Trying to figure out the base way to mount a chair inside the sphere, making it affordable and strong, is a little tricky. Especially if you want to continue our philosophy of ‘use one part!’ for many uses. An interlocking wooden structure is one idea, and could be cheap and very strong.
While a square version is good we’re building in the inside of a truncated icosahedron, so five or six sided is better. If we want the seat to be parallel to the ground it would fit over a pentagon but it’s actually a little better tilted back so a hexagon shape is even better.
The slots are not aligned but we can see pretty quickly that this wouldn’t fit together very easily :p
Three sides are perhaps a little better but we’d still need large slots to wiggle the thing into the assembly, and then it would still be a little lose…
The search for the ‘perfect idea’ continues! Answers in a comment appreciated! 🙂
interesting, however i’d more worried about how you are going to overcome Inertia, I have some drive idea’s , we should talk!
as a #StarCitizen fan and backer 🙂 looking forward to seeing more. Would love to fly in this. Also remember the tall people.
I think an appropriate solution would be hexagonal tubes. You would just convert the geometry from the convex hexagons within the orb and extrude tubes to a flat bed of hexagons as your “floor” at the height you want and make a set of hexagonal tubes for that layout. I could do an isometric projection if you wanted to visualize if needed.
That would allow you to make it out of lightweight materials, as each tube would support all the others around it, completely fill the space and displace the pressure across the bed evenly.
Additionally it would not limit your design aesthetic. Should your geometry change in size or convention, as long as the geometry worked in both the convex and planar surfaces you’re golden.
This is an interesting idea Shane but one of the constraints we’ve imposed on ourselves is that the whole project should use as few parts as possible, at least initially. This would also lock the ‘floor’ into place and make altering the center of gravity difficult.
Instead a reasonably good solution that I’ve been working on this week is to have multiple rods that can be adjusted in length and attached to different panels. They all support an internal floor which can now be adjusted in position and angle. The main disadvantage is the initial setup time, but once in place it shouldn’t need changing.