawn .
2) Stanford Torus
This is the first and small of several ring - like habitats on this list . Conceived of in 1975 during a 10 - week program in engineering organization invention held at Stanford University and NASA ’s Ames Research Center . It ’s a self - close in torus 1.8 klick in diameter , and would circumvolve once per minute to provide its 10,000 inhabitants with 1.0 gm of gravity .
An privileged tintinnabulation is connected to the outer ring with a serial publication of spokes , and provides sunlight ready up with a scheme of mirror , which ply light to the station .
The torus feature in Neill Blomkamp ’s ( underrated , IMO ) 2013 film Elysium is similar to a Stanford Torus : It shares the dual ring and speak construction , but is much , much larger at 40 klick in diam and two kilometers across , housing 10 million of Earth ’s moneyed citizens . Unlike the Stanford Torus , it ’s not an inclose ring : the top is undefendable to space , with the rotation and paries of the station holding in the installation ’s atmosphere .
3) Bernal Sphere
The Bernal Sphere was first formally advise in 1929 by John Desmond Bernal . The vault of heaven is essentially a strain - filled domain , spun up to provide gravity to its dweller at the equator . The original idea was of a sphere 16 kilometers in diam , which would provide life space for 20,000 to 30,000 people .
There ’s a handful of instance of their use in skill fable , such as Gagarin Station in Mass Effect , as well as Kim Stanley Robinson ’s Terrariums , hollowed - out asteroids with living infinite installed in their interiors used in his novel 2312 .
4) O’Neill Cylinder
In his 1976 al-Qur’an , The High Frontier : Human Colonies in Space , Gerard K. O’Neill distressed about the possibleness of humans overtaxing the Earth , and assay for alternative . He noted that for long term sustainability , a space habitat would have to be ego - sufficient , being able to make its own food and have its own atmosphere .
These “ islands in space ” as he call them , would be massive : four geographical mile in diam , twenty miles long , they would bear five hundred solid miles , and could put up up to a million individuals , and that ’s at the small final stage . The great unity “ could be fifteen Swedish mile in diameter , seventy - five miles recollective , and could have a full land country as much as seven thousand square miles ; about half that of Switzerland . ”
These O’Neill cylinders would be fully enclosed , and would go around to offer an world - tantamount somberness , and could be configured to have simulate daytime hours . A larger interlingual rendition of this is a Topopolis , which would be long enough to be curl around a star .
There are some notable examples of this in scientific discipline fiction : the Babylon 5 station from the show of the same name , while another appear at the end of Christopher Nolan ’s Interstellar .
5) Death Star
“ That ’s no Moon . ” The Death Star is perhaps the most famous megastructure to exist in science fable . Designed as a weapon of intimidation , they ( Their issue depend on your reading of canyon / non - canon sources ) were commissioned to hold the Empire ’s case in assembly line by the threat of planetary destruction .
The Galactic Empire ’s planet - defeat installation ring in at 120 ( A New Hope ) and 160 ( Return of the Jedi ) kilometre in diameter ( About the same size as Saturn ’s moon Epimetheus and Uranus ’s lunar month Puck ) , and house upwards of the 1.7 million personnel office required to black market the installing .
A late regimen would resurrect the concept with Starkiller Base , but establish into a planet deeply in the galaxy ’s unknown regions .
6) Globus Cassus
This structure was proposed in a design book in 2004 by Christian Waldvogel , a Swiss architect and creative person . This social organisation is a compressed “ geodesic icosahedron ” with a duet of scuttle to let in light . At 85,000 kilometers in diameter , it would take all of Earth ’s subject and turn it inside out in a gargantuan shell , with habitable living blank space in the inside .
7) Ringworld
The titular location of Larry Niven ’s novel Ringworld is an iconic scientific discipline fictional megastruture . It ’s massive : 600 million mi in circumference , a million miles all-inclusive and 1 AU in radii , provide an unimaginable amount of living space for a civilisation . The soberness create by the rotation of the structure observe its citizen and atmospheres on unshakable terms on the inner edge of the ring , while day and night cycles are create with squares that revolve above the airfoil .
Unlike the Stanford Torus , a ringworld designs preponderantly boast a single , massive ring , sometimes surrounding an energy source in its core .
Niven ’s Ringworld has provided sight of brainchild for other creations : the military science fable first somebody shooter Halo features a number of ringworlds , each around 10,000 kilometers in diameter , and often revolve another planet . Iain M. Banks also have the structure in his Culture novel : revolve star and weighing in at around 3 million klick in diam , they ’re still a bit minor than the original , but still ply plentifulness of elbow way for their denizen .
8) Alderson Disk
An Alderson Disk is another hoop - shaped structure , but unlike a Ringworld , it looks more like a magnetic disc with the sun in the center . Proposed by Dan Alderson ( who write some of Voyager 1 and 2 ’s software ) , he was a prominent science fiction buff , and came up with the idea of his disk .
A wall would protect the inner part of the record , holding in the social structure ’s atmosphere . Unlike a Ringworld , which would conserve a continual habitable region , human race would only be able to inhabit a key stripe : the region closest to the sun would be extremely red-hot , while the areas further aside would be extremely stale . Science fabrication authors such as Larry Niven , have noted that living could evolve in strange ways , propagate out into the various country of the magnetic disc .
These structures , while get up from skill fable fandom , have only appeared in a handful of stories , most notably the Ultraverse comics and Charles Stross ’s novella Missile Gap .
9) Dyson Sphere
Aside from a Ringworld , theDyson Sphereis one of the more popular types of hypothetical megastructures . evoke by Olaf Stapledon in his novel The Star Maker and discussed by Freeman Dyson in 1960 , a Dyson sphere is a megastructure fabricate around a asterisk , to collect the entirety of said star ’s end product .
As these culture get and become more technologically sophisticated , their vitality requirements grow as well . Dyson has noted that this concept does n’t necessarily require for a star to be completely enclosed : there are other magnetic declination , such as a Dyson Swarm or Bubble , which have numerous objects surrounding the star to collect its free energy .
Another theoretical social organization , a Matrioshka genius , would work within a Dyson sphere : a monumental computer system that would use the energy of the sun to function , using that energy across multiple layers .
Dyson Spheres are trite within science fabrication , notably in Star Trek : The Next Generation and in some Star Trek novel , as well as Olaph Stapledon ’s Star Maker , Spinneret by Timothy Zahn , Peter F. Hamilton ’s Commonwealth Saga , and in book by Alastair Reynolds , Stephen Baxter , David Brin , Ann Leckie , Gene Wolfe , and others .
10) Shkadov Thruster
First proposed by Dr. Leonid Mikhailovich Shkadov during the 38th Congress of the International Astronomical Federation encounter in Brighton , UK in October 1987 , the Shkadov Thruster is a stellar locomotive engine that utilizes the vigour of a star for actuation .
The structure would be a monumental solar sail that would direct Energy Department and radiation away from a star , which would drag out the star and its planets in one direction . The system shares some similarities with a Dyson Sphere , and anyone count to move their sensation organisation would have to be working on fabulously tenacious time plate : millions and billions of year .
Olaf Stapledon ’s novel Star Maker touch to stellar engines , while in Larry Niven ’s Ringworld , the Puppeteers have embarked on a major labor to move five planet out off from the galactic center .
HaloLarry NivenSpace ElevatorStar Wars
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and polish news in your inbox daily .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
