A team of US experts suggests hollowing out an asteroid and filling it with buildings. Increasing asteroid spin also creates artificial gravity for residents. They acknowledge that this will require "technical capabilities that do not currently exist."
Scientists have proposed perhaps the strangest concept for colonizing the universe: life within asteroids.
In a new paper, experts at the University of Rochester suggest hollowing out an asteroid to increase its spin, create artificial gravity, and fill it with buildings.
Placing the selected asteroid in a flexible mesh bag made of carbon nanofibers can prevent the debris from breaking off as the asteroid rotates, they say.
The team admits that their concept is "very theoretical" and requires "technical capabilities that don't currently exist."
In a highly theoretical paper, Rochester researchers envision enclosing asteroids in flexible mesh bags made of ultra-lightweight, high-strength carbon nanofibers as the key to creating human cities in space. doing.
Representation of a cylindrical rotating habitat covered with solar panels. Inside is a thick layer of asteroid debris and regolith that acts as a radiation shield. Just below the solar panel is a sturdy, hard container that keeps debris from flying around. The habitat rotates around its longitudinal axis, creating gravity on its inner surface
Our papers straddle the line between science and science fiction," said study author Adam Frank of the University of Rochester.
“We have adapted his sci-fi ideas, which have been very popular recently on TV shows such as Amazon's The Expanse, to offer new ways to build cities in space using asteroids.
"Based on our calculations, an asteroid 300 meters in diameter and the size of several football fields could be extended into a cylindrical space habitat with an inhabited area of about 22 square miles, which is the size of Manhattan. is."
The team was inspired by the O'Neill cylinder, a space habitation concept proposed by American physicist Gerald K. O'Neill in 1976.
The spinning cosmic metropolis consists of two connected cylinders that rotate in opposite directions. The cylinder spins fast enough to create artificial gravity on its inner surface, but so slowly that the people living inside do not suffer from motion sickness.
Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who own Blue Origin and SpaceX respectively, reference his O'Neill cylinder in their visions of future space habitats.
But the Rochester team says it would be very difficult and expensive to bring the building materials needed to build them from Earth into space.
"Our proposal is likely to be less expensive and less technically complex than building a classical O'Neill habitat," they wrote in their paper.
The team were inspired by 'O'Neill cylinders', a concept for a space settlement proposed by US physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in 1976 (pictured)
An O'Neill cylinder would consist of two counter-rotating cylinders that would rotate in opposite directions, both providing artificial gravity They therefore turned to asteroids – rocky bodies orbiting the sun, leftover from the formation of the solar system approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
Scientists estimate there are about 1,000 asteroids larger than one mile across in our solar system alone.
A 2019 study led by Thomas Maindl at the University of Vienna already suggested a hollowed out asteroid with a central cylindrical cavity could be spun about its axis to achieve artificial gravity similar to Earth's
But this paper did not account for a potential issue:that the hollowed-out rock of asteroids would not be strong enough, so it would fracture and break up as it spun.
Most asteroids are not even solid rock but 'rubble piles' – clusters of loose boulders, stones and sand held together by the weak mutual gravity of space. A new study therefore proposes encasing the asteroid in a flexible mesh bag made of ultra-lightweight, high-strength carbon nanoliters. This is a tube made of carbon just a few atoms in diameter.
The bag encloses and supports the entire rotating mass of the asteroid debris and habitat within it, while supporting its own weight during rotation.On top of the carbon nanoliters are solar panels that power the habitat. Experts say the asteroid's outer layer provides a natural shield against the sun's deadly cosmic rays.
Additionally, habitats built on asteroids affect interplanetary transport. So a colonized asteroid could serve as a spaceport. The asteroid's rotation will be spun up to create artificial gravity using rockets, Frank told Mail Online.
Asteroids can be propelled into the air by affixing a rocket motor to a pile of debris and launching it perpendicular to its surface, he said.
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