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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Symphony of the Sword/The Order of the Rose
Topic ID: 11
Message ID: 15
#15, RE: Wait... what?
Posted by BLUE on Jun-06-06 at 04:56 PM
In response to message #12
LAST EDITED ON Jun-06-06 AT 05:16 PM (EDT)
 
>Hmm... I think maybe you missed what I was saying. Picture the
>sphere. Now, inside it, place a psuedocontinent (PC), happily
>orbiting the star that lives at the center of the sphere (put it a
>safe distance away from the inner surface of the sphere, of course :).
> People live on the PC, with their feet pointing at the star (on the
>other side of the PC), and their heads at the inner surface of the
>sphere. Cianbro's magic accounts for the apparent location of the
>star to the inhabitants (could be done with mirrors, theoretically).

Okay, but that's entirely missing the point of building (or creating)a dyson sphere in the first place. You build the sphere to give yourself the maximum amount of useable space possible, which would be on the inner surface of the sphere, not in orbit around the star or hanging inverted from the surface on a pylon.

If the pseudo continent was made up of as much mass as it would take to create it in my example above, plus the mass of the sphere itself, plus a minute amount of spin to the sphere, gravity should take care of itself pretty much. The gravity of the star exerting itself on all points of the sphere equally would keep it positioned; at 1 AU (93 million miles) the mass of the pseudo-continent and the mass of the sphere, and therefore the combined force of gravity from the two, will affect J Random much more than the gravity of the star due to proximity. The mass required to make a dyson sphere is truly enormous, and it's going to exert it's effects on people. Gravity pulls towards the center of mass, and the curve of the sphere is so shallow (1 degree of arc is over a million and a half miles) that over any distance that means anything to a New Avalonian, the center of mass is towards the surface of the sphere. Even if the pseudo-continent is a hundred times smaller than my figures, the sphere is still there, and it's not going away.

And if anyone remembers the episode of ST:TNG with Scotty and the Dyson Sphere, it was the inner surface of the sphere that was developed; maybe that doesn't apply here, but it's the most obvious choice.