Talk:Stanford torus

Ukrainian production

"On 20th December, 2011, the Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, in an interview with Global Post, disclosed that a facility in Dnipropetrovsk is producing parts for the first stage of a Stanford Torus Space station in collaboration with U.S. scientists.[10]"

The citation says nothing of the sort. JamesDeSimas (talk) 07:16, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The article cited shows exactly that quote. It's a poorly designed click-through to the third page of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.246.97.163 (talk) 17:43, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Ringworld

I think a refrence to the Novel Ringword would be apropriate. Perhapse under a Refrenced in fiction type-section? Justin 23:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC). The historical thread begins with the premice that habitats are built with known materials, the Ringworld cannot, nor can many fictional habitats. In the interest of actually getting there I think we should think about known materials and how they may be obtained and used in space. Space construction is difficult because of the frailty and unsuitablity (pardon the pun) of human constructors. I think that before space stations are anything more than an expensive experiment a method of constructing them with robots must be worked out. I think this is possible because robots function best in a simple environment and in the absence of cats. Robots are used for many assembly plants and I believe a fairly complex assembly can be programmed. I propose that, if enough people are interested, we could contribute to a prize for some kind of primative constructor. This would require that someone well known host the prize and that a number of people contribute a small sum. We may have a considerable grace period before cats make it into space, but in fact I think this is an idea thats time has come. 19:55, 29 October 2006 (UTC)gem Selective_laser_sintering might prove to be something that robots could do with relatively little processing of materials since it works with a great variety of substances.

A reference to Ringworld isn't appropriate for this article because the Stanford Torus is a fairly specific design that is very different in scale (and plausibility) to the Ringworld. Rings of one kind or another arise completely naturally when trying to simulate gravity in space; most ring-shaped space structures aren't Stanford tori. -Mark Foskey (talk) 22:00, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Is Freeside really a torus? If I remember correctly, Gibson describes it as cigar-shaped in Neuromancer. That is, it's pretty much a long cylinder, circular in cross-section, rotating about its long axis. Allister MacLeod 20:55, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Last night a friend showed me where Gibson uses "The Torus" as one of the names for the archipelago--but I'm still not totally clear on what's where. Is it possible that Freeside is the center of the spindle, the pin in the middle of the top? Allister MacLeod 18:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The reference to Gibson's Freeside being a torus shaped station was something that was bugging me, as in other passages he describes it as a spindle or cigar shaped. So doing some digging and pulling passages from the book I come to the conclusion that it's not Freeside that's torus shaped, but instead the Rastafarian station Zion. I believe the confusion arose from the passage: 'The islands. Torus, spindle, cluster. Human DNA spreading out from gravity's steep well like an oilslick.' Which isn't specifically referring to Freeside, but rather the collection of different habitats within the fifth Lagrange Point. The Torus being Zion, the Spindle being Freeside and an unnamed cluster of other stations. 76.48.58.111 06:20, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I removed the reference to Ringworld, since it is CLEARLY inappropriate. The Ringworld is a modified version of a Dyson sphere, and is completely different, both in scale and in mechanics. Ringworld is the size of the orbit of a planet in the "Goldilocks" zone, and is heliocentric, i.e. it rotates with the star at its center. A Stanford torus, and similar structures, rotate on an imaginary or structured axis, and would be stationed at one of the Lagrange points around an individual planet. Gil gosseyn (talk) 11:32, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Numbers

The Bernal sphere article claims the Torus can house "140,000 people", this article claims a modest "10,000". I smell a little problem. Jafet 15:21, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Island One = 500 m diameter, 10,000 population, Island Two = 1800 m diameter, 140,000 population. Both geometries (sphere and torus) were proposed as alternatives for each generation. Pfhreak (talk) 21:39, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

What scale?

"that is one mile in diameter" - what type of mile? It should be rewriten in kilometers. Ran4 20:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

To reply to the above, do you think that the dimensions should read
a)"1.609344 kilometres in diameter",
b)"1.609344 kilometres (1 mile) in diameter",
or c)"a mile (1.609344 kilometres) in diameter? And anyway, what type of kilometer?Chrlsuk 19:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I rewrote it how i would like to see it, which is "one statute mile (1.6 km) in diameter". The exact size is not important, i see no reason to put that many decimal points in the conversion to kilometers. The miles should come first, with the kilometers in parentheses, because the engineers worked in imperial units. Foobaz·o< 00:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The exact size is extremely important, since there are very specific design criteria which need to be satisfied. The difference between a nautical mile and a statute mile in diameter at 1 rpm means more than a 10% difference in the strength of the fake gravity and the tangential velocity of the torus. --76.224.64.68 21:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

They're not real, so it's not like exact dimensions are important. --79.65.116.222 (talk) 20:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Halo???

A more accurate paragraph would be: "Bungie's video game series Halo involves orbiting space-station rings completely unlike the Stanford torus model, being approximately four million times larger in diameter." Unless there's something in Halo 3 that I haven't seen that look like a Stanford torus - the Halo installation itself isn't a torus, it's a ribbon. There's no roof, and no mirrors.

In fact, I shall delete the reference here to Halo, on the grounds that it's entirely irrelevant to this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.188.147.34 (talk • contribs) 10:14, 23 August 2007

I agree, thanks for removing it. Foobaz·o< 10:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Halo is a torus. It has a 3-dimensional cross-section and it is a uniform regular closed loop. Not that it matters for this article, because it's not a Stanford torus. --76.224.64.68 21:20, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Babylon 5 not a torus

I removed the following:

• In the sci fi TV series Babylon 5, The human race use space stations based on the Stanford Torus around Earth and most of the worlds that Earth has colonized.

on the grounds that the colony doesn't look at all toroidal, and the interiors don't have the open air quality that was intended for the ST. Mark Foskey (talk) 21:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Material strength requirements

I was surprised by these calculations in the source document that the limiting factor for the torus material's tensile strength is for containing the air pressure (51.7 kPa), not counteracting the centrifugal force (7.66 kPa equivalent). I remember reading that tensile strength for larger structures (Ringworld) required exotic materials. Would this be worth mentioning in the article? --IanOsgood (talk) 17:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Not Ringworld here - but calcs for ST would be relevant. I was looking for stress figures. (5appendA is now at 5appendA ) - Rod57 (talk) 10:28, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

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fiction section

Is this section really necessary given that wikipedia is not for science fiction? TeH nOmInAtOr (talk) 16:23, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia is for science fiction, and English literature-fiction, and Spanish-literature fiction, and sports, and military history, and 1,000s of other topics. It is natural to include information about how different topics influence each other. Johntex\^talk 19:30, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Confusion between Stanford Torus and other wheel-shaped space habitats

This article is generally great but flawed, unsurprisingly. I understand the Stanford Torus to be the specific design of space habitat conceived at the Summer Study in 1975, but toroidal space habitats were conceived a long time before that. For instance, there's a well-known Chesley Bonestell illustration of one from the '50s. The main problem with this is that all the stuff about centrifuge-style space habitats is being put here and belongs somewhere else.

loose objects

If there were a loose object in the living space of a rotating torus, not attached to anything, like a bird, would it still be subject to the same gravity and move along at the same speed as everything else?81.71.164.202 (talk) 03:31, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

If nothing else, air friction would eventually bring it into consensus motion. —Tamfang (talk) 18:01, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Mass effect.

I think the mass effect information should be altered, It is actually the presidium itself that is based on a Stanford torus not the whole citadel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.182.60.198 (talk) 20:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit, Cheers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.182.60.198 (talk) 14:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Centripetal and Centrifugal

In the introductory section the text that discusses the apparent gravity due to the centrifugal force has been changed a few times to read 'centripetal', perhaps by folks armed with a the high-school physics meme that there is "no such thing as centrifugal force".

Centrifugal is correct (I've changed it back), and in fact centrifugal is the term used throughout the NASA document cited at the end of that sentence.

I'm adding this in the hope that a future drive-by corrector might think twice before changing it again.

Idmillington (talk) 20:25, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Land area?

At least a rough order of magnitude for the land area would be nice to have. Obviously, it depends on the width, but then so does the tonnage, which is quoted. Homunq (࿓) 23:31, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Habitat

Biosphere One is Earth, Biosphere 2 was a gruesome failure. Aside from the social problems, a self-sustaining closed environment for human habitability isn't a solved problem. Just blowing it off is like saying our bodies don't need gravity long run. Wrong! Here's a link: https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-04/fyi-can-humans-survive-completely-self-sufficient-closed-environment/ - 66.102.220.134 (talk) 06:00, 13 October 2021 (UTC)