Ok. I just had another couple of insane airship ideas.
Idea 1) Active support, orbital ring style. Basically have a loop of matter (wire?) electromagnetically held in place and accelerated to great speed. Actually, several loops like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring
Idea 2) Control theory. A material subject to buckling is in an unstable equilibrium. If the material was in a state of perfect uniform symmetry, it would remain in that uniform state. But small deviations are exponentially amplified. Symmetry breaking. This means that the metal vacuum ship trying to buckle is like a pencil balanced on it’s point. In theory the application of arbitrarily small forces could keep it balanced.
Thus, a vacuum ship full of measurement lasers, electronics and actuators. Every tiny deviation from spherical being detected and countered by the electronics.
Now is this safe? Probably not. If anything goes wrong with those actuators then the whole thing will buckle and come crashing down.
Ok. I just had another couple of insane airship ideas.
Idea 1) Active support, orbital ring style. Basically have a loop of matter (wire?) electromagnetically held in place and accelerated to great speed. Actually, several loops like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring
Idea 2) Control theory. A material subject to buckling is in an unstable equilibrium. If the material was in a state of perfect uniform symmetry, it would remain in that uniform state. But small deviations are exponentially amplified. Symmetry breaking. This means that the metal vacuum ship trying to buckle is like a pencil balanced on it’s point. In theory the application of arbitrarily small forces could keep it balanced.
Thus, a vacuum ship full of measurement lasers, electronics and actuators. Every tiny deviation from spherical being detected and countered by the electronics.
Now is this safe? Probably not. If anything goes wrong with those actuators then the whole thing will buckle and come crashing down.