The Eros Project MetroCircus by Gregory Nemitz A Variant of an O’Neill Space City Proposed for the South Pole of 433 Eros Photo, Courtesy of NASA Proposed location of Eros' Capital City, "Gagarin" MetroCircus on Asteroid 433, Eros. Images, Courtesy of Artemis Society International. Twin 3-Ring MetroCircus     Food for Thought: "When you think of Space, Remember Beefjerky.com" This site is copyright © 2001- 2003 Orbital Development, www.orbdev.com
		----- The MetroCircus Also known as a "Nemitz Ring-City", is an improvement on the O’Neill space city concept first developed by Gerard K. O’Neill. The MetroCircus design offers incremental growth and development of space city systems, allowing a learning curve towards building full-fledged O’Neill space cities. A MetroCircus is a moving train on a circular track. It has no front or back, it’s a seamless circle, or a circular track full of cars. The train may use wheels on the track or be a mag-lev system. The MetroCircus is inside a 1 kilometer diameter circular trench or tunnel in an asteroid or small planet. A train track is placed on the outer wall of the trench or tunnel. The MetroCircus runs on the track, producing simulated gravity by centripetal force.  One main advantage of this design is that the moving structure does not include the radiation shielding mass. This enables far less massive structures and enables the early development of large-scale habitable structures with simulated gravity on Eros. The construction method can vary, from multiple cars to a welded construction for a completely solid circle. The hull could be up to several inches thick and made of nickel-iron, or even solid Platinum Group Metals. One kilometer in diameter is large enough to reduce or eliminate debilitating coriolis effects. A one-kilometer MetroCircus would run at about 150 kph to simulate 0.40 gravity. To get on and off the moving city, another track runs alongside. A ‘commuter bus’ accellerates to match speed with the city, then workers and materials are transferred. The Eros Project thanks the Artemis Society International, http://www.asi.org, a non-profit research foundation, Gregory Bennett, and Mike Delaney for providing supporting technical analysis and MetroCircus images.