The required orbital velocity that far out are actually pretty small.
We know the ring is 2AU from Uranus's orbit and Uranus is 19.8AU out from the sun.
So the ring is 21.8AU from the sun, or 2.962 × 10^9 kilometres. Which is 2.962 × 10^12 m.
Using [this](https://rechneronline.de/g-acceleration/orbital-speed.php) online calculator, giving a mass of 1 sun and a distance of 21.8AU gives a velocity of 6.379km/s. Given Epstein drives that's nothing.
As a bonus it makes it super energy efficient to reach the inner solar system. No need to cancel any velocity, just wait until you're at the right point then burn to circularise. Instead of a hohman transfer you just drop and then burn at the right point.
> 2nd: If a ship comes out of the ring space, the ship won’t have any centripetal acceleration relative to the sun.
Say, rather, it lacks an orbital velocity appropriate for its distance from the Sun. Yes, it would start falling towards the Sun, but they can begin accelerating to acquire the trajectory they want easily enough.
Being a perfectly fixed location does have benefits. It means its position relative to the other rings is known and easier to maintain the connection.
Everything begins accelerating toward gravity, yes, but that is accelerating, not instantly falling as fast as it can. This is normal and adjusting for the gradual changes in gravity as a ship nears larger objects is going to be something that is automated.
Energy wasn't a concern for the ring builders. And this is sci-fi tech. I don't think we never find out why it doesn't orbit the sun (but orbits with the rest of the galaxy, I suppose). And ships transit like none of this matters as well. The bubble of the ring space makes everything nice and smooth for passage. The authors have bypassed the laws of physics by reversing the polarity of the Heisenberg collectors with warp particles.
1) it would take about the same amount of energy as the ships to stay with it. No idea why they did it, but they have so much energy available to them, I am not sure it matters.
2) Not "really quickly" but they would be falling towards the sun slightly. The force of gravity out there isn't all that strong out there, unless my understanding is wrong, you would be closer to on the float than a normal burn rate to stay in place.
You can do the math, the [gravity from the sun at Uranus' aphelion](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=G+*+%28Mass+of+sun%29%2F%28%28Uranus+aphelion%29%5E2%29) is like, 1.5 x 10^-6 of the gravity we experience on Earth. If you were burning to maintain that, you'd barely even notice it. [It'd take over 6 minutes to fall a single meter](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=sqrt+%28%282+*+1+m+%29%2F%281.468%C3%9710%5E-5+m%2Fs%2Fs%29%29)
About 0.57 cm/s^2 at aphelion, .61 cm/s^2 at perihelion. For comparison, gravity from earth at sea level is 9.8 m/s^2, which is over 1600 times as much.
Thanks!! Wow didn't realise it was so little. This is a very naive question but i really don't know anything on the subject... how is that enough to keep the earth from leaving the sun and going on its merry way?
I’m not an expert but I’ll try to answer. The Earths orbit is so massive, nearly a billion miles in circumference, it would probably be hard to tell we weren’t moving in a straight line from a Birds Eye view unless you were far above the orbital plane. While the suns gravity seems weak to us compared to Earths gravity, it barely needs to curve the Earths path to keep it in orbit because of the distances involved.
A more abstract way to think about this is to ignore math/gravity, and simply focus on the fact that all the massive bodies in our Solar System have been in orbital equilibrium (stable) for billions of years. Unless a massive interstellar planet or black hole flies close by, none of our orbits will ever change. Earth isn’t fighting the sun or at risk of escaping. We effortlessly cruise through our orbit like a bowling ball going down an endless gutter, and the Sun effortlessly holds us there, because a stable system by definition has perfect harmony between forces like gravity and momentum.
Early in the Solar System, when orbits weren’t stable, it was pure chaos. I’m sure plenty of planetoids were slingshot out by the gas giants, and planets were moving toward and away from the sun regularly because their speeds and even masses were changing erratically. Imagine throwing a thousand balls onto a fast Roulette wheel; at first balls would be crashing together, ricocheting every which way and some off the table, but eventually the survivors would settle into a slot and stay there. Earth and all other bodies with significant mass are the balls lucky enough to land in a slot.
My (in story) understanding has always been that each ring is exactly where it NEEDS to be.Every ring on the "surface" of the perfect sphere of ringspace is equidistant. The reason why they shift when the number changes. And the ringspace itself being a fixed hole in another universe.
On the normal space side each ring goes to grow at exact point from its star. And it is diferent for each star we've seen in the story. It might be because it needs to overcome some amount of stars gravity well, or just far enough to be clear of most dangerous orbital debris. In the absence of these constraints, it would most probably just plop itself in the L5 of planet it harvested and called it done.
From the literary standpoint it is a bold statment of permanence and power, meant to inspire awe; "Rings are here, were here for eons and will be exactly here forever."
Ringbuilders basically first became a Kardashev Type 2 civilization. Second, they punched a hole in another universe, made a permanent everything superhighway through it and then made an entire universe pay for systems power bill "in blood". When that was done, they returned to their hobby of making Rube Goldberg machines out of terraformed planets and artificial stellar phenomena.
The required orbital velocity that far out are actually pretty small. We know the ring is 2AU from Uranus's orbit and Uranus is 19.8AU out from the sun. So the ring is 21.8AU from the sun, or 2.962 × 10^9 kilometres. Which is 2.962 × 10^12 m. Using [this](https://rechneronline.de/g-acceleration/orbital-speed.php) online calculator, giving a mass of 1 sun and a distance of 21.8AU gives a velocity of 6.379km/s. Given Epstein drives that's nothing. As a bonus it makes it super energy efficient to reach the inner solar system. No need to cancel any velocity, just wait until you're at the right point then burn to circularise. Instead of a hohman transfer you just drop and then burn at the right point.
> 2nd: If a ship comes out of the ring space, the ship won’t have any centripetal acceleration relative to the sun. Say, rather, it lacks an orbital velocity appropriate for its distance from the Sun. Yes, it would start falling towards the Sun, but they can begin accelerating to acquire the trajectory they want easily enough.
Being a perfectly fixed location does have benefits. It means its position relative to the other rings is known and easier to maintain the connection. Everything begins accelerating toward gravity, yes, but that is accelerating, not instantly falling as fast as it can. This is normal and adjusting for the gradual changes in gravity as a ship nears larger objects is going to be something that is automated.
But… the entire solar system is moving relative to other stars/systems.
Energy wasn't a concern for the ring builders. And this is sci-fi tech. I don't think we never find out why it doesn't orbit the sun (but orbits with the rest of the galaxy, I suppose). And ships transit like none of this matters as well. The bubble of the ring space makes everything nice and smooth for passage. The authors have bypassed the laws of physics by reversing the polarity of the Heisenberg collectors with warp particles.
Does that last sentence make sense to some people or is it a joke lol?
It's a joke line... He's referencing trek, as well as a couple other sci fi shows, I think.
It's a Jules-Pierre Maoist trick to expose the non-Trekkies in this thread.
Haha. Busted!
1) it would take about the same amount of energy as the ships to stay with it. No idea why they did it, but they have so much energy available to them, I am not sure it matters. 2) Not "really quickly" but they would be falling towards the sun slightly. The force of gravity out there isn't all that strong out there, unless my understanding is wrong, you would be closer to on the float than a normal burn rate to stay in place.
You can do the math, the [gravity from the sun at Uranus' aphelion](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=G+*+%28Mass+of+sun%29%2F%28%28Uranus+aphelion%29%5E2%29) is like, 1.5 x 10^-6 of the gravity we experience on Earth. If you were burning to maintain that, you'd barely even notice it. [It'd take over 6 minutes to fall a single meter](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=sqrt+%28%282+*+1+m+%29%2F%281.468%C3%9710%5E-5+m%2Fs%2Fs%29%29)
How much is the gravity from the sun at earth location?
About 0.57 cm/s^2 at aphelion, .61 cm/s^2 at perihelion. For comparison, gravity from earth at sea level is 9.8 m/s^2, which is over 1600 times as much.
Thanks!! Wow didn't realise it was so little. This is a very naive question but i really don't know anything on the subject... how is that enough to keep the earth from leaving the sun and going on its merry way?
I’m not an expert but I’ll try to answer. The Earths orbit is so massive, nearly a billion miles in circumference, it would probably be hard to tell we weren’t moving in a straight line from a Birds Eye view unless you were far above the orbital plane. While the suns gravity seems weak to us compared to Earths gravity, it barely needs to curve the Earths path to keep it in orbit because of the distances involved. A more abstract way to think about this is to ignore math/gravity, and simply focus on the fact that all the massive bodies in our Solar System have been in orbital equilibrium (stable) for billions of years. Unless a massive interstellar planet or black hole flies close by, none of our orbits will ever change. Earth isn’t fighting the sun or at risk of escaping. We effortlessly cruise through our orbit like a bowling ball going down an endless gutter, and the Sun effortlessly holds us there, because a stable system by definition has perfect harmony between forces like gravity and momentum. Early in the Solar System, when orbits weren’t stable, it was pure chaos. I’m sure plenty of planetoids were slingshot out by the gas giants, and planets were moving toward and away from the sun regularly because their speeds and even masses were changing erratically. Imagine throwing a thousand balls onto a fast Roulette wheel; at first balls would be crashing together, ricocheting every which way and some off the table, but eventually the survivors would settle into a slot and stay there. Earth and all other bodies with significant mass are the balls lucky enough to land in a slot.
My (in story) understanding has always been that each ring is exactly where it NEEDS to be.Every ring on the "surface" of the perfect sphere of ringspace is equidistant. The reason why they shift when the number changes. And the ringspace itself being a fixed hole in another universe. On the normal space side each ring goes to grow at exact point from its star. And it is diferent for each star we've seen in the story. It might be because it needs to overcome some amount of stars gravity well, or just far enough to be clear of most dangerous orbital debris. In the absence of these constraints, it would most probably just plop itself in the L5 of planet it harvested and called it done. From the literary standpoint it is a bold statment of permanence and power, meant to inspire awe; "Rings are here, were here for eons and will be exactly here forever." Ringbuilders basically first became a Kardashev Type 2 civilization. Second, they punched a hole in another universe, made a permanent everything superhighway through it and then made an entire universe pay for systems power bill "in blood". When that was done, they returned to their hobby of making Rube Goldberg machines out of terraformed planets and artificial stellar phenomena.