Talk:O'Neill cylinder

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Which is it, O'Neill or O'Neil? Should this be moved? -- John Owens 06:47 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

Never mind, found the info, I'll fix it. -- John Owens

Where did Gilliland make his propositions? I can't find sources online. --NeuronExMachina 02:16, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Gilliland wrote the Rosinante trilogy, which is set on a "mundito" in the asteroid belt. Excellent books, IMHO, and the design of the habitats is fairly fleshed out. He used a somewhat different design in another novel, The End of the Empire. However, I don't know what this:

"He also proposed structuring the habitat as a spiral wrapped on a central core. The advantage would be that much more area could be packed into the same volume, lowering the cost per unit area. A secondary advantage is that water would run downhill. Light would be distributed using light-pipes."

refers to. Some other story, or a misunderstanding?

—wwoods 00:39, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1 Walls, No Roof, Centrifugal Force?
2 rama
3 The list of science fictional uses
4 clouds?
5 Maximum size?

[edit] Walls, No Roof, Centrifugal Force?

Is this kind of how it works? Or alternatively, is this how it could work, kind of like a very small ring world?

Some of the photos get me thinking of a structure without a roof, however they were intended. And, there's the part in the text that mentions the metal casing and the air (for the top side?) providing adequate protection from cosmic rays.

[edit] rama

Rendezvous with rama was published in 1972? - cohesion★talk 07:17, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The list of science fictional uses

I've started improving this a little. I've put the items into approximate chronological order (some of them are in series that I'm not familiar with, so may have screwed up when within the series the habitats were introduced) to start with, and expanded the entry on Rendezvous with Rama to describe the similar placement of Rama's light strips to O'Neills windows, and indicate both its prior publication and likely independent origin.

I've also removed the reference to Greg Bear's Eon, which seemed somewhat far removed from an O'Neill cylinder, which is a very specific design, rather than the general concept of a rotating habitat. I'm in two minds about Babylon 5, but left it in. It is substantially more similar, but still feel it does not share enough of the characteristics of an O'Neill cylinder to be described as related to one. I wonder if JMS et al read any descriptions of O'Neills work when designing it? JulesH 17:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Just my humble opinion: Babylon 5 certainly fits the model. I would define an O'Neill habitat as anything that's cylindrical and rotates for internal gravity. The mirrors are optional. A secondary definition would be that it replicates a natural ecology inside for life support. The quality of the CGI at the time really couldn't show it off but Babylon 5 was supposed to have hydroponics and gardens inside. The water resevoirs would also appear as lakes and could have been used for recreation purposes but were specifically left out of the design because JMS (show's creator) thought that he had a hard enough time selling the concept to the suits already. He mentioned in one of his RASTB5 usenet posts that the suits wanted to know how the crewmembers didn't fall off the ceiling. He said they had velcro on their shoes, deadpan delivery. The suits said "No, that's so impractical, how would they move around?"

If you can mention the other non-mirrored habitats here, you could certainly mention B5. Also, if such a habitat were built further out from the sun than earth's orbit, especially if it is used as the basis for an interstellar spaceship, there would have to be an internal source for light generation anyways. The mirrors could possibly be a cost-savings measure when the structure is parked near enough a suitable star.

8-24-06 by a humble non-registered user

"In the video game Halo, the Halo itself was a ring-shaped megastructure bearing some similarities to an O'Neill cylinder." If no-one has any objections, i would like to remove this... Halo is almost a ringworld, but certainly very different to an O'neill cylinder. WookMuff 07:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Halo, as the name suggests, was a ring world, not an O'Neill cylinder. See the Ring World article (which for whatever reason is specific to the novel of the same name, but still contains good information on engineering of such a construct). In the classical sense of the term, a ring world would be large enough to encircle its parent star, though the Halo was considerably smaller than this, in its own orbit at what we assume to have been a planetary distance, with its rotation exposing different parts of its interior surface to the incoming light over the course of its "day". Azriphael 15:17, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] clouds?

would clouds floating 1/2 a kilometer above the ground still react to the man-made gravity? Does the painting take extreme liberties?

Well, those are concept art so I do not know how real they can be. However, according to a normal reasoning process, a certain amount of debris, water vapour, etc. will float in the middle of the cylinder due to the weak gravity(actually no gravity). How far they can float from the middle is unknown. MythSearcher 03:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)