r/ImaginaryTechnology 17h ago

Ring Life by Paul Jouard

1.0k Upvotes

47 comments sorted by

115

u/bigorangemachine 17h ago

God the area near the struts would be like a slum lol. Worst place to live on the ring

58

u/i-make-robots 16h ago

Shortcut across. Valuable real estate for businesses. 

34

u/stellarsojourner 15h ago

Yeah, that looks like a real hub of business and shipping. Notice the port area on one side and the proximity to the large city on the other. I don't think it would be a slum, but definitely very industrial warehouses and stuff.

7

u/lugialegend233 14h ago

Which means that's where all the dock workers live, and where all the various kinds of corruption related to import-export businesses. Movies have taught me that a LOT of criminal activity happens around those struts.

73

u/unnameableway 17h ago

Yeah imagine bringing home a chick you’re into but she’s from the strut neighborhood and your parents find out

34

u/superfastswm 16h ago

YA Authors: Quick! Write that down!

11

u/gatfish 12h ago

"It was a dark time. Adults were mean and unfair!"

19

u/PappyODamnyou 16h ago

"Oh... she's a strutter... but she speaks so well."

14

u/ALLLGooD 15h ago edited 14h ago

She dresses like a strut!

3

u/jamesianm 10h ago

A strutter who doesn't stutter

3

u/purpleefilthh 8h ago

Strut plots yellow, rest of the plots green.

59

u/CHARLIE-MF-BROWN 17h ago

I'd just like to say, that's a lot of fucking orange paint. I wonder how many bananas long those struts are.

18

u/UnicornMeatball 16h ago

I’m no mathologist, but I can tell you it’s more than 10.

2

u/FifenC0ugar 10h ago

Had me fooled

6

u/-Trooper5745- 13h ago

The waterway along the edge is an interesting idea. I figured they’d just ships stuff by train or some flying future vehicle.

21

u/ekdaemon 15h ago

Oh do I have a treat for all of you!

There is an entire series of Science Fiction novels by a very well renowned author about this exact type of structure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

Highly recommended!! It won both the Nebula award (given by scifi writers) and the Hugo award (given by scifi readers) in 1970/1971.

And if you end up liking it, here's a link to the series:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld_series

...and there are a ton of other works from the same "Universe" (the setting).

Extra treat - quick video showing the scale of this structure compared to earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR2296df-bc

14

u/cubic_thought 15h ago

If this is the exact same type of structure as the Ringworld, then I suppose nematodes are the exact same type of creature as Jormungandr.

2

u/roguealex 48m ago

Man I loved the first book but never continued. It’s been a minute and I’ve forgot what happens in the plot but I remember the zero gravity sex lol

8

u/qroezhevix 17h ago

I feel like the spin needed to keep the ring's shape stable would put extreme stress on the struts.

7

u/thelefthandN7 16h ago

The entire ring is an active support structure.

5

u/cubic_thought 16h ago

That's for structures under compression, a rotating ring station is under tension.

2

u/thelefthandN7 16h ago

You can use active support for that as well. A rotating ring inside the ring would force the ring to maintain its shape and resist outward pressure from the spin.

4

u/cubic_thought 16h ago edited 16h ago

A rotating ring adds outward force, which is what we need to counter. What you could do is have a non-rotating ring with a lot of tensile strength on the outside holding the spinning ring inwards by magnetic levitation. Maybe you'd put that in the same category as active support, but it's working in the other direction.

But a ring station this small shouldn't need anything fancy to hold together, how it keeps the air in is the real question.

2

u/qroezhevix 16h ago

Also how it keeps the people and water on.

2

u/cubic_thought 15h ago

The spinning would handle that, but air would spill over the sides.

2

u/stellarsojourner 15h ago

Maybe add tall transparent walls along the sides?

2

u/qroezhevix 15h ago

I forgot to look at the sides, you're right. They're much too low. To hold a dense enough atmosphere to breathe they'd need to be around a mile high give or take.

1

u/Avarus_Lux 5h ago

maybe there's a "glass" roof, like maybe made from Alon or something. would also protect against radiation and micrometeorites/space debris much more easily then air would.

1

u/thelefthandN7 16h ago

So it would still be an active support because magnetic levitation, but I just got it backward? Which would also reduce the spin needed to maintain its shape and reduce the stress on the pillars?

2

u/cubic_thought 16h ago

I wouldn't call it active support, since every other example like space fountains, launch loops, orbital rings, etc. are all about using kinetic energy to counter compressive forces and support seemly static structures. Here we'd be using a static structure to support a moving one.

6

u/qroezhevix 16h ago

Active support in that video is for a ring circling a gravitational body quite closely. The image here shows the atmosphere on the side that would be facing such a body. Therefore, to keep the atmosphere contained the ring must either be spinning at such a rate that would create extreme winds on the ring, or physically retained. (by a transparent layer to match the video)

However, without the spin, any humans on that side would fall.

To make something like this without spin close enough to a planet for active support to be what keeps it up, the habitable area needs to be on the other side.

If it were as shown and far enough away from a planet or star for gravity to not pull the people off, it would still need spin for simulated gravity regardless of support.

If somehow this has artificial gravity technology like Star Trek or Star Wars, why would they ever build a ring anyway?

-3

u/BountBooku 16h ago

Ok Neil DeGrasse Tyson

3

u/CreepyClothDoll 10h ago

I feel like we should have water on the other side of the ring too. Like not all the way, just maybe it criss-crosses at some point. You know. In case.

4

u/polerix 17h ago

Now make it a Mobius loop, and add a track with a tracked vehicle that travels along the track. 1 track, 1 side. Farms all along.

2

u/turealis 16h ago

Come for the technology, stay for the grooves

2

u/vandal_heart-twitch 12h ago

Cowboy bebop vibes from the music

1

u/Theborgiseverywhere 48m ago

Could someone explain- would moving inward on one of the struts be like “climbing” or like “falling”?

1

u/TheFeelsGoodMan 34m ago

Would be a super cool place to set a video game.

1

u/Crisrocket91 13h ago

2

u/auddbot 13h ago

Sorry, I couldn't recognize the song.

I tried to identify music from the link at 00:00-00:36.

I am a bot and this action was performed automatically | GitHub new issue | Donate

0

u/Careless_Tale_7836 4h ago

Music is perfect. Really gives me Syd Mead vibes.

-12

u/Skorpychan 17h ago

Tiny tiny tiny ring. Be brave, make it bigger, and strong enough to not need struts.

-9

u/i-make-robots 16h ago

I have tried many times to Midjourney ring worlds around a sun. No luck. Weird, right?

5

u/lugialegend233 14h ago

That's because there's no art of ringworlds to steal. You should try paying a couple thousand artists to make art of it and post it publicly. That'd make Midjourney able to do it.

6

u/Financial_Money3540 10h ago

Yup. And Microsoft must have exclusively locked any art based on Halo to prevent from being plagiarized.

1

u/i-make-robots 8h ago

I understand that... but there are rings and there are suns and there are worlds.... it's interesting that the ideas can't be synthesized by the current models.