Moontanman

An astrophysicist has worked out a star system with as many as 60 habitable planets by taking advantage of gas giant moons and Trojan points... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25653-ultimate-solar-system-could-contain-60-earths.html#.U5CYXXLza_g

I was thinking along similar lines but more of an artificial word, with a torus core of some artificial material along the lines of Niven's ring world. It wouldn't have to spin as fast, make the torus 12,000 miles thick and 36 thousand miles across, the hole in the doughnut would be 12,000 miles across. Spin so it would have a 36 hour day, I'm not sure how to calculate the surface area of a torus but I'm betting it would be equal to several Earths. Gravity should be around Earth normal or a bit above... Makes for some interesting possible story lines..

Andre Norton was one of my favs as well. Forerunner was the first of hers i read..

The book was written in 1958 by Hal Clement, he made it as factual as possible, it was an interesting read, I think I might still have a copy someplace.. 700g at the poles 3g at the equator.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Clement evidently he later recalculated the gravity at the poles as 250g... Hal Clement, Asimov, and Heinlein were my favorite writers when I was a little boy.. The idea of a torus shaped planet is very intriguing, The more i look the more interesting it becomes. I have been working a story around the type of planets found in the book by Robert Forward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld, I wanted to give it a bit of a twist so that both planets are earth mass and share an atmosphere so that flying animals can migrate from one planet to the other much like flying animals migrate from the poles to the equator on Earth. I have been told that such a configuration would not be stable over geologic time but it's a story...

I remember reading a science fiction book about a very rapidly spinning planet that was on effect shaped like an oval, gravity at the poles was intense but very low at the equator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_of_Gravity

I don't think we are all on the same page here My bike was an 1100 Yamaha Midnight special with a few mods. It was #5 in a long line of bikes starting with dirt bikes. The 1100 was my fav of all of them, most powerful in it's time, I loved the shaft drive, previously a 900 Kawasaki I had was chain drive, on what was then called a superbike, it ate chains like a child eats candy... I was in a wreak on a Yamaha RD 350 once as well, a car turned in front of me, mostly just bruises but again my helmet was trashed..

For me, I stood the motorcycle on it's front tire just as I hit the car, ruined my helmet, but not my head, broken collar bone several ribs and a broken arm. At the time I was more interested in what had happened to the bike...

What would it be like to live on a toroidal planet? Not likely to form but it would be very interesting place! http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/02/torusearth.html

This is near where I live...

I actually hit a car once and was catapulted up and over the car, me and the bike did a complete somersault and me and the 800lb motorcycle ended up in a pile. I remember with extreme clarity seeing my Saeing poly-carbonate fairing turn inside out before it exploded into thousands of shards. I put a pretty good dent in the car too... Not a single image on google of that Saeing fairing... how odd..

Having experienced a few motorcycle accidents, I have no answer other than they should be avoided at all costs. Wearing a helmet is the most important thing you can do to survive a motorcycle wreak...

Possibly this is part of your problem, Jupiter is 317 times as massive as the entire Earth. Doubtful we could use up a significant amount of that mass...

I think that possibly you are unaware of the scale of Jupiter..

If we want to obtain hydrogen from an off planet source, ignoring all the obvious problems, Jupiter would seem to be a bit more reasonable than the Sun..

Due to the extreme pressure on Venus, if you cooled it down to earth temps you would get a planet covered by solid CO2. On Venus now CO2 is a super critical fluid.

You might find this interesting, take it with a grain of salt, I'm not sure how accurate it is... http://members.shaw.ca/bru_b/Liberty_ship_menupg.html

There are a few possibilities... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet This is interesting but seems even more iffy... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_plasma_thruster

WHAT! I can neg rep and they don't know it's me!!!

According to the Cassini/Huygens probe the cloud layer stopped at a reasonable altitude. Doesn't mean there couldn't be fog or mists... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Huygens_surface_color.jpg

Hmmm, kinda puts a whole new twist on the definition of Centaur....

Yes but a super volcano can have a devastating effect and recolonization can result in a whole new suite of plants and animals recolonizing... Only one side of the planets? You are kidding me right? Then you have gamma ray bursts, just about anything can be argued I thought we were arguing something specific..

There is also the possibility that certain parts of space are only minimally habitable, too close to the galactic core and natural events could prevent long term habitation, super nova could sterilize large portions of space opening them back up for colonization. I don't see a steady increase to filling up everything actually happening...

I see a red down one too, not sure why you don't unless there is a lower post limit to being able to neg rep people...