07-14-2015, 10:33 AM
(07-13-2015, 09:29 AM)JoeStrout Wrote: Oh yeah, and in case anyone's curious, here is our reasoning for how much power is required for artificial lighting.
Pure sunlight on Earth is 1.4 kW/m^2, but clouds reduce that by 90% or so, while still remaining quite bright outside. It seems silly for space colonists to need sunscreen and hats to protect themselves from the artificial light, so let's assume a base target of 15% full sunlight.
We can assume that artificial lights will be quite efficient, but not perfect. So, end-to-end, we'll consume 20% of full sunlight power, or 280 W/m^2.
They won't need sunscreen or hats because the UV will be much less than on Earth. Redheads can go skinnydipping at noon!
Is your idea to basically make the ceiling (in habitats that have one, like a torus) into a giant TV screen? That would be pretty cool.