by A pandemic-induced ‘lockdown’ project has produced a new vision of how to build cities on asteroids.
The wild asteroid concept would see humans of the far future scoop rock debris into a giant bag of nanofiber mesh, allowing future astronauts to build a habitat inside the loose bits of asteroids as the rocks spin through space.
“This project started as just a way for physicists and engineers to blow off steam, put aside mundane stresses for a while, and imagine something crazy,” said Ph.D. candidate and lead study author Peter Miklavčič, who is based at the University of Rochester, said in a statement (opens in new tab).
The researchers suggest that future cities 22 square miles (57 square kilometers) in size could be built on these space rocks, just like in science fiction, assuming the parent asteroid is at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter.
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“We’re taking a sci-fi concept that’s been very popular recently — in TV shows like Amazon’s ‘The Expanse’ — and offering a new route to using an asteroid to build a city in space,” added co-writer Adam Frank .who teaches physics and astronomy in Rochester, in the same statement.
The study team argues that if their idea actually works, it would (eventually) enable solar system exploration at a lower cost and open up extraterrestrial life to far more people than billionaires.
That said, the launch infrastructure is not yet in place for fast and affordable access to space, let alone any star city building material. which may take a few decades at least to build, if not centuries.
The new study borrows from the oft-cited “O’Neill scroll (opens in new tab)concept, first proposed by physicist Gerard O’Neill in 1972 NASA study. Simply put, the design involves two cylinders rotating in opposite directions, inspiring billionaires like Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin (who made his fortune with Amazon) or SpaceX‘small Elon Musk. But previous work has shown that sourcing the necessary materials from Earth would be quite expensive.
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Miklavčič studies the space debris that often appears on asteroids, which in many cases can only be held loosely by gravity. Since a spinning O’Neill cylinder would cause such an asteroid to fly apart, a flexible bag could be a solution to hold the materials inside and allow a stable base for a city.
The mesh bag will be made of carbon nanofibers, which are light and yet strong enough to hold asteroid debris in a potential habitat. In theory, a spinning asteroid inside a bag would throw its rocks sideways, allowing the bag to expand and hold the rocks tightly with the help of nanofibers. Debris peppering the side of the bag would be held there by artificial gravity and shield the inhabitants from space radiation.
While the study is literally “out there,” the researchers emphasized that all of the technology is currently in place (albeit at an early stage) and that the science holds up.
“Obviously, nobody’s going to be building cities on asteroids anytime soon, but the technologies needed to achieve this kind of engineering don’t violate any laws of physics,” Frank said.
A research-based study was published in January (opens in new tab) in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, and was highlighted by the university in December.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Because I’m taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) the Facebook (opens in new tab).
