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A project to build a city where humans live on an asteroid in space is attracting attention. It is not different from what you see in science fiction (SF) novels or movies.
Scientists at the University of Rochester in the US have seen through a new study that our future may lie on asteroids. these are A ‘theoretical’ paper published in the Frontier Journalclaimed that a human-inhabitable city (place) could be built on an asteroid for a future beyond Earth. The thesis was published in early January of this year.
An asteroid is a rocky body orbiting the sun, a remnant from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists estimate there are about 1,000 asteroids larger than a mile in diameter traveling through our solar system.
A research team of University of Rochester engineers and astrophysicists believe that if their concept becomes a reality, it will eventually make low-cost exploration of the solar system possible and make life off-Earth easier for far more people than just a handful of billionaires. stressed that it would be possible.
First author of the paper, Peter Miklavch press release“This project arose from the imagination of physicists and engineers to take off the stresses of the world for a while,” he said. Of course, the ‘lockdown’ (blockade) brought about by viruses such as Corona 19 also affected the Asteroid City project.
“All the flying mountains (asteroids) orbiting the sun will provide a faster, cheaper, and more effective route to space cities,” Miklavic emphasized.
This isn’t a brand new plan. In 1972, physicist Jared O’Neill came up with the concept of the ‘O’Neill cylinder’ when he was commissioned to design a space habitat for NASA.
He believed that in the 21st century, space colonies could be built with resources from the moon or asteroids, so he devised a city with two cylinders rotating in opposite directions to simulate Earth-like gravity.
“These cylinders will rotate fast enough to provide artificial gravity on their inner surfaces,” the University of Rochester research team explained, “but slowly enough that people living inside them won’t experience motion sickness.”
However, sending all the materials needed for an O’Neill cylinder into space would be prohibitively expensive. So, the research team proposed an alternative to building a city on an asteroid.
Their project name, ‘Habitat Bennu’, was first discovered in 1999 and is derived from the asteroid Bennu, which the probe OSIRIS-REX is currently visiting and returning with samples.
Compared to the hard surface of the earth, asteroids are a collection of many debris such as rocks, stones, and sand, so it is not easy to build a city. In addition, the rocks that make up the asteroid can be difficult to handle even rotating one-third of the Earth’s gravity. It is presumed that once the asteroid begins to rotate, it will begin to break apart.
So, the research team proposes a ‘mesh bag’. Covering the asteroid with a giant mesh bag made of carbon nanofibre tubes a few atoms thick. This is to ensure that the surface does not fall off and at the same time support the weight when rotating.
The asteroid is then rotated inside the mesh bag, causing pieces of debris to hit the mesh bag, which could create a layer that protects residents of the asteroid city from radiation, he explains.
“According to our calculations, an asteroid with a diameter of 300 meters, the size of several football fields, could expand into a cylindrical space habitat with a habitable area of about 22 square miles,” the research team said. It is roughly the size of Manhattan, New York.
“The idea of an asteroid city may seem far-fetched, until you realize that no one flew in an airplane in 1900,” they said. It shows that it can be done.”