>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.

I shouldn't get into something this pointlessly geeky, but dammit this needs correcting.

The center of mass and gravity for any point on the Sphere would be centered on - is supposed be centered on - Zeta Cygni. Anything attached to the inside of the sphere, including the shipyards, Avalon, the terraforming widgets and whatever other stuff Gryph feels like pulling out of his hat on any given day, are included in the total mass of the Sphere. The net gravitational effect is such that anything not firmly attached to the Sphere's inner surface is going to fall into the frigging star at the rate of however many meters/second Zeta Cygni exerts at one AU.

The reason that all the loose junk around New Avalon (like cars, people, buildings, the atmosphere, whatever) don't exhibit this behavior is because they've got handwavium gravity generators making sure that down faces towards the Sphere and not towards Zeta Cygni. Same basic principle as what keeps people from floating around on the Enterprise.

To sum up all this wandering gibberish: Gravity don't work the way you think it works.

--
Mr. Fnord, free fallin'