RCS System: A reaction control system (RCS) is a spacecraft system that uses thrusters to provide attitude control, and sometimes translation.
I think Captain Savage will get mixed reviews on how much fun she is to serve under, depending on who you ask. Hmm, and also Sergei may not be quite as reluctant as he let on earlier when it comes to keeping the prickly matriarch happy.
The freighter crew's destination is Nova Dagon, an O'Neill cylinder space colony which has the appearance of a hollowed out asteroid. It's been suggested by a number of hard science fiction authors, including Arthur C. Clarke and Kim Stanley Robinson, that this is a great way for humans to colonize space: hollow out asteroids and spin them up to create artificial gravity inside them. Freeman Dyson also vouched for the idea when considering human colonization of the Oort Cloud. But would that actually work?
That's complicated to answer. First, a quick note about asteroids: We tend to think about them as giant rocks in space (I've heard them referred to as 'space boulders' or 'mountains' numerous times), but that's not really accurate. There certainly are some asteroids that are solid monolithic chunks of rock or metal, but many – perhaps most – asteroids are just loosely coalesced rubble piles. There's not much holding these together in the way of gravity; in fact the pressure at the center of most asteroids isn't even enough to crush a soda can. So if you spin one of these things around to make a centrifuge, it's just going to separate into a million pieces flying every which way.
When it's used in science fiction, the asteroid colony concept is usually represented as a solid chunk of rock. In the Expanse novels on which the Scy Fy series is based, it's even explained that the asteroids are melted down first and then cooled into a solid structure to hold them together. But unfortunately, it appears this would do precious little to solve the problem. Solid rock fractures very easily, and the stresses of spinning a giant monolithic asteroid fast enough to generate even Martian-equivalent gravity would cause it to break apart.
But there is a solution, as it turns out. With a little engineering we could make composite structures that would hold together, even using present day materials. In the video below, rocket science Youtuber Scott Manley suggests combining the rock into a matrix with basalt fiber sealed with epoxy. In a far future solar system, enterprising astro-engineers could use superstrong materials like carbon nanotubes to make these structures even sturdier.
So, it is do-able. But there is one problem still. Creating something like this requires you to completely melt the asteroid down and reform it. So the end result probably shouldn't look like an asteroid. The builders should be able to shape it into whatever form they choose. Yet, my depiction of Nova Dagon clearly still looks like a potato-shaped asteroid with Christmas lights. Why is that?
The short answer is because I thought it looked cool. And also, because not everybody reads these blurbs, it at least conveys a bit of an immediate visual clue to the reader as to what the thing is made out of. It's also worth considering that the architects who build megastructures like these might have some sense of style, so maybe sculpting your nanotube matrix asteroid colony to look like a raw unprocessed asteroid is what all the cool kids do?
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