3 ms·

I also question whether the structural integrity of these things is enough for them to withstand centripetal gravity without ripping themselves apart. We haven'

• VLM 13y ago
  Then rip them apart by design. There's an artist fixation on making one big non-redundant volume, but other than some surface area to volume vs mass issues there's no reason not to make something that looks more like a sea urchin than a baseball. Once you get over 100 or so little modules chained together you get some interesting dynamic stability problems but it gives the computers something to think about. Worst design I can imagine is one single huge volume like the classic artists interpretation of an oneil cylinder. One hole and they all die and/or the thing rips itself to shreds. "large asteroids are really even one solid piece of rock" You'd be surprised what can be figured out from albedo and rotation measurements. The other thing is the line between asteroid and planet is purely arbitrary, but hovers around the self circularizing point where gravity is intense enough that it has to be more or less spherical. So the biggest asteroids are gravitationally guaranteed to be rounder and smoother, almost like a planet, at least compared to a smaller asteroid. And we've got direct imaging on small asteroids WRT scaling. The reason there are no planets the size of the earth that are cigar shaped or whatever is gravitational. A giant asteroid would be a bit "bumpier" relatively than a small planetary moon, but its not gravitationally possible to be a cigar or a swiss cheese.