Following the initial work on the refueling space stations around ringed giants I wanted to work on the planet-to-orbit transportation facilities around terrestrial bodies. That is in all probability these should always remain the main population and economical centers for a species that originated on the ground!
As a matter of fact I had known of space elevators for a long time. However it’s only when I was checking the maths to model them that I followed a Wikipedia link to “non-rocket spacelaunch” systems and learned about orbital rings. Well in contrast with the laborious coding something nice about building your own little universe is that projects costing trillions of in-game credits are not an issue as long as they are consistent!
In that case the necessary materials and technologies were already supposed to be available for the ship itself, and large space infrastructures make sense for an interstellar civilization… hence the addition.
Below is a presentation video of an orbital ring in the game.
By the way if you’re interested in this kind of space structures and do not know about his great work yet I strongly suggest checking Isaac Arthur’s channel!
Back to ASG’s development from now on I’ll be working on making all those stations truly operational. The ship’s avionics will also need some reworking to manage relative flight sequences and transitions to and from deep-space operations.
Thanks for reading!
Orbital rings are just about my favorite megastructure concept and it is truly delightful to see them rendered in such detail, such clarity.
Thank you for your feedback 🙂 And yes that’s really an amazing concept indeed!