Progress:
The initial material transport to orbit will utilize a rail gun type magnetic accelerator. This accelerator will propel craft up to high speeds before they engage their boosters. Doing so will greatly reduce the energy and fuel costs associated with standard space launches. The rail system will be aligned along the equator facing east. This will allow for the launch process to take full advantage of equatorial low earth orbits (ELEO). Once this system has been constructed, the material delivery process will begin. Each launch will send many pieces shaped as equilateral triangles. These triangles are designed to mesh along only one chamfered face. Using platonic solid geometry, the chamfer angle of each triangle corresponds directly to that necessary to form an isocahedron. These icosahedrons are designed with only one mesh face. Once assembled and in their orbits, they will be magnetically attracted to other icosahedrons. When they meet, they will "crawl" along one another until the appropriate faces meet. These faces will have a conductive filament that a charge will be sent through to superheat them and weld the surfaces together. Due to the arrangement of the surfaces, the icosahedrons will naturally spiral out to form helixes as they spiral out. Six of these spirals are used to form a larger hexagonal superstructure. Around this superstructure will be a metallic skin to encapsulate the ring. The skin will "grow" along with the ring, thereby maintaining an isolated environment for each section, and eventually the whole ring.
Using Solidworks Animator in conjunction with Windows Vista Movie Maker, we created a short video that demonstrates our current level of expertise using the software. We fabricated a triangular prism with chamfered edges as shown below. The angle of the chamfer we had to research. One of the websites we used was http://www.slyman.org/right_projects_math.php to help us determine the geometries required. The angle turned out to be 20.905 degrees to 5 significant figures, although the actual value is irrational.
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We then mated 20 copies of the triangular prism along the chamfered edges until we produced an isocahedron:
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When viewed from the fron plane, the isocahedron possesses interesting geometric qualities, and various platonic solids can be seen withing the isocahedron as shown below:
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After making a number of these isocahedrons and combining some kind of motion in Solidworks animator, we compiled the animations and changed their settings to simulate a space environment. We then used Windows movie maker to compile the videos we made in Solidworks into a short film which we posted on Youtube. The title of the video is D.I.R. Sacred Geometry Space Ring Draft 1 and can be found here