Thomas de Groot wrote:
> "Mike Andrews" <nomail@nomail> schreef in bericht
> news:web.434fc6b84ff5b998c717c9af0@news.povray.org...
> 
>>For practicality I prefer Banks' 'Culture' ring model which is to have a
>>smaller ring orbiting in a star's life zone, spinning once per day to give
>>one g of centripetal accelleration and with a small rotation plane offset
>>from the sun. If I got my calculation right (a = lw^2) the radius is about
>>1.85 million km,  which still gives a huge surface area for a reasonable
>>ring width - and you can build several in one system :-)

There may be a problem with tidal stresses at that size.

>>(Wanders off, dreaming of how to reduce Jupiter to workable material ...)
> 
> And there you get the Ringworld described by Larry Niven!!

Not exactly.

What Mike described is a small ring, the center of which is at a 
distance (150Gm or so) from the star.  Ringworld is a huge ring (150Gm 
or so radius), with the star at the center of the ring.

Regards,
John

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