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Islands in Space
Feb. 10th, 2011 06:30 pmBack in the 60s and 70s, a number of SF writers (notably Larry Niven and George Zebrowski) used the concept of a hollowed-out asteroid as a place for space colonists to live. They owed this concept to Dandridge Cole and Donald Cox’s 1964 book, Islands in Space: The Challenge of the Planetoids, which first introduced it.
Basically, the idea was to heat up an appropriately large asteroid and reshape it into a 30-kilometre-long hollow cylinder, after the fashion of a glassblower. Spin it for gravity, use mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the interior, stock same with various kinds of life, plus ice caps at both ends and a lake in the middle, and there’s your space colony, complete with ecosystem. (Okay, I’m simplifying a bit).
Here’s a blog entry about the concept that includes some nice graphics.
The concept may not be as practical as it once seemed -- it appears the asteroids’ metal content is not high enough for such a structure to hold together -- but maybe it could work in some other star system, where the asteroids are richer in the right substances.
Unlike Habitable Planets for Man, this book doesn’t seem to be available online in an authorized edition anywhere, but it’s well worth finding a copy by interlibrary loan or a used-book dealer.
Basically, the idea was to heat up an appropriately large asteroid and reshape it into a 30-kilometre-long hollow cylinder, after the fashion of a glassblower. Spin it for gravity, use mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the interior, stock same with various kinds of life, plus ice caps at both ends and a lake in the middle, and there’s your space colony, complete with ecosystem. (Okay, I’m simplifying a bit).
Here’s a blog entry about the concept that includes some nice graphics.
The concept may not be as practical as it once seemed -- it appears the asteroids’ metal content is not high enough for such a structure to hold together -- but maybe it could work in some other star system, where the asteroids are richer in the right substances.
Unlike Habitable Planets for Man, this book doesn’t seem to be available online in an authorized edition anywhere, but it’s well worth finding a copy by interlibrary loan or a used-book dealer.