Ringworld's Children

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This is for the firemen of California and neighboring states who fought the fires of October 2003, with particular thanks to those who saved our house and others in Indian Falls, Chatsworth, Los Angeles County.

The Ringworld is about the same mass as Jupiter. Its shape is that of a ribbon a million miles across and six hundred million miles long, which makes it a bit larger than the Earths orbit, and a few miles thick. It circles a yellow dwarf star. Its spin, at 770 miles/second, is enough to give it about Earths gravity of centrifugal force. Walls along both rims, standing a thousand miles high, are enough to hold an atmosphere for millions of years.

Much else derives from these basic assumptions.

The inner surface is a habitat three million times the area of planet Earth. The topography is literally a work of art, carved in by whoever built the thing, so that from underneath the Ringworld resembles the back of a mask.

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