Hanging Mansions

House-sized balls/spheres hang beneath the skyscraper-sized bridges connecting some of our tallest buildings.

 

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Table of Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Dimensions & Layout
  3. Totals by Size
  4. Special/Safety Features
  5. Events with a View
  6. Creation History
  7. Basic Design with Bridge (Images Begin)
  8. Overall Appearance
  9. Inspiration
  10. Exterior Concepts
  11. Interiors
  12. 2020/+ Updates
  13. 2022 Update:  Scale-model in Minecraft
  14. 2022 Update:  Minecraft 1:1 Models

 

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Introduction:

A play on “ball rooms”, these rooms, lounges, homes, and full-sized multi-winged mansions are all spheres hanging like fancy club light orbs from the undersides of SotU‘s skyscraper-bridges; like larger versions of disco balls.  These spherical abodes are available in four sizes; from ~RV to ~mansion –each with a garage and multiple levels.  Repulsine-assisted, they can never fall or even get jarred.

Although more accurately titled “spherical dwellings”, the FOBian race (Inisfreeans; those born of what was originally called F.O.B.1), being a completely sexually-open society, prefers to use the naturally-suggestive innuendo “ball homes”.

 

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Dimensions & Layout:

These ball homes range in size from their midsections having a 40′ diameter (1,256 square feet of floor-space for their middle floor)… to mansions with a 100′ midsection diameter (30,000 square feet on that floor).  

  1. 40′-diameter:  comparable to a studio-apartment or RV
  2. 60′-diameter:  comparable to a normal/average apartment
  3. 80′-diameter:  comparable to a normal/average house
  4. 100′-diameter:  comparable to a small mansion

Like the ceiling mansions of the Auzdome, these homes have observation decks for basements, and many wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window panels (i.e. the entire wall is transparent), as well as aircraft docking hangars instead of drive-up garages.

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Their totals in each of Sotu’s sections are as follows:

  • Gray surface section 1/5 (NW):  38
  • Gray subsurface section 1/5 (NW):  38
  • Gray surface section 2/5 (NE):  39
  • Gray subsurface section 2/5 (NE):  39
  • Gray surface section 3/5 (SE):  41
  • Gray subsurface section 3/5 (SE):  41
  • Gray surface section 4/5 (S):  42
  • Gray subsurface section 4/5 (S):  42
  • Gray surface section 5/5 (SW):  31
  • Gray subsurface section 5/5 (SW):  31
  • Grand Total:  382 (based on the ability to place their representative block in the Minecraft model; there may be room for a few more Hanging Mansions in the actual build)

Those numbers are the way they are because the subsurface sections ‘mirror’ the layout of skyscrapers above them, thus there are the same number of skyscraper-bridges in corresponding surface and subsurface sections, thus the same amount of space to hang these spherical dwellings.

 

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Totals by Size:

To calculate how many Hanging Mansions of each diameter there are, we count the different-size skyscraper-bridges;

  • Gray section 1/5 (NW):  19 horizontal; bridges (4 1-long, 11 2-long, 2 3-long, 1 4-long, 1 5-long)
  • Gray section 2/5 (NE):  27 horizontal; bridges (6 1-long, 11 2-long, 2 3-long, 3 4-long)
  • Gray section 3/5 (SE):  23 horizontal; bridges (7 1-long, 9 2-long, 6 3-long, 1 4-long)
  • Gray section 4/5 (S):  22 horizontal; bridges (11 1-long, 7 2-long, 1 3-long, 2 4-long, 1 5-long)
  • Gray section 5/5 (SW):  19 horizontal; bridges (7 1-long, 9 2-long, 1 3-long, 1 4-long, 1 5-long)

Double those numbers; to include the subsurface/under-concavity bridges;
(19+27+23+22+19) x2 = 220 bridges in Sotu, all of which can support at least 1 Hanging Mansion

Now we establish where each size Hanging Mansion must be hung:

  • 100′-diameter Hanging Mansions are only hung under the largest bridges; 5-long* –and only 1 per bridge, always under its center.
  • 80′-diameter Hanging Mansions are also only hung on the 5-long –on either side of the 100′-diameter Hanging Mansion.
  • 60′-diameter Hanging Mansions are hung under the 4-long.
  • 40′-diameter Hanging Mansions are hung under the 1-long, 2-long, and 3-long.

* This is a reference to the scale-model in Minecraft; “5-long” is a skyscraper-bridge made with a sequence of 5 Minecraft wall-blocks, giving it a span representing 730′ between the skyscrapers it connects.

Totaling the different-length skyscraper bridges, we get:

  • 6 5-long; room for 6x [(1 100′-diameter Hanging Mansion) + (2 80′-diameter Hanging Mansions)] = 6 100′-diameter Hanging Mansions and 12 80′-diameter Hanging Mansions
  • 16 4-long; room for 16x (2 60′-diameter Hanging Mansions) = 32 60′-diameter Hanging Mansions
  • 24 3-long; room for 24x (1, 2, or 3 40′-diameter Hanging Mansions) = 72 40′-diameter Hanging Mansions
  • 94 2-long; room for 94x (2 40′-diameter Hanging Mansions) = 188 40′-diameter Hanging Mansions
  • 70 1-long; room for 70x (1 40′-diameter Hanging Mansion) = 70 40′-diameter Hanging Mansions
  • Re-adding:  6 + 12 + 32 + 330 = 380 (very close to the above/initial estimate of 382)

So our totals for each Hanging Mansion size are:

  •  330 40′-diameter Hanging Mansions (half above ground, and half in the Under-concavity)
  •  32 60′-diameter Hanging Mansions (half above ground, and half in the Under-concavity)
  •  12 80′-diameter Hanging Mansions (half above ground, and half in the Under-concavity)
  •  6 100′-diameter Hanging Mansions (half above ground, and half in the Under-concavity)

 

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Special/Safety Features:

All of these homes come with built-in Repulsines which are naturally in a state of bare-minimum ‘spin’, meaning the fluid in their hollow gyroscope rings is moving just enough to trigger an immediate ‘spin up’ to the point where their angular momentum and other effects would prevent their respective spheres/mansions from falling, let alone hitting the pavement/streets below.  In other words, these homes double as stationary “flying saucers”, more or less, in that they have engines hidden in them which are designed to always be ready to automatically stop separation, falls, and the related potential damage.  The byproduct of this is that… no matter how much furniture or people you put in any the Hanging Mansions / Ball Homes, as some call them, its weight is canceled out to the point that it does not put any added strain on the attachment keeping these homes secure beneath the skyscraper bridges they rotate under.

 

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Events with a View:

“Have a ball in your ball.”  Ever had a dance ball or other party in an Inisfreean Ball Home hanging hundreds of stories above the SotU streets?  Ever seen how Tokyo, New York City, Singapore, and Coruscant would look combined –and clean?  From these special residences, you can.  What’s more, you can even host dance parties in them, as many of them come standard with ball rooms; the kind for dances, formal or otherwise.

Each hanging mansion includes all the rooms found in a normal house.

 

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Creation History:

After the creator of Inisfree moved to the site of its near-future location in 2010, the majority of its construction was completed in 2011, its people (the Inisfreeans) being 3D-printed in 2012 to staff it all.  During those earliest years, Inisfree’s downtown skyscrapers were printed and erected (though “grown” is the term the Inisfreeans use, as many of their structures, including their starships, are printed on-site, appearing to rise up from their foundations), followed by the skyscraper-size bridges that connected some of them, and then (simultaneously) their Rooftop Carriers… and these hanging spherical residences.  “Growing” down from the thick metal-like super-plastic support-node that each of these hanging mansions would remain fixed to, and rotating via, their skeleton/frame formed first, followed by its floors, then its walls and windows, and finally everything else; even its furniture and appliances were “grown” inside, never having to be shipped/trucked or moved/lifted.

By 2013, all of Inisfree’s hanging mansions had “grown”/formed.  They were set to rotate at the same slow speed until someone moving into one wishes to increase or decrease that speed in his or hers.  “Finishing touches” continue to be added to them, always based on the preferences of whomever moves in.

 

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Basic Design with Bridge:

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Overall Appearance:

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Inspiration:

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Exterior Concepts:

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Interiors:

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2020/+ Updates:

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2022 Update:  Scale-model in Minecraft

Each upside-down copper lightning-rod Minecraft-block in these images represents a hanging mansion underneath a skyscraper-size bridge connecting the even-bigger skyscrapers.  The real hanging-mansions’ overhead-connection cylinders are not that long relative the spheres they hold under those bridges, though, and the hanging mansions’ diameters are sometimes greater than the width of those lightning-rod block cubes in this game we used for the downtown computer-model.

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2022 Update:  Minecraft 1:1 Models

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