Friday, June 3, 2011

Homes in a sunny orbit

I've always liked the idea of the Stanford torus, but such a facility really needs to be in sunlight continually, and if it's outside Earths magnetic protection it needs a radiation shell, I was recently reminded of dawn to dusk sun synchronous polar LEO's, an object in such an orbit is always above the day-night terminator, and so always in the sunlight.
If we could get cost to orbit as low as $100,000/tonne, just maybe we could see a Beverly Hills in space, a community for the super rich that the rest of us could at least visit.
Interestingly,  sun synchronous orbits are between 550 and 1000km high, a favorable altitude  from which to swing a rotovator:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTC...

Seen from the Earth, a 2km diameter colony at that altitude would appear to be about 1/4th the diameter of the Moon, orbiting at the terminator it would be easily and often seen.

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