I believe they are real.

As are the plans for Dubai, which look really promising from a sci-fi perspective.

Firefly.

It's called an O'Neill Cylinder

In 1975 NASA actually looked into building a similar design called a Standford Torus: a proposed design for a space habitat capable of housing approximately 10,000 to 140,000 permanent residents. It consists of a torus or donut-shaped ring that is 1.8 km in diameter (for the proposed 10,000 person habitat described in the 1975 Summer Study) and rotates once per minute to provide between 0.9g and 1.0g of artificial gravity on the inside of the outer ring via centripetal acceleration.



Personally I think such a place would be a nightmare, the ultimate suburbia and there's no way out.

I think that's the beauty of those kinds of projects. They're seductive on one level and utterly horrifying on another.

No wind unless artificially generated. heat would of course be artificially generated but would it be at a steady constant or would there be seasons and general flunctuations in temperature? And would day lengths be altered accordingly? No rain, no snow unless again of course it's artificially generated. If there is any kind of "weather" we would know exactly what it will be always. No natural resources except any plants and animals taken there and only those plants and animals, and sunlight. Would it result in a too small gene pool for the people, animals and plants?

It'd be fucking weird.

Okay, so this is kinda cool, but...

...this image sums up why I really loath fantasy art.

As they say. One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

Anyway, here's some more escapist brilliance for social retards:

If it were large enough, like the O'Neill Cylinder, I think you'd get precipitation. Heat and light would come from the directional mirrirors. Generational Starships are said to require at least 160 inhabitants to ensure genetic diversity of the future colony, so the Stanford Torus is secure.

Manhattan skyline circa 2678

Call me a pessimist if you like, but I'm thinking something more like this:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/114/2...9c3082.jpg?v=0

ace thread

he verges on off topic but he's pretty hip right now so I think deserves a little postage.





There are thousands of unkowns who produce some really gorgeous CG 3d rendering scenes, though often looking same same.. its nice to see a mix of media in this thread! old and new

couldn't find larger sorry

I love that sort of Victorian 'steampunk' sci-fi thing.

This computer is Far Too Amazing:

A joke as it may be, this actually far more appealing to me!

I know what you mean. I love seeing places that are meant to contain loads of people but which are almost empty. It's very J.G. Ballard. In fact, I got most of those images simply by dong a search of 'Ballardian'

These also came up, which I really like:

I was obsessed with this picture as a kid (as well as most of the illustrations in the Star Frontiers rule book).

I love this one!