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Cloud Nine (tensegrity Sphere)
Cloud Nine is the name Buckminster Fuller gave to his proposed airborne habitats created from giant geodesic spheres, which might be made to levitate by slightly heating the air inside above the ambient temperature. Geodesic spheres (structures of triangular components arranged to make a sphere) become stronger as they become bigger, because of how they distribute stress over their surfaces. As a sphere gets bigger, the volume it encloses grows much faster than the mass of the enclosing structure itself. Fuller suggested that the mass of a mile-wide geodesic sphere would be negligible compared to the mass of the air trapped within it. He suggested that if the air inside such a sphere were heated even by one degree higher than the ambient temperature of its surroundings, the sphere could become airborne. He calculated that such a balloon could lift a considerable mass, and hence that 'mini-cities' or airborne towns of thousands of people could be built in this way. A Cloud Nine co ...
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Project For Floating Cloud Structures (Cloud Nine)
A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations". A project may be a temporary (rather than a permanent) social system ( work system), possibly staffed by teams (within or across organizations) to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints. A project may form a part of wider programme management or function as an ''ad hoc'' system. Note that open-source software "projects" or artists' musical "projects" (for example) may lack defined team-membership, precise planning and/or time-limited durations. Overview The word ''project'' comes from the Latin word ''projectum'' from the Latin verb ''proicere'', "before an action," which in turn comes from ''pro-'', which d ...
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Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as " Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" (e.g., Dymaxion house, Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map), "ephemeralization", " synergetics", and "tensegrity". Fuller developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome; carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres. He also served as the second World President of Mensa International from 1974 to 1983. Fuller was awarded 28 United States patents and many honorary doctorates. In 1960, he was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal from The Franklin Institute. He was elected an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1967, ...
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Floating City (science Fiction)
In speculative fiction, floating cities and islands are a common trope, which range from cities and islands that float on water to ones that float in the atmosphere of a planet by purported scientific technologies or by magical means. While very large floating structures have been constructed or proposed in real life, aerial cities and islands remain in the realm of fiction. Seaborne cities and islands Seaborne floating islands have been found in literature since Homer's ''Odyssey'', written near the end of the 8th century BCE, described the island of Aeolia. They reappear in Pliny the Elder's '' Natural History'' of the 1st century CE. Richard Head‘s 1673 novel '' The Floating Island'' describes a fictional island named Scotia Moria. In ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'', the characters sail to a floating island, which later becomes fixed in place. In the DC comics story of Wonder Woman, Themyscira is a group of floating islands. In Jules Verne‘s ''Propeller Island'', the cha ...
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Geodesic Dome
A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic domes able to withstand very heavy loads for their size. History The first geodesic dome was designed after World War I by Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer of the Carl Zeiss optical company, for a planetarium to house his planetarium projector. An initial, small dome was patented and constructed by the firm of Dykerhoff and Wydmann on the roof of the Zeiss plant in Jena, Germany. A larger dome, called "The Wonder of Jena", opened to the public in July 1926. Twenty years later, Buckminster Fuller coined the term "geodesic" from field experiments with artist Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain College in 1948 and 1949. Although Fuller was not the original inventor, he is credited with the U.S. popularization of the idea for which he rece ...
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Arcology
Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology",. is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated and ecologically low-impact human habitats. The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. These structures have been largely hypothetical, as no arcology, even one envisioned by Soleri himself, has yet been built. The concept has been popularized by various science fiction writers. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle provided a detailed description of an arcology in their 1981 novel ''Oath of Fealty''. William Gibson mainstreamed the term in his seminal 1984 cyberpunk novel ''Neuromancer'', where each corporation has its own self-contained city known as arcologies. More recently, authors such as Peter Hamilton in '' Neutronium Alchemist'' and Paolo Bac ...
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Arcology
Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology",. is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated and ecologically low-impact human habitats. The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. These structures have been largely hypothetical, as no arcology, even one envisioned by Soleri himself, has yet been built. The concept has been popularized by various science fiction writers. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle provided a detailed description of an arcology in their 1981 novel ''Oath of Fealty''. William Gibson mainstreamed the term in his seminal 1984 cyberpunk novel ''Neuromancer'', where each corporation has its own self-contained city known as arcologies. More recently, authors such as Peter Hamilton in '' Neutronium Alchemist'' and Paolo Baciga ...
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Colonization Of Venus
The colonization of Venus has been a subject of many works of science fiction since before the dawn of spaceflight, and is still discussed from both a fictional and a scientific standpoint. However, with the discovery of Venus's extremely hostile surface environment, attention has largely shifted towards the colonization of the Moon and Mars instead, with proposals for Venus focused on habitats floating in the upper-middle atmosphere and on terraforming. Background Space colonization is a step beyond space exploration, and implies the permanent or long-term presence of humans in an environment outside Earth. Colonization of space was claimed by Stephen Hawking to be the best way to ensure the survival of humans as a species. Other reasons for colonizing space include economic interests, long-term scientific research best carried out by humans as opposed to robotic probes, and sheer curiosity. Venus is the second largest terrestrial planet and Earth's closest neighbor, which ma ...
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Floating Cities And Islands In Fiction
In speculative fiction, floating cities and islands are a common trope, which range from cities and islands that float on water to ones that float in the atmosphere of a planet by purported scientific technologies or by magical means. While very large floating structures have been constructed or proposed in real life, aerial cities and islands remain in the realm of fiction. Seaborne cities and islands Seaborne floating islands have been found in literature since Homer's ''Odyssey'', written near the end of the 8th century BCE, described the island of Aeolia. They reappear in Pliny the Elder's '' Natural History'' of the 1st century CE. Richard Head‘s 1673 novel '' The Floating Island'' describes a fictional island named Scotia Moria. In ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'', the characters sail to a floating island, which later becomes fixed in place. In the DC comics story of Wonder Woman, Themyscira is a group of floating islands. In Jules Verne‘s ''Propeller Island'', the c ...
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Tensegrity
Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other while the prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially. The term was coined by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s as a portmanteau of "tensional integrity". The other denomination of tensegrity, ''floating compression'', was used mainly by the constructivist artist Kenneth Snelson. Concept Tensegrity structures are based on the combination of a few simple design patterns: * members loaded in either pure compression or pure tension, which means that the structure will only fail if the cables yield or the rods buckle. This enables the material properties and cross-sectional geometry of each member to be optimized to the particular load it carries. * preload ...
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Aerospace Architecture
Aerospace architecture is broadly defined to encompass architectural design of non-habitable and habitable structures and living and working environments in aerospace-related facilities, habitats, and vehicles. These environments include, but are not limited to: science platform aircraft and aircraft-deployable systems; space vehicles, space stations, habitats and lunar and planetary surface construction bases; and Earth-based control, experiment, launch, logistics, payload, simulation and test facilities. Earth analogs to space applications may include Antarctic, desert, high altitude, underground, undersea environments and closed ecological systems. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Design Engineering Technical Committee (DETC) meets several times a year to discuss policy, education, standards, and practice issues pertaining to aerospace architecture. The role of Appearance in Aerospace architecture "The role of design creates and develops concepts a ...
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Aerostats
An aerostat (, via French) is a lighter-than-air aircraft that gains its lift through the use of a buoyant gas. Aerostats include unpowered balloons and powered airships. A balloon may be free-flying or tethered. The average density of the craft is lower than the density of atmospheric air, because its main component is one or more gasbags, a lightweight skin containing a lifting gas (which could be heated air or any gas of lower density than air) to provide buoyancy, to which other components such as a gondola containing equipment or people are attached. Especially with airships, the gasbags are often protected by an outer envelope. Aerostats are so named because they use aerostatic lift which is a buoyant force that does not require movement through the surrounding air mass, resulting in VTOL ability. This contrasts with the heavy aerodynes that primarily use aerodynamic lift which requires the movement of a wing surface through the surrounding air mass. The term has also be ...
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House Types
This is a list of house types. Houses can be built in a large variety of configurations. A basic division is between free-standing or single-family detached homes and various types of attached or multi-family residential dwellings. Both may vary greatly in scale and the amount of accommodation provided. By layout Hut A hut is a dwelling of relatively simple construction, usually one room and one story in height. The design and materials of huts vary widely around the world. Bungalow Bungalow is a common term applied to a low one-story house with a shallow-pitched roof (in some locations, dormered varieties are referred to as 1.5-story, such as the chalet bungalow in the United Kingdom). Cottage A cottage is a small house, usually one or two story in height, although the term is sometimes applied to larger structures. Ranch A ranch-style house or rambler is one-story, low to the ground, with a low-pitched roof, usually rectangular, L- or U-shaped with deep overha ...
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