 May 31, 2015 - 4:06pm | anyone looking for a SF-ish dome floor plan? check out this manufacturer of cement domes for their floorplans: http://www.monolithic.org/homes/floorplans These look to be easily borrowed for use on the next outpost colony that your characters visit. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 31, 2015 - 4:26pm | I'm kind of partial to this one: 1 bedroom, 1 bath and a garage just park an explorer in the garage and this would be great for an outpost. Many of the domes could have an entry hall added to act as an "air lock" for hazardous environments   I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 31, 2015 - 5:48pm | My wife and I actually built a monolithic dome for our first house. Then, we moved after a few years due to life events, but my brother-in-law still lives there. They're pretty neat. As you might expect, there are advantages and disadvantages, but we both really liked it. |
 May 31, 2015 - 8:40pm | I read about these 20 years ago in college and they mentioned that they are great for tornadoes because they look like a bump in the land and just get passed over. I wonder if that is true. -iggy |
June 1, 2015 - 4:49am | Haven't experienced it myself. However, that is the theory, and they do have some recorded cases where it actually happened. Part of the reason is that the dome's structure is reinforced concrete, but the shape is more important because the tornado doesn't have a way to "grab hold" of the structure. The important part for my family is that these structures are relatively easy to build. Besides the foundation and the sprayed insulation, my wife and I actually built it ourselves using our own labor. Don't get me wrong, it was a LOT of work, and we still regret not renting some of the better tools to do some of that for us. However, it only takes a professional team three or so days to finish the structure for one of these houses. Also, considering the construction technique, they'd be perfect for moonbases or Star Frontiers. This is because during construction you depend on the internal pressure of the dome "balloon" to suspend your wet concrete. With low external pressure or in low gravity, that would become easier and easier. |
June 1, 2015 - 11:06am | You are correct, these would be great for moon bases, especially as the raw materials are local to the moon. The one scarce item would be the water for the concrete. However these could be made with moon dust heated to it's melting point and sprayed into the tent made out of a high temp asbestos like material. Talk about living in glass houses.  -iggy |
 June 20, 2015 - 8:38am | When I was visiting the US back in 2007 and on a road-trip around the south, I took this photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jer_trek/449310125/ |
 June 20, 2015 - 5:13pm | Out of the need to find blueprints for the generally round decks in SF, my computer archives are filled with pictures of floodplains of round and dome houses. If someone stumbles on to the folder and looks at it with no context to my gaming, than one would assume that I am ether house-hunting for round homes, or that I got some kind of obscure round-house fetish. =P |
