Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
On Sunday, 25 September 2016 12:34:12 PM AEST Robin Humble via luv-main wrote:
On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 01:59:16PM +1000, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
Is there a good free orbital simulator for Linux? ..............snip a full Dyson sphere is neutrally/meta stable, but no idea how you'd actually construct it in a stable manner... likely someone has thought about it though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld
One thing that's noted in the Errors section of the above page is that a ringworld as a rigid structure is not in orbit around the star but spinning independently and would need attitude jets to keep it in place. A full Dyson sphere would require the same but with greater complexity as the jets could only be on the outside of the sphere.
No doubt this is correct, but it is not intuitive; - "intuitively" one might expect that movement of the centre of mass of either: the Ringworld or the Dyson Sphere away from the centre of mass of it's star; would result in a net gravitational force and thus dynamic stability ? regards Rohan McLeod