Good concept art for space colonies?

[bernie14]

Agree, looks great. May be a difficult proposition, but would you have a way to tinge the solar panels and metallic glossy parts to the sky of the planet? I imagine that would take some extra files. Iirc, some texture files (gloss.dds??) was associated with reflecting the environment in either civ4 and/or civ5

 

[Kyriakos]

Agree, looks great. May be a difficult proposition, but would you have a way to tinge the solar panels and metallic glossy parts to the sky of the planet? I imagine that would take some extra files. Iirc, some texture files (gloss.dds??) was associated with reflecting the environment in either civ4 and/or civ5

This won't be full 3d so all gfx will just be image files/animation
And the textures aren't final.

 

[Kyriakos]

A view of the asteroid:

 

[Kyriakos]

@hobbsyoyo , the asteroid model came from Turbosquid. Is it realistic in your view?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Too brown in my opinion. Turn it black and grey with a splash here and there of brown. Other than that it looks good. The texture and general shape is spot-on.

 

[Kyriakos]

Too brown in my opinion. Turn it black and grey with a splash here and there of brown. Other than that it looks good. The texture and general shape is spot-on.

Would an asteroid of this size allow for any non-airborne vehicles for transport? (ie would it make any sense to have land vehicles?)

 

[Samez]

No they would use monorail

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Would an asteroid of this size allow for any non-airborne vehicles for transport? (ie would it make any sense to have land vehicles?)

No not really because the gravity is effectively non-existent. A rail system*might* work if it latched onto the vehicles but even then, asteroids aren't particularly stable geologically so anchoring the system would be a massive challenge. Plus, if you already have spaceships to get to the asteroids and it takes ~no fuel to move about them (because of the tiny distances involved), just use the spaceships to hop around. 'Vehicles' would basically be systems with gas-jet systems for manuevering and strong tether systems to bite into the rock to anchor them when they need to be immoble.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Would an asteroid of this size allow for any non-airborne vehicles for transport? (ie would it make any sense to have land vehicles?)

No, because as hobbsyoyo said, there's practically no gravity that would hold them down. You'd start them up, and they'd drive right off into space. Personally, I would not even consider putting a colony on anything that small, particularly if it's not at least a moon that's spherical. There would need to be one hell of a compelling reason that would outweigh all the costs and resources needed to make such a place habitable and not a constant drain of precious resources such as air and water.

Please consider reading Ben Bova's Grand Tour novels, at least the ones dealing with colonies on non-Earthlike locations. The colony on the Moon uses "hoppers" to travel between settlements. It's nothing so grandiose as a spaceship, or even a shuttle. You need something with engines, fuel, and a way for the driver and passengers to hang on long enough to get where they're going; the fancier models actually have enclosed cabs where you can take your helmet off if you want, to conserve oxygen.

So I'd recommend reading Moonbase, Moonwar, and Farside. There are four other novels in the series that make up the Asteroid Wars arc; @hobbsyoyo, I forget which one goes into detail about how the miners' colony on Ceres is set up. The colony is underground, and the gravity is so light that the people have to shuffle their feet as they walk, or they bounce right off the floor and are apt to have accidents until they get their "Ceres legs" (the sense of balance required for such a small world).

 

[Kyriakos]

I can just increase the size of the asteroid. How many times larger would be somewhat viable?
There is also the plot way around this: eg it contains a very important mineral, etc.

Also, if the size doesn't alter much to the one I have currently, would buildings require something like an obvious exosceleton-like foundation? (would it be realistic to just have -inferred- deep foundations in so small a meteorite, and if not what kind of structures would allow relatively high-rise buildings?)

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@hobbsyoyo, I forget which one goes into detail about how the miners' colony on Ceres is set up

I have not read most of the asteroid wars arc.

I can just increase the size of the asteroid. How many times larger would be somewhat viable?
There is also the plot way around this: eg it contains a very important mineral, etc.

Also, if the size doesn't alter much to the one I have currently, would buildings require something like an obvious exosceleton-like foundation? (would it be realistic to just have -inferred- deep foundations in so small a meteorite, and if not what kind of structures would allow relatively high-rise buildings?)

How big depends on what they're mining. I'd say a decent 'general purpose' asteroid would be in the 1km+ diameter range but I think that would throw off your scaling pretty bad. There are some mostly-metal asteroids which would be extremely profitable to mine even at your size though as they contain lots of valuable metals and rare-earths.

At the current size it almost makes sense to put a metal band around the asteroid to hold your base in place rather than trying to anchor it. The anchors would have to be quite large and numerous and would depend a lot on unstable geology that's going to shift around as you extract more resources. But an adjustable band around the asteroid (like a belt for your pants) would be secure and adjustable with not much more material going into its construction.

It might look silly but modern problems require modern solutions.

 

[Kyriakos]

I have not read most of the asteroid wars arc.

How big depends on what they're mining. I'd say a decent 'general purpose' asteroid would be in the 1km+ diameter range but I think that would throw off your scaling pretty bad. There are some mostly-metal asteroids which would be extremely profitable to mine even at your size though as they contain lots of valuable metals and rare-earths.

At the current size it almost makes sense to put a metal band around the asteroid to hold your base in place rather than trying to anchor it. The anchors would have to be quite large and numerous and would depend a lot on unstable geology that's going to shift around as you extract more resources. But an adjustable band around the asteroid (like a belt for your pants) would be secure and adjustable with not much more material going into its construction.

It might look silly but modern problems require modern solutions.

Going by images found by google, it seems the asteroid mining stations that are just embedded on the asteroid's side in a ring structure or several such structures are on very smaller asteroids than the one in my pic:

Some are even larger than the actual asteroid...

Others make the asteroid look like an ork waaghboss:

I think this is from Star Wars:

But the asteroid in my image has a periphery of roughly one kilometer.

Anyway, there is also "rule of cool". Eg this just doesn't look interesting:

By the way, shouldn't those permanent or long-time bases have some kind of deterrent against small meteorites falling on the base? (would this be a thing in an asteroid of this size?) And if so, would those be structures or weapons?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Protection wouldn't be especially important. In deep space (away from the gravity well of a big planet), the meteor flux is quite low so it'll be pretty rare to get hit. There is a lot of meteor debris in the vicinity of large asteroids but it's co-orbital and thus going very slow relative to the asteroid and more likely to bounce off than penetrate. They might be falling under gravity toward the asteroid but this will also be very slow.

I'm not saying you wouldn't want any meteor protection, just that you wouldn't necessarily need armor plating or something. The ISS uses fabric covers for this sort of protection and it's not obvious that this is what the fabric sheets actually are - it's not visually distinctive like armor plating.

 

[Michkov]

Those images remind me of Seveneves, at least the early chapters. Here is a nice rendition of the near future ISS with Asteroid attached.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I hate that book so, so much.

 

[r16]

oh , let me say nothing to subscribe . One must not forget his roots or whatever . And ı was reading my niece's science magazines before they were recycled and it seems ten years ago scientists were claiming they were just about inventing force fields or whatever . Assuming this is Civ III related , something like Tesla spheres with flashes of light be too odd for walls . Am thinking you would not consider some sphere all over the place as a shield too confusing , to be assumed atmosphere ?

 

[Kyriakos]

oh , let me say nothing to subscribe . One must not forget his roots or whatever . And ı was reading my niece's science magazines before they were recycled and it seems ten years ago scientists were claiming they were just about inventing force fields or whatever . Assuming this is Civ III related , something like Tesla spheres with flashes of light be too odd for walls . Am thinking you would not consider some sphere all over the place as a shield too confusing , to be assumed atmosphere ?

While a separate civ3 set may be made, it won't look anything like the asteroid project (due to civ3 restrictions in scale and also format). I am not yet sure how things will end up looking, and ideally I would like to make a small indie strategy game, in the style of Gremlin's K240.

 

[Kyriakos]

Now the central domed building has a massive Bane vibe

 

[Zkribbler]

I really like changing the brown ground to metallic. I utterly believe this is a site for mining ultravaluable Kyriakite.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Looking great dude!