Megastructures: Bishop Ring by Neil Blevins

[u/One_Giant_Nostril]

[u/One_Giant_Nostril]

The artist writes,

This is part of *Megastructures: The Visual Encyclopedia* book project on Kickstarter.

A Bishop Ring is a space habitat similar to but much smaller than a Niven Ring. Instead of being centered around a star, it is orbiting a star or planet, thus has a much smaller diameter. It was first proposed in 1997 by Forest Bishop of the Institute of Atomic Scale Engineering. The original proposal would have it be 1000 km in radius and 500 km in width, although other proportions would be possible. The ring would spin to produce artificial gravity using centrifugal force, and would not need to be enclosed as is the case with other spinning space habitats, as it would be large enough for the atmosphere to stick to the surface through gravity and possibly an atmospheric retention wall. By giving a tilt to its orbit, you could achieve a natural day and night cycle, or illumination could be achieved using mirrors or an artificial sun at its center.

Source, more pics here

[u/semisociallyawkward → u/One_Giant_Nostril]

Ah so it's a smaller Banks Orbital? Neat, and probably a lot more feasible with current tech!

[u/Metadine]

if it's orbiting a planet, half of the time it's in the dark. I wonder how long it takes for it to go around its planet?

[u/wadamday → u/Metadine]

That would depend how close it is to the planet, you'd probably want it pretty close for the reason you mention but also transit time to and from the station. The ISS orbits in 90 minutes and the moon in 28 days. Put it in a geostationary orbit and it'll orbit in 24 hours, appearing stationary over a fixed point on the earth.

[u/Belisaurius555 → u/Metadine]

Depends on how wide and how tilted the orbit is.

[u/Anen-o-me]

You need mirrors for light to avoid radiation problems.

[u/The_Last_Fluorican]

interesting

[u/_syzygy079]

Thankfully the terrain is on the correct side of the ring this time… /s