I'm not at all suggesting we do this. But if you impacted Mercury and Mars into Venus you'd end up with a planet with nearly the same mass as the Earth. In the process you could doubtless spin Venus up to have a 24 hour day and give it a magnetic field - and given this level of technology - why not make Earth and your new Venus into a double planet and include the Moon also in the mix - or maybe you decide to keep the Moon because you like the look of it :).
Or, if you collect together the material from the Oort cloud, then you have several times the mass of the Earth.
This is not pure fantasy though certainly far future science. You can move planets around using repeated flybys by giant asteroids. But it would take millions of years. Whether you can do it more quickly by more speculative future technology is another question.
But if you just mean - a habitable area the size of the Earth in space - well you just need one medium sized asteroid 128 km across. That's got enough matter in it to cover the entire land area of the Earth to a depth of 7.5 meters which is enough radiation shielding to build Stanford Torus habitats with total surface area for living on the same as the Earth.
Here is a video fly through of a visualization of one such habitat (not sure why he has this huge structure at its hub though
That is - not living in the asteroids. But using the asteroids to construct habitats. There is enough material there for a thousand times the land area of the Earth in habitats. Living space potentially for trillions of people.
Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths
Or, if you collect together the material from the Oort cloud, then you have several times the mass of the Earth.
This is not pure fantasy though certainly far future science. You can move planets around using repeated flybys by giant asteroids. But it would take millions of years. Whether you can do it more quickly by more speculative future technology is another question.
But if you just mean - a habitable area the size of the Earth in space - well you just need one medium sized asteroid 128 km across. That's got enough matter in it to cover the entire land area of the Earth to a depth of 7.5 meters which is enough radiation shielding to build Stanford Torus habitats with total surface area for living on the same as the Earth.
Here is a video fly through of a visualization of one such habitat (not sure why he has this huge structure at its hub though
That is - not living in the asteroids. But using the asteroids to construct habitats. There is enough material there for a thousand times the land area of the Earth in habitats. Living space potentially for trillions of people.
Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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