Ringworlds

[kafka47]

Now, I have found Niven a triffle boring at times. And, nowhere is this more true than his Ringworld books. Now, I know that this a personal comment more upon me than Niven's works (there - I hope I have avoided the flamewar). What are the other sources that one can use when developing a Ringworld...as I was thinking of exploring this in one of my Traveller games, and as I don't want to go the Master (ie Niven), I was hoping others can inspire me?

 

[GypsyComet]

The "orbitals" of Iain Banks' Culture novels, and also from Halo. Smaller, but otherwise similar.

I've seen a book or two set on a Dyson Sphere, but extensive ringworld time would be only Niven that I'm aware of.

And yes, the Ringworld books are a bit slow. Fundamentally this is due to Larry Niven not being a pulp action writer*, but firmly from the Campbell school of exploratory/speculative SF. They are still quite immersive, but you have to be capable of reading for the scenery instead of merely the bullet count.

--

*-something he has openly admitted, and the reason he farmed the Man-Kzin Wars period out to writers with more of an action-prone style.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I have to admit I tried reading Niven's famed Ringworld book (the first one), and found the first few pages tiring. But not for lack of action, but for lack of good exposition. I honestly had to put the thing down, and haven't cracked it since.

 

[aramis]

BG: Try again. It's worth the effort.

 

[Plankowner]

Niven's sequal "Ringworld Engineers" while more of his style (you either like it or you don't), has more information on the operation of the Ringworld and the some of the Ecological issues are explored. Might be worth a read.

 

[Gadrin]

Niven's sequal "Ringworld Engineers" while more of his style (you either like it or you don't), has more information on the operation of the Ringworld and the some of the Ecological issues are explored. Might be worth a read.

trying to transplant one into MTU, I'm thinking the resources of several star systems would need to be exploited. (I'm speaking off-the-cuff).

any good candidates in the Marches ?

the prominence & abundance of terraforming in Firefly kinda makes me itch to place a Terraforming MegaCorp in the 3i, active since a few centuries before Cleon I, perhaps borrowing from 2i tech/secrets.

I know the Vargr region offers a few unusual constructs, so my understanding is that any type of project like this is alien or Ancient in origin.

 

[GypsyComet]

There is one canon ringworld (unfinished) and two apocryphal (one finished, one not) ringworlds in "close" proximity to Imperial space. The Canon location is in the Hinterworlds, while the other two are in (the long since decanonized Paranoia Press version of) The Beyond and just rim-trailing of GURPS K'kree space.

Virtually any Marches system with asteroid belts could be host to "bits" of a ringworld, on the assumption that the world was destroyed to make room, but not yet "swept up" when the Final War hit. Finding an odd synthesizer (feed it asteroids and it spits out scrith in big sheets) drifting in the Oort could also work. Heck an entire rogue moon could be a factory in disguise. Niven's Ringworld was estimated to be the mass of pretty much everything else a system would normally have in it, so any intermediate stage could be interesting.

Note also that Grandfather was known for his pocket universes. Pick any sparse system and announce that *something* is randomly occluding stars in huge patches. Investigation reveals that a massive and apparently unfinished ring is phasing in and out of visibility (as some ancient pocket generator is slowly failing). Local and Imperial concerns want the phasing halted, as it is also apparently playing hob with jump space AND the local star. Several investigators have already vanished after landing on the structure. Guess what? YOU'RE NEXT!

 

[Droyne668]

any good candidates in the Marches ?

"Grandfather's Worlds" i(see Challenge issue 27 if memory serves) is a sort of small-scale ringworld that is sort of in the Regina system.

Nothing else comes to mind in the Marches, but the Beyond might be a good place to hide a megaconstruct. The Vargr Extants, even more so. And who knows what the Zhodani Core Expeditions turned up?

Getting ready to send my campaign spinning off to the Hinterworlds and the Leenitakot ringworld. The canon description is very short and very vague, but very intriguing. Lots of possibilities there.

I'm not an engineer, but I'm given to understand that one reason ringworlds show up less and less in current sci-fi is due to some problems in maintaining an object of that size and shape. But I don't know. I'm still mystified as to how anyone would think of building an internal combustion engine in an age of horses...

Best,
Will

 

[Gadrin]

Pick any sparse system and announce that *something* is randomly occluding stars in huge patches. Investigation reveals that a massive and apparently unfinished ring is phasing in and out of visibility (as some ancient pocket generator is slowly failing). Local and Imperial concerns want the phasing halted, as it is also apparently playing hob with jump space AND the local star. Several investigators have already vanished after landing on the structure. Guess what? YOU'RE NEXT!

<sparks memory>

I had an idea similar to that for the Zhodani Core Expeditions, that an aging Intendant in charge of putting together Lanthanum Mining sites would periodically "face home" in memory of his dead wife, and notice that a star is missing from the sky, but can be clearly seen from other worlds. However after doing research on his own, according to surveys there shouldn't be anything occluding it (no nebulas, etc) and it eventually leads to an adventure when the characters get close to that area of space.

thanks for jogging my memory!

 

[Gadrin]

"Grandfather's Worlds" i(see Challenge issue 27 if memory serves) is a sort of small-scale ringworld that is sort of in the Regina system.

thanks I'll look that over tonight.

And who knows what the Zhodani Core Expeditions turned up?

yes, a prime area for the bizarre.

I had an idea the Ancients might use the Core to take Tesla's beamed power a step further on a much grander scale, but I'm not sure it really makes sense. Then again, we are talking Ancients

Getting ready to send my campaign spinning off to the Hinterworlds and the Leenitakot ringworld. The canon description is very short and very vague, but very intriguing. Lots of possibilities there.

Best,
Will

I'll be interested in hearing what you come up with. I'll probably be e-mailing you shortly on some other ideas.

 

[tjoneslo]

I'm not an engineer, but I'm given to understand that one reason ringworlds show up less and less in current sci-fi is due to some problems in maintaining an object of that size and shape. But I don't know. I'm still mystified as to how anyone would think of building an internal combustion engine in an age of horses...

There are two problems with ringworlds (as described by Larry Niven). First, if you spin it, the material needs to be hugely strong not to fall apart (i.e. orders of magnitude beyond chemical compound bonds). Scrith is magical. Second, it's unstable. There's nothing keeping the ring centered on the sun, and if it's the least bit off center it will continue to fall closer to the sun, until it hits it. Larry attempts to address this in the second Ringworld book.

 

[Brian Blank]

There are two problems with ringworlds (as described by Larry Niven). First, if you spin it, the material needs to be hugely strong not to fall apart (i.e. orders of magnitude beyond chemical compound bonds). Scrith is magical. Second, it's unstable. There's nothing keeping the ring centered on the sun, and if it's the least bit off center it will continue to fall closer to the sun, until it hits it. Larry attempts to address this in the second Ringworld book.[/QUOT

If I remember right, in Ringworld Engineers Niven used Bussard Ramjets as attitude jets for stabilizing the Ringworld, and it was those same Ramjets the City builders used to make their starships.

Instead of a Ringworld how about an artifical ring around an Earthlike world , orbiting about the same distance as our Moon does and being say 1000 miles thick and 5000miles in width. You'd still have the same problems with material and stability though not on the same scale.

I'm thinking it's something Grandfather or one of his children might have done while researching building a Ringworld.

 

[LordVince]

The stablest -- stabler? -- most stable orbit around a planet would be an Equatorial Orbit, just like the Moon. But, given the dimentions you suggest, wouldn't this create a whopper of a shadow, on the planet below?

No problem, if the planet is useless or uninhabitable -- beneficial, even -- but over a terra-type world?

 

[Droyne668]

The stablest -- stabler? -- most stable orbit around a planet would be an Equatorial Orbit, just like the Moon. But, given the dimentions you suggest, wouldn't this create a whopper of a shadow, on the planet below?

No problem, if the planet is useless or uninhabitable -- beneficial, even -- but over a terra-type world?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain#Orbital_Ring

Since the ring is anchored, if it could keep up with the natural wobble of the earth, that would minimize the shadow effect.

Google "orbital ring". There's a lot of stuff out there.

 

[G. Fieendish]

Re: Grandfather's Worlds
As I remember, it's not as much a Ringworld, more a Necklaceworld....
Just be careful which Startown curio shop, you decide to buy your souviners from.....

 

[Icosahedron]

IIRC, a thicknes of 1000 miles at a (Lunar) distance of 250k miles would subtend an angle of Arctan 1/250. I've not dropped that into a calculator, but I'd guess it's significantly less than the angular diameter of the sun. You'd see it at as a dark line across the sun's face, like a crossing planet, but there would be no shadow. Not sure how brightly it would shine on the night side, it could be figured out if it were important enough.
Interesting notion though; it'd make one helluva highport! I might even dig out some formulae and calculate the forces involved... one day.
<click of mental cogs as idea gets shelved for a year or ten>.

 

[far-trader]

I seem to have not mentioned my problem with ring worlds and such in this particular round of the subject. That is where does the material come from?

I seem to recall a calculation years back that it would take all the anticipated suitable material of a couple or more solar systems to build one ring world.

And if you have the ability to travel to other solar systems then you really don't need to build a ring world, you just settle the habitable worlds of the other solar systems. As a bonus you don't have all your eggs in one big basket.

 

[tjoneslo]

I seem to have not mentioned my problem with ring worlds and such in this particular round of the subject. That is where does the material come from?

I seem to recall a calculation years back that it would take all the anticipated suitable material of a couple or more solar systems to build one ring world.

The calculations I've seen for constructing a Dyson sphere seem to indicate that there is enough material in our solar system to build one. But it assumes that you are going to undertake the effort to dismantle every planet in the system, including the Gas Giants, and you have some matter conversion process (the output of a fusion engine works) to turn the mostly hydrogen into whatever element(s) you are building your construct from.

The energy requirements of dismantling Jupiter stagger the imagination, and if you have access to that kind of power, you should also be able to build high-fraction-of-c normal space engines and colonize other worlds that way.

 

[Icosahedron]

How about this, FT?

"Colony? You think I got a straw hat and bare feet? Why do we build skyscrapers in the city center when it's much cheaper and easier to live in a trailer park a couple of dozen miles down the highway?
People put great store in being where its at. They want to live and work in the metropolis, business is easier when your trading partners are on the doorstep rather than a day/week/month away. Hell, with 'age-of-sail' communications delays, you're too far out of the action. A new colony is gonna be a one-horse shanty town for a generation or two while the infrastructure builds up. Where's the nightlife, the hospitals, the schools? While you're setting up in a prefab cabin three worlds away, your competitor is stealing an edge your grandkids will still be catching up on.
I reckon a new-build less than a light-second from the heart of the action is the way to go. Leave the homesteading to the homesteaders; I want a bigger slice of THIS cake. Sign me up for a condo with a planet view."

 

[GypsyComet]

The three literary examples are all for different purposes. The Halo is a weapon, Banks' Orbitals are just more real estate in busy systems (but are a LOT smaller), while Niven's is a galactic-scale lifeboat.

That "secondary" purpose can go a long way to answering the "but WHY?" of such super structures.

An anchored ring around a planet has a specific name that I'm not recalling at the moment. Most start as a lose linkage between multiple beanstalks. It may be time to pull out Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise" again...