Bishop Ring (habitat)
Encyclopedia
A Bishop Ring is a type of hypothetical rotating space habitat
originally proposed in 1997 by Forrest Bishop. As with other space habitat designs, the Bishop Ring would spin to produce artificial gravity
by way of centrifugal force. The design differs from the classical designs produced in the 1970s by Gerard K. O'Neill and NASA in that it would use carbon nanotubes instead of steel, allowing the habitat to be built much larger. In the original proposal, the habitat would be approximately 1,000 km (620 mi) in radius and 500 km (310 mi) in width, containing 3 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) of living space, comparable in size to nations like Argentina
, or India
.
Because of its enormous scale, the Bishop Ring would not need to be enclosed like the Stanford torus
: it could be built without a "roof", with the atmosphere retained by artificial gravity and atmosphere retention walls some 200 km (120 mi) in height. The habitat would be oriented with its axis of rotation perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, with either an arrangement of mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the inner rim or an artificial light source in the middle, powered by a combination of solar panels on the outer rim and solar power satellites.
Also unlike the 1970s NASA proposals, where habitats would be placed in cislunar space or the Earth-Moon L₄/L₅ Langrangian points, Forrest Bishop proposed the much more distant Sun-Earth L₄/L₅ Langrangian points as the sites for the habitats.
Space habitat
A space habitat is a space station intended as a permanent settlement rather than as a simple waystation or other specialized facility...
originally proposed in 1997 by Forrest Bishop. As with other space habitat designs, the Bishop Ring would spin to produce artificial gravity
Artificial gravity
Artificial gravity is the varying of apparent gravity via artificial means, particularly in space, but also on the Earth...
by way of centrifugal force. The design differs from the classical designs produced in the 1970s by Gerard K. O'Neill and NASA in that it would use carbon nanotubes instead of steel, allowing the habitat to be built much larger. In the original proposal, the habitat would be approximately 1,000 km (620 mi) in radius and 500 km (310 mi) in width, containing 3 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) of living space, comparable in size to nations like Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, or India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
Because of its enormous scale, the Bishop Ring would not need to be enclosed like the Stanford torus
Stanford torus
The Stanford torus is a proposed design for a space habitat capable of housing 10,000 to 140,000 permanent residents.The Stanford Torus was proposed during the 1975 NASA Summer Study, conducted at Stanford University, with the purpose of speculating on designs for future space colonies...
: it could be built without a "roof", with the atmosphere retained by artificial gravity and atmosphere retention walls some 200 km (120 mi) in height. The habitat would be oriented with its axis of rotation perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, with either an arrangement of mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the inner rim or an artificial light source in the middle, powered by a combination of solar panels on the outer rim and solar power satellites.
Also unlike the 1970s NASA proposals, where habitats would be placed in cislunar space or the Earth-Moon L₄/L₅ Langrangian points, Forrest Bishop proposed the much more distant Sun-Earth L₄/L₅ Langrangian points as the sites for the habitats.
Bishop rings in fiction
- Bishop Rings are a common type of habitat in the fictional universe of the Orion's Arm world-building projectOrion's ArmOrion's Arm, is a multi-authored online science fiction world-building project, first established in 2000 by M. Alan Kazlev, Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn, Bernd Helfert and Anders Sandberg and further co-authored by many people since...
, where the width of individual rings can vary from as little as 100 km to as much as 500 km (60—310 mi). - The eponymous ring installationsHalo (megastructure)Halos are fictional megastructures and superweapons in the Halo video game series. They are referred to as "Installations" by their AI monitors, and are collectively referred to as "the Array" by the installations' creators, the Forerunners...
of the Halo series are essentially Bishop Rings with slightly divergent proportions. Notably, the Halo rings are located in orbit around gas giants rather than at lagrangian points.
See also
- Halo (megastructure)Halo (megastructure)Halos are fictional megastructures and superweapons in the Halo video game series. They are referred to as "Installations" by their AI monitors, and are collectively referred to as "the Array" by the installations' creators, the Forerunners...
- Island ThreeIsland ThreeThe O'Neill cylinder is a space settlement design proposed by American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space....
- Orbital (The Culture)
- RingworldRingworldRingworld is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. It is followed by three sequels, and preceded by four prequels, and ties into numerous other books set in Known Space...