Can't get back to sleep. Woke up thinking about a sphere within a sphere, with a cushion of water between the two, maybe a third of the way up or so. I believe the water would equalize in pressure on all sides, preventing the inner sphere from bumping against the outer except possibly during extreme shocks, as when rolling down a mountainside. The inner sphere, say 12 feet in diameter, would have a flat floor, as a living space, and to serve as a ballast to keep it relatively motionless in the Z plane. The outer sphere, say 14 feet diameter, would be solid except for an escape hatch which could be removed in case of emergency. Both should be clear, maybe 1 inch polycarbonate. The inner sphere would have some air holes in it, and some means of collecting some of the water condensing against the top of the outer sphere during times of relative stability, when that water isn't contaminated by the algae-filled water at the bottom. I'd need to do some research to see exactly how big the spheres have to be, to have enough algae to generate sufficient oxygen to support one or two humans. If it turns out to be over 20 feet, I'll likely never be able to afford it.
Anyway, wastes go out to the space between the spheres, to feed the algae; the algae gets harvested and eaten; the cycle continues. How long? No clue.
These could be used out on the ocean, during times of global upheaval, as survival pods. There also may be terrestrial and space applications. I'd like to make a small prototype, not even necessarily clear but with some means of measuring the shocks experienced by something in the inner sphere, and of knowing if it remained relatively upright while rolling the contraption down the side of a mountain.
I guess that will all have to wait until this trip is over, and some of my other projects -- especially the HPV -- have been prototyped and the seeds scattered by the Internet winds. I now have the equipment to make small movies, which can be really helpful for understanding things.
last updated 2013-01-10 21:02:48. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com