The Space Egg

by Glen Hendrix

Here it is - the Space Egg in all its glory. I describe its construction in detail in Transmat World but here's a quick rundown.

My blog post Saving the World From an Asteroid Strike discusses the means for herding asteroids into orbit around Earth; and it’s not a pie-in-the-sky, out-of-this-world device but a reasonably cheap and technically doable method for accomplishing this feat. It uses a 'smart' OLED film to absorb or reflect photons, nudging the asteroid into a different orbit. A good orbit to nudge it into would be Earth's. Like the old saying "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer". In Earth's orbit we will mine them for the metals and minerals. What we do with the rest is we melt it down.

In my blog post The Space Mirror Hack I describe the space mirror, the device that allows us to turn this chunk of rock into something usable. The space mirror concentrates the sun's energy onto the asteroid, turning it into a molten ball of slag. A ceramic 'straw' is then inserted and it is inflated to a desired dimension and it is allowed to cool. The walls will be at least several feet thick, providing protection from even gamma radiation. It will be safer than Earth in the event of a nearby supernova.

Now the inside of this sphere can be fitted out to accommodate human inhabitants. The whole thing will be be parked at a Lagrange Point and set spinning to provide artificial gravity. Several cylindrical layers can be installed to form at least several floors to divvy the space up into living quarters. The central area will be a weightless area used for working on space vehicles that are docked for loading, unloading, or repairs.