Comments by "" (@timogul) on "Scott Manley" channel.

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  2. If I was going to colonize an asteroid like that, I would use a "worm coring" method. I would build a toroid spinning habitat on one end of it, providing an artificial gravity environment. Then I would use standard mining equipment to dig a massive tunnel straight through the center to the other side. This tunnel would be capped at both ends and linked to the existing station, but at first would be a zero-G environment. Then I would head to the middle of this tunnel, and slowly start to expand outwards, taking a cylindrical chunk out of the middle, big enough around to make another cylindrical habitat that could be spun up to comfortable gravity. Once that's going, colonists would have two places to get in some gravity exercise, but still the tunnel would be zero-G. Then you just expand outward from the center, clearing more space and adding more spinning habitat until you have plenty of space for the people to spend most of their time in the gravity areas. Once you have most of the asteroid hollowed to this level, assuming there is more room to expand towards the surface, you do so, slowing down the spinning components and moving new housing into outer rings as necessary, until eventually the whole thing is mostly hollow. Since the spinning components would all be engineered for durability rather than natural, it shouldn't break up. The benefit to this over just building a giant O'Neill cylinder from scratch is that 1. you would be able to constantly mine the asteroid through the development process, making it a revenue-producer from day one rather than a complete money pit until mostly completed, and 2. the rocky shell should provide a strong defense against radiation and impacts, like coating an O'Neill cylinder with massive amounts of armor.
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