Orbital Rings in Fiction
Donald Kingsbury described a partial ring (a few hundred kilometers long) in his novel The Moon Goddess and the Son.
The manga Battle Angel Alita prominently features a slightly deteriorated orbital ring.
The second iteration of the anime series Tekkaman features a complete ring, though abandoned and in disrepair due to war, and without surface tethers.
In the movie Starship Troopers, an orbital ring is shown encircling the Moon.
The anime series Kiddy Grade also uses orbital rings as a launch and docking bay for spaceships. These rings are connected to large towers extending from the planets surface.
The anime Mobile Suit Gundam 00 also prominently features an orbital ring, which consists primarily of linked solar panels. The ring is connected to earth via three space elevators. This ring effectively provides near unlimited power to earth. Later in the series the ring also shows space stations mounted on its surface.
Orbital rings are used extensively in the collaborative fiction worldbuilding website Orion's Arm.
Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey features an orbital ring with differing levels of gravity, provided by the centripetal force of the ring's spinning.
In the close of Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise, a reference is made to an orbital ring that is attached in the distant future to the Space Elevator that is the basis of the novel.
Read more about this topic: Orbital Ring
Famous quotes containing the words rings and/or fiction:
“If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)