The idea of building a giant flying ball city

In the 1960s, inventor Buckminster Fuller proposed the idea of building cities for humans in the form of giant spheres that would fly up thanks to hot air.

Buckminster Fuller, an American architect and inventor, came up with the idea of building Cloud Nine in the 1960s. Cloud Nine is essentially a giant floating sphere for humans to live in. Fuller’s idea was based on a geodesic sphere, which consists of many triangular pieces built into a thin shell structure that resembles a large sphere. The advantage of building this way is that it distributes pressure throughout the entire structure.

The triangle is the only arrangement of structural members that can be stable on its own without additional connections at intersections to prevent geometric warping, according to Outdoor Igloos, the company that makes geodesic domes. In other words, applying pressure to one side of the triangle will distribute that force evenly to the other two sides, which in turn transfer the pressure to adjacent triangles. This distribution of pressure is how geodesic domes effectively distribute stress throughout the entire structure.

Interestingly, spheres and geodesic domes become proportionally stronger as they get larger. Not only that, as the radius of the sphere increases, its volume also increases at a higher rate.

Next, let's look at buoyancy. Buoyancy is an upward force in a fluid (any substance that flows, including air) that acts on any object within it. This force arises from the pressure inside the fluid becoming greater as the object goes deeper into the fluid. The pressure at the bottom of an object in a fluid is higher than at the top of the object, causing an upward force.

If the buoyant force of the fluid is greater than the weight of the object, the object will float. Helium can rise because it is lighter than other elements in Earth's atmosphere. The same thing happens when the air in a hot air balloon is heated and thinned, making it less dense than the air outside, allowing it to rise.

Fuller suggested that if the air inside a giant geodesic sphere were heated to even just 1 degree Celsius above the surrounding temperature, the sphere could levitate. Such a balloon, he said, could lift significant mass, allowing humans to live in floating spherical cities.

However, whether this method is feasible in practice remains to be seen. Some experts estimate that creating habitable areas, say in layers, would quickly make the entire system too heavy. This would make a flying ball city very impractical, not to mention the risk of the ball crashing to the ground.

Fuller doesn't expect Cloud Nine to be implemented in real life anytime soon. Instead, he's pitching the idea as a way to get people thinking about how to deal with a growing population.

Thu Thao (According to IFL Science )

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