Marcus here with the Star Wars project work blog. Well, this is mostly going to be copying and pasting all my work files together, so don’t expect it to be very personalized….
Right, here we go.
How Does Cloud City Float?
A Question Asked By Marcus Whitehead.
How does Cloud City float? Well, we know the answer to that: Gravity Generators. The second most ultimate Sci-Fi excuse. Because Time Travel is OBVIOUSLY the first. Guy comes back from the dead when you’ve just buried him? Time Travel. Floating City? Gravity Gen. the MOST, OVERUSED Excuse that has EVER existed. Standing in a space station? Gravity Gen! Standing on a flying space ship? Gravity Gen! Somehow making a giant city that weighs QUADRILLIONS OF KILOS fly? Gravity Gen!
But seriously. You get tired of it. So, we came with a whole bunch of ways you might make a giant city In a gas giant, float, that might actually work. Or not. But this is an intro, so I’m not going into what we did. :7)
So, whoever is reading this, READ ON! Because it gets much better!
Project carried out by
Marcus Whitehead, Chief Enthusiastic, and David Whitehead, Head Mathmateer and Equipment Supplier.
Star Wars Project, Test Landscape: Bespin
Bespin is a gas giant that is rich in tibanna gas. It has a diameter of 118,000 km and a core of 6,000 km. It has a 12 Earth hour day and 1 year on Bespin is 14 Earth years. It Is comparable in ways to Saturn and Jupiter. It has a habitable zone 150 km below the edge of the atmosphere. This zone has oxygen, reasonable tempature and earth gravity. It is 30 km thick and inside it is Cloud City, and all the tibanna gas mining facilities. Bespin rotates at speeds around 30,000 km per hour.
< http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bespin
< Saturn, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/saturn/saturn.jpg
< Jupiter http://www.wolaver.org/Space/Jupiter.jpg
< Earth
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xjcwwA-nj8k/S9D9ixh0QqI/AAAAAAAAANw/Or6ldDwxI0k/s1600/earth.jpg
Star Wars Project Experiment 1: Helium Balloons
How helium/hydrogen balloons work by displacement. They as they push through the air, the air will push back into its place, which is displacement. It’s the same way with boats. As they move through the water, the water flows back into place, therefore moving the boat forward. The volume of the balloon needed to lift Cloud City would need to be at a diameter of 89.9 km. The reason that helium and hydrogen float up is because they are gases that are thinner than air. That means that they get pushed up by cold air, which is dense, and let down by hot air, which is thinner.
How it could work in the Star Wars Universe.
Well, they could, instead of a physical balloon, use a force field to hold in all the hydrogen, that way you could have more lift and less physical materials are needed.
(I wish I could do that :7( )
< Helium Balloons
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balloons-aj.svg
Cloud City Balloons
Project Experiment 2: Helicopter
It works on the premise of aero-dynamical lift. The rotating blades are like wings. As the engines turn them the air flows over and under them. The blades are shaped so the air travels further going over the wing than under it. The air on top of the wing forms a region of lower pressure that pulls up the helicopter.
One good example is the mi-26 Russian helicopter. It has 32 m blades and its 40 m long. Its total weight is 28,200 kg and it has a total lift of 56,000 kg. Unfortunately it has a fuel consumption of 3750 l of fuel per hour… that’s a lot. It was able to move a 25 ton block of ice containing a frozen mammoth.
Unfortunately there really is no Star Wars equivalent, since there are no Helicopter Vehicles. They always use rockets for all of them. And I guess since there is no air for them to get sucked up by, it can’t really fly…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBP1cIh27Oo
< Mi-26 Helicopter https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Russian_Air_Force_Mi-26_Beltyukov.jpg/300px-Russian_Air_Force_Mi-26_Beltyukov.jpg
Cloud city Drone
Star Wars Project Experiment 3: Kite
Wind could be used to fly Cloud City like a kite.
Kites fly using aero-dynamical lift from the air pressure on its wings caused by the wind moving over and under it. Being fixed at one end means the wind can generate lift.
How it could work in the Star Wars Universe.
You could use a tractor beam instead of a rope or string to tether it to the core, but since the core is so far down the beam might not reach cloud city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIZr3R5JnEs.
One good thing is that there should be a lot of wind out by the outer atmosphere, so no problem there.
< kite
http://www.prismkites.com/products-sl-stowaway_delta.php
Star Wars Project Test Subject: Cloud city.
Cloud City is 16.2 km in diameter and 17.3 km high. It It is located in Bespin’s habitable zone. (refer to Star Wars Test Landscape: Bespin.) It is approximately 50,000 km from the core. It has 392 floors, from housing, to casinos and arcades, to the refineries. It can supply its self from the tibanna gas mined from Bespin, which is the most powerful fuel source in the galaxy, used to power the Star Destroyers. But there are also very high winds, so standing outside is not recommended.
< Cloud City
http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/035/2/9/cloud_city__bespin_by_tk769-d5t696r.jpg
And That is the end of the copy’s there. Though, that isn’t all of the work. I just can’t show all the work because it won’t go on the blog. Sorry. But I hoped you liked it.
Yogic flying was also investigated, but was ruled out as it would require too many yogis.