What If We Built A Ring World In Space?

Maryna Hordiienko6 days ago

Someday, when humankind outgrows planet Earth, we might aim to build a habitat so vast we
could never overpopulate it.
The Earth may not be our home forever. Eventually, we may have to leave. What if instead of
finding a potentially habitable exoplanet light-year away, we stayed in our Solar System and
built a habitat so enormous we could never overpopulate it?

How would we go about building such a thing? Where would we find enough materials to
construct this cosmic megastructure? How long would it take before we could move in into our
new artificial home?

Imagine you lived on a ring with a radius of 150 million km (93 million mi) encircling the Sun. A
gigantic artificial world with its own gravity, ecosystem, and atmosphere. A world with three
million times the area of the Earth – big enough for trillions of humans to call home.
Imagine you lived on a ring with a radius of 150 million km (93 million mi) encircling the Sun. A
gigantic artificial world with its own gravity, ecosystem, and atmosphere. A world with three
million times the area of the Earth – big enough for trillions of humans to call home.

You’d live on enormous landmass on the inner side of the ring. The outer shell would protect
you and all those trillions of people from the hazards of outer space.

How does that sound? Problem is, assembling such a thing – suspended out in the Solar
System – wouldn’t be easy.

You couldn’t just pull the Earth apart and have an army of robots reassemble it into a ringworld.
Among the many problems you’d run into, your first would be finding the material.

The International Space Station roaming the Earth’s lower orbit right now weighs about 420
tons. Something like a ringworld would tip the scales at no less than a million tons. Where would
we find so much material?

I know some places. The Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Neptune would do just fine. This ring of
icy bodies stretches out for almost 3 billion km (1.9 billion mi).

Some astronomers think the Kuiper Belt would have enough material for this project, although
it’s hard to tell exactly how much we’d need to construct a thing like this.

We might have to sacrifice all the planets, moons and asteroids in the Solar System. Our
ringworld would be left all alone in the entire Solar System.

If we could manage to gather and transport all the material available, then construction would
begin. It would take a lot of physical labor, an army of robots and maybe hundreds of
generations to realize that our structure was not stable enough.

Because the megastructure would turn out so enormous, it would break any known molecular
bonds. We’d have to find a way to make use of one of the fundamental forces of nature – the
strong nuclear force. Of all forces, it’s the grippiest – it bonds material on the scale of the atomic
nucleus so that nothing can break it apart.

Or maybe we’d come up with a new super-strong material altogether. But until we figure that
out, every interstellar body passing through our Solar System would be a threat to our
megastructure.

The next thing we’d have to worry about is gravity. That part is pretty easy – we’d just have to
spin the ringworld at nearly 2,000,000 km/h (1,200,000 mi/h).

I know, that’s really fast. We’d have to build up the speed over time. Luckily, maintaining it in the
frictionless environment of space wouldn’t be too hard. Such rotation would generate centrifugal
force, and that, in turn, would create an artificial gravity equal to the one we have here on Earth.

With gravity solved, we’d bring in the atmosphere and start populating the ringworld. For the
inhabitants of the megastructure, it would always be daytime.

Unless we could create a day and night cycle with extra panels inside the ring. These panels
would not only block the sunlight in some areas to give us nighttime. They’d also be good for
harvesting energy from the Sun.

But for all the epicness of the world we just created, it wouldn’t be stable. A single asteroid strike
could cause the structure to drift closer to the Sun. A hole punched through the ring could let all
our atmosphere out. And a massive solar storm? Don’t even get me started on that one.

One failure inside the ring could doom the entire structure together with its inhabitants. It’s just
too risky to build it around the Sun. We might have better luck with a huge ring space station in
the Earth’s orbit.

Reflection:
In this article, there was world or what they so-called “Ringworld” encircling the sun that we can’t
over populated because of its size is three million times the area of the Earth, but upon the
realization of this megastructure, there are so many things we might to consider. First, where can
we find such a tremendous amount of materials for this structure?. Second, the assembling and
labor for such a thing. Third, gravity and atmosphere. Lastly, the natural phenomenon that is
happening in outer space that cannot be predicted.
While I am reading and watching this article, I found it challenging, because building such a big
structure is not an easy task, it takes time, effort and the cooperation of each nation for its
progress. As I read deeper I felt a bit lonely about what will happen to Earth as well as to the
entire solar system because upon the construction of this megastructure, it needs plenty of
materials that can be found in the solar system so if this structure get done the only thing left in
the entire solar system is the sun and our ringworld.
I realize that our ever-changing world got older and weaker so we must protect, conserve and
plan to reduce the stresses that our world experience for us to live more and stay on Earth happily
and orderly.