Niven, Larry: RINGWORLD

The Dimensions of Ringworld

"I myself have dreamed up an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - which would make it 600 million miles long. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a million miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand meters. The Ringworld would thus be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere.

"There are other advantages. We can spin it for gravity. A rotation on its axis of 770 miles/second would give the Ringworld one gravity outward. We wouldn´t even have to roof it over. Put walls a thousand miles hight at each rim, aimed at the sun, and very little of the air will leak over the edges.

"The thing is roomy enough: three million times the area of the Earth. It will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding.

(Larry Niven: A Hole in Space)

AUTHOR:  Larry Niven

COVER: paperback

PAGES: 342

LANGUAGE: english