Fun solutions to conworlding problems

[cntrational]

This thread is for sharing clever, elegant, fun, or interesting solutions to problems you've faced while conworlding -- things you wanted to include, but where you did something clever to make it so. If it made you chuffed to have created such a thing, put it here. I'll use my own conculture as an example.

I wanted a dense, high population center with a lot of people, but I wasn't satisfied with generic large cities -- I wanted something that would be very interesting.

So, I created Kolrand Orbital, a combined Banksian Orbital and ecumenopolis. If you take an Orbital with the equivalent of 20 Earth surface areas, which works out to roughly a few million km of diameter and a thousandish km of width, and populate it with about the same density as Manhattan, you get 120 trillion people.

I reduced this figure to 115 trillion for Kolrand, but I find it rather pleasing to figure out a way to make ridiculous populations possible rather than just handwaving it away or over/underestimating the figures.

[CatDoom]

It sounds interesting, though I'm not sure that the advantages of the ring shape make up for the disadvantages of the structure (i.e., as far as I know it would have to be built from materials stronger than anything known to science). It seems like it would be more practical to build a swarm of smaller habitats linked by some kind of shuttle system.

Perhaps a bigger issue is how you're going to feed, clothe, and otherwise provide for 115 trillion people. There are presumably ways of doing it, but it would require a fantastic amount of infrastructure in addition to the habitat itself, and it seems like it would be hard to prevent it from being extremely vulnerable to disruption by natural or artificial disasters and acts of war or sabotage.

Also, is this meant to be a habitat inhabited by future humans? Based on current trends in wealthy, industrialized nations, it seems unlikely that the total population of the human race will ever approach 115 trillion unless some kind of major pro-natalist cultural shift happens or we start growing tons of vat-baby clones for some reason. I suppose if we were to find a cure for aging then population growth would start to pick up again, but even then we probably wouldn't see the kind of explosive growth that's happened on earth over the last couple centuries, and 115 trillion is a *long* way off.

Sorry to post a bunch of problems in a thread about solutions. >_< I really do find your idea of a super-city in space quite interesting and appealing, I'm just interested in hearing more about how you imagine such a thing coming to be.

[kadmii]

I've always liked the idea of an asteroid like Ceres turned into a mini-Ecumenopolis.

[cntrational]

It sounds interesting, though I'm not sure that the advantages of the ring shape make up for the disadvantages of the structure (i.e., as far as I know it would have to be built from materials stronger than anything known to science). It seems like it would be more practical to build a swarm of smaller habitats linked by some kind of shuttle system.

Yeah, it's not exactly the most efficient or practical way. An Orbital would indeed be impossible to build out of regular stuff, so my explanation is that they use forcefields to hold the Orbital together.

Perhaps a bigger issue is how you're going to feed, clothe, and otherwise provide for 115 trillion people. There are presumably ways of doing it, but it would require a fantastic amount of infrastructure in addition to the habitat itself, and it seems like it would be hard to prevent it from being extremely vulnerable to disruption by natural or artificial disasters and acts of war or sabotage.

My justification is that they collect material from interstellar dust, generate energy from fusion (using hydrogen mined from gas giants), antimatter (mined from stars), and solar power (collected by equally huge solar panels).

As for food, well, why not use the outer side of the Orbital to place farms and stuff?

Orbitals are fairly stable once you get around the tidal force issues, but you still have to protect it from disasters and conspiracies, of course. But that's just fun anyway.

Also, is this meant to be a habitat inhabited by future humans? Based on current trends in wealthy, industrialized nations, it seems unlikely that the total population of the human race will ever approach 115 trillion unless some kind of major pro-natalist cultural shift happens or we start growing tons of vat-baby clones for some reason. I suppose if we were to find a cure for aging then population growth would start to pick up again, but even then we probably wouldn't see the kind of explosive growth that's happened on earth over the last couple centuries, and 115 trillion is a *long* way off.

Well, the setting of the story is about ten thousand years into the future, so there's enough time to grow. Furthermore, humans aren't the only ones there -- Kolrand is part of a multi-species community, so there are tons of aliens inhabiting it, not to mention the AI and sophont machines. And, yes, humans and aliens are all effectively immortal in this conculture, but not prohibited from having children.

Sorry to post a bunch of problems in a thread about solutions. >_< I really do find your idea of a super-city in space quite interesting and appealing, I'm just interested in hearing more about how you imagine such a thing coming to be.

Oh, it's fine. Raising questions is part of the thread, and good exercise for thinking things out through.