Life in Space: City on an Asteroid

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Brett

The coefficient of static friction between hard-compound rubber and typical dry pavement is about 0.8, which means that a vehicle with rubber tyres can accelerate, decelerate, or corner no harder than about 0.8 times local gravity.

:)

And since local gravity is 0.0203 m/s^2... it would take over 9 minutes just to get up to 20 mph, and 25 minutes to accelerate up to 55 mph. And ditto to slow back down. Kinda impractical.

Hm - new vehicular thought: aircraft-carrier-style launch-assist, to give a vehicle an initial boost so it doesn't have to take all that time getting up to speed. However, that still leaves the problem of /de/celerating, not to mention cornering...


Okay - so surface off-road travel is going to be /really/ slow. Let's review the options mentioned so far:

* Rocket hoppers.
* Rail/maglev, with the tracks upside-down.
* Tunnels, driven on the ceiling.
* Slag-surfaced road, driven by gecko-tired vehicles
* Extremely slow-to-start, slow-to-stop, and hard-to-turn offroad surface vehicles
* Ground vehicles launched by cannon and caught by net-or-equivalent, still hard-to-turn.
* A "Crazy Eddie" project: digging straight-line tunnels through the asteroid for gravity-powered trains.


Am I missing any ideas?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

(And may I say that I just love that there exists a forum where I can ask a completely random question, such as about road-building costs, and someone actually responds with valuable insights? :) )

Who says these games wreck your education?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

Am I missing any ideas?

Cable cars. Or (since supporting weight is pretty much insignificant), cable cars.

Are there any marks available for pointing out that this is a hell of a place to live?

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Brett

Cable cars. Or (since supporting weight is pretty much insignificant), cable cars.

Ah, yes - externally-powered transport. Forgot about that. In a similar vein, we could throw in Heinlein-esque slidewalks for consideration.

Are there any marks available for pointing out that this is a hell of a place to live?

Maybe - but more importantly, is it a /good/ heluva place to live, or a /bad/ heluva place to live?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

Am I missing any ideas?

Pneumatic tubes, but that's just a variation on tunnels.

The rocket hoppers and catapult/net methods have a safety problem, in that it's easy for a failure to leave you moving at over escape velocity, which means someone has to come and fetch you. This is reasonably urgent, because you keep on getting further away.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Brett

The coefficient of static friction between hard-compound rubber and typical dry pavement is about 0.8, which means that a vehicle with rubber tyres can accelerate, decelerate, or corner no harder than about 0.8 times local gravity.

Just realized a further complication of this detail - if that's really how hard it is to accelerate to a reasonable speed, then even /shoes/ are going to need the gecko-tech I mentioned earlier. Outside of the centripetal-force gravity train, I should probably describe life on the asteroid more in terms of freefall with a slight-breeze-level force nudging loose objects 'down', rather than in terms of anything approaching allowing normal walking.

[hari]

This could also be stated up with spaceships. Just refrain from giving it any kind of mobility. And that gives you a third book to play with (or third to tenth or so I suppose).

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

Just realized a further complication of this detail - if that's really how hard it is to accelerate to a reasonable speed, then even /shoes/ are going to need the gecko-tech I mentioned earlier. Outside of the centripetal-force gravity train, I should probably describe life on the asteroid more in terms of freefall with a slight-breeze-level force nudging loose objects 'down', rather than in terms of anything approaching allowing normal walking.

Absolutely! 0.002 gee is much too little for walking. If a person took a normal step it would take two and a half minutes for him or her to come down, and he or she would travel about 300–500 m in a gentle ballistic arc.

[Anthony]

You can also do roller coaster type tracks, with wheels on both sides of the track, or similar designs using cables instead of tracks (this won't support as high velocities, but it's much cheaper to lay out). For durable loads, you can simply throw them into a catch net at the other end, you need 25-30 m/s to reliably throw to anywhere on the asteroid.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Brett

Absolutely! 0.002 gee is much too little for walking. If a person took a normal step it would take two and a half minutes for him or her to come down, and he or she would travel about 300–500 m in a gentle ballistic arc.

And there's one way the established locals can have fun with any newly-arrived greenhorns, especially dislikable ones like bureaucrats... <scribbles notes>