>> >> Think big :-).

>> > Recommend perusal of Freeman Dyson's approach ...

>> Or Larry Niven's.

>> It's very hard to spin a sphere in enough dimensions at 
>> once.

> Figure the area of a ring 1 mile wide X  2.9X10^8 miles 
> circumference.

I meant a sphere when I said a sphere.
Dyson proposed a sphere, Niven a ring.

In fact, if you read Dyson's comments subsequently he was 
probably thinking more of a conceptual sphere than an 
unobtainium shell per se. You use all the planetary mass to 
make a "speher" but it need not be all tightly linked into a 
'walkable' surface. Night is always there, just out the back 
door. And the nights do get rather cold. Depending on the 
thermal transmissivity of the scrith*.

Spinning a ring can give you something close to gravity. A 
spherical shell can't be give a gravity like foprce all over 
by spinning. Even spinning it in one plane does interesting 
things as you get off plane. Spinning it in two planes at 
once would at first glance be most interesting and at second 
glance probably only equivalent to spinning it in a single 
plane at the vectos sum angular rate.


        Russell McMahon

* http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q=scrith&meta=




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