Mesklin scaled one in 500 million

Last crawled date: 5 years, 7 months ago

The whirling world. This is the scaled model of the planet where it takes place Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement, a hard science fiction short novel. Hard sci-fi is a branch in science fiction, which not only takes special care in scientific accuracy, but also the plot is centered in a scientific concept. In this case, the story is about a planet in the 61 Cygni system visited by humans in the future. The planet spins too fast that polar flatening is extreme, the polar radius is less than a half the equatorial radius. Mesklin is a massive ice planet, with a solid ice surface, an hydrogen atmosphere, and a methane pluvial system. The gravity acceleration in the equatorial latitudes is 3 G, three times the surface gravity of Earth; while in the poles is near 700 G. The planet has a ring system and at least one moon (the presence of other moons is implicit). The inner moon, called "Toorey", where humans have a base, is a massive moon, but it's never explicit any clue of its size. Mesklin resides in a real star system, 61 Cygni, 11.4 light year away, composed of two K-type stars 61 Cygni A and B, that at the time the novel was written it was suspected that a massive planet was orbiting the main star of the system, idea that was later discarded.
The file's names explained: name_1_x_10_y.stl is 1 : x * 10y. So _1_6_10_7 is 1:600000000 or one in 60 million.