Re: [Fwd: starship-design: Infrastructure in space [was: FTL travel...]]

[Zenon Kulpa <zkulpa@zmit1.ippt.gov.pl>]

> From owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Mon Apr 24 04:53:18 2000
> From: pk <thida@videotron.ca>
> 
> "L. Parker" wrote:
> 
> > Now for the large open areas in space. This is not really so hard. If we
> > accept that we will need to mine asteroids for materials, it actually 
> > gets rather easy, just hollow one out and move it! It doesn't have to be
> > spherical necessarily, just large and open. The hard part will be 
> > convincing the meek to let us move a large asteroid into Earth orbit....
> 
> What do you mean: "it doesn't have to be spherical"??
> Unless you mine an asteroid (which IS a spheroid, most of the time),
>
It seems not - most of the small ones (below some 100 km diameter or so)
are far from spheroid.

> you'll be better with a sphere: constraints... why do you think that the
> earth and all other spinning object in space are more or less spheroid?
> Because it's the shape in which it's the easiest not to explode!
> Well, that's what i was taught, anyway 8)
>
The reason is gravity - the stony body above that about 100 km 
of diameter has enough gravity to pull all the rubble into a more 
or less spherical shape. Fast spinning actually deforms it from a sphere 
into an ellipsoid.

-- Zenon Kulpa