Jupiter's Belts

[Thomas Bowman]

Inner belt
Radius:

110,680 km​

Average Thickness: 20 km (5 km dirt and rock, 5 km ocean, 10 km atmosphere)
Width:

20,106 km
Rotation: 249.231 minutes per rotation
Centrifugal force minus Jupiter's Gravity: 1 g (outward)​

Middle belt
Radius: 110,700 km
Average Thickness: 20 km
Width: 20,106 km
Rotation: 352.466 minutes per rotation
Centrifugal force minus Jupiter's gravity: 0 g

Outer belt
Radius: 110,720 km
Average Thickness: 20 km (5 km dirt and rock, 5 km ocean, 1 km atmosphere)
Width: 20,106 km
Rotation: stationary
Jupiter's gravity: 1 g inward

Surface Detail of section 1

Surface Detail of Section 2

Surface Detail of Section 3

Location and orientation of Sections 1, 2, and 3
Inner belt Positioning 13
Total number of sections in Inner Belt: 17
All other sections in the inner belt are basically the same.

Section 18

Section 19

Section 20

Location and orientation of Sections 18, 19, and 20

Outer belt Positioning 13
Total number of sections in Outer Belt: 18 through 34
All other sections in the inner belt are basically the same.

The Middle Belt consists of space docks, and transportation systems providing transportation to either the Inner or Outer belts.

The Inner and Outer Belts have an atmospheric height of 10 kilometers and a ceiling providing artificial illumination simulating sunlight as seen from Earth's surface.

The time is the 40th century AD, these belts were constructed by mining the material out of Venus, with the atmosphere of Jupiter providing the materials for the habitable atmosphere and oceans.

The player characters arrive by starship launched in the 22nd Century, they went into suspended animation at the time the ship was launched, when they arrived, they find their ship back in the Solar System, apparently they never arrived at Alpha Centauri. the Crew and Passengers are one way colonists, a meteor impact destroyed a fuel tank causing the ship's computer to abort the mission, the remaining fuel was conserved to slow the ship down from an elliptical orbit around the Sun. When the ship got back in the Solar System. the crew is revived so they can decide what the new destination is going to be, so the ship can make the proper orbital maneuverings with the remaining fuel.

So what RPG system do you think would work best with this?
​

 

[Eltab]

I'm having a hard time figuring out the layout of this. Are you saying a Ringworld was built around Jupiter, with the groundforms being an east-to-west repeated series of Earths?

At the moment, I'm thinking the Ringworld game might be the place to start.
I'd also consider one of the Traveler rules sets (preferring Classic or the rules underlying the Nth Interstellar War setting book).

 

[Thomas Bowman]

I'm having a hard time figuring out the layout of this. Are you saying a Ringworld was built around Jupiter, with the groundforms being an east-to-west repeated series of Earths?

At the moment, I'm thinking the Ringworld game might be the place to start.
I'd also consider one of the Traveler rules sets (preferring Classic or the rules underlying the Nth Interstellar War setting book).

Well its definitely smaller than Niven's ringworld. I've set the distance between the walls of the ringworld to half of the Earth's circumference from North Pole to South Pole, though with this projection the poles are stretched into lines. The lines of latitude and longitude are in increments of 15 degrees each. With a width of 20,206 km between the walls that means the distance between 15 degree intervals is an invariant 1,683.83 km, this makes mapping the campaign world a lot easier. I would arbitrarily assign the section the PCs would investigate as either section 2 or section 19. 19 in the outer belt, which does rotate at all, 2 is in the inner belt. The middle belt contains the machinery which keeps this double ringworld going, such as fusion reactors. Drone tanker ships regularly dip into Jupiter's atmosphere to obtain more hydrogen to be fed into the fuel reactors in the middle belt. The power plants provide power to the outer and inner belts, providing energy for the artificial sunlight, temperature regulation and weather control. the weather control provides climates to simulate the prevailing winds and ocean currents of the original Earth, which still orbits the Sun at a distance of 1 AU. Standing on the habitable surface of this belt world is almost indistinguishable from standing on the surface of the actual Earth. On the surface one is treated to a simulation of the sun rising and setting on a 24-hour time table, at the higher latitudes the Sun stays closer to the horizon during the day, there is seasonal variation as well. Above the sky ceiling are vents and fans. You see the prevailing winds on these belt worlds will not normally follow the same path as they would on a ball-shaped spinning Earth, so the fans force them to. At the bottoms of the oceans are some water intakes and pumps to force the ocean currents to follow the same path. Water is also heated and cooled in places to make up for the fact that near the poles, the paths the water and air take is longer, it is very artificial and designed to simulate natural weather patterns found on Earth. The humans native to this ringworld have regressed technologically from that level which was capable of building this double ringworld, but the machinery maintains itself and is guided by an AI computer network running on automatic.

Massive planetary scale technology was required to build it, but the technology itself is rather simple. The non-rotating outer belt balances out with its weight under Jupiter's gravity the outward centrifugal force of the spinning inner belt. The middle belt is spinning at orbital velocity in between. All three belts repel each other with magnetic fields powered by the multiple fusion reactors in the middle belt. the fusion reactors are quite large and engage in proton fusion similar to what occurs in the center of the Sun, hydrogen is fused to helium releasing energy which is converted to electricity which in turn powers the artificial lighting and environmental control systems. In other words there is no scrith or any substance like it, this ringworld is built with 100% ordinary matter, though it does use nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to maintain itself.

There are of course various artifacts found within the belts, most artifacts are self-maintaining and thus are functional, the natives of this world treat them as magical items, but their operation is 100% according to the principles of science. Some of the effects might be mistaken as magic by a low tech society of course. Maximum altitude within the belt habitat is 10 km above sea level, if you try to go higher than that, you hit the ceiling, this is higher than Mount Everest by the way, and most of the weather is below this altitude.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

this contains a description of my revised idea on this: