Land Size, including land size calculator

[Kokuten]

Grover's Corners is VERY well estimated as to size in acres vs. dimensions, Bob.
www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app19...ndarea.jsp
gives a radius of 1862', giving a diameter of 3724', for a 250 acre circle. That's close enough that I'm not going to quibble - I'm going to thumbs up and cheer.
The stated 3900' diameter, radius of 1950', gives a 274 acre chunk, which is fine too.
Hephaestus, at ten acres of Alaska, is 700' x 622', for an exact ten acre chunk. I have to admit, though, I stoled the chunk of land that forms the 'prow', so my measurements are a bit off.
S. Hoffswalsh Field, being a residential parcel, doesn't seem unlikely at 155' x 270', giving a .96 acre postage stamp - this is what you would get if you horked my current home out of the ground, land and all, only smaller. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Bob Schroeck]

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Grover's Corners is VERY well estimated as to size in acres vs. dimensions, Bob.

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Not estimated, but calculated -- just not to too many significant digits. I knew how many acres I wanted it to be, went and looked up how many square feet an acre was, and just ran "pi R squared" backwards from there. I must have dropped a number somewhere to be off by 175 feet in diameter, though, otherwise I would have said 3700 or maybe 3725.

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The stated 3900' diameter, radius of 1950', gives a 274 acre chunk, which is fine too.

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Oh! That's what happened. I ran the numbers for 275 acres, too, before settling on 250 acres. I must have used the wrong diameter. (I was scrawling everything on a little scrap of paper and didn't organize it too well.)
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[Acyl]

As an aside, I'd very much appreciate if someone could help me figure out the dimensions for the Floating Island. I've been playing with that very neat land size calculator, but, uh, would anyone be kind enough to reality-check me?
That's the spaceborne Fen shopping mall, hotel, resupply point, neutral meeting ground, and general hangout... the one I proposed rather early on in the original thread.
We all know that Bob's referred to Grover's Corners as the Island's much bigger brother...and at 250 acres, that's unquestionably true.
Question is, though...how big's the Island? Now I'm actually kicking around story fragments, though, I need to really nail down details. And I suck with numbers. e_e;
Here's what I've established. The Island is a roughly hemispherical divot of land, with a rather messy cluster of structures on top. Two original warehouse complexes, an array of small domes...and a fairly large amount of open space, for parking, docking tubes, and so on. It's not as neatly 'roofed over' as Bob's creation.
Much of the Island's living space is underground, though, and there's a fair amount of raw earth they haven't burrowed into yet. I'd say by this point, about a half of the complex is "above ground", and half "basement". There's ample room for expansion both above and below, as it were.
Now...I figure the combined currently utilized area is in the region of couple million square feet. ie, the size of a really big mall with lots of parking...which is pretty much what it is.
That's floor space, though - adding up the areas of all the various levels. 'cause the place is multi-storey, right? I'm not sure how deeply its stacked, tho. Maybe 5 significant floor levels (three topside, two basement) of retail and residential. But that doesn't include deeper "service" levels, including the docking bay right on the underside of the Island.
And they haven't filled the entire Island up yet. I figure they could pretty much double the size of facilities with additional digging and surface construction, before running out of room. I mention that 'cause it's something of a plot point...
So...how many acres would be reasonable for something that's essentially a flying megamall and hotel? How many acres for the base landmass, I mean? What does that mean for the external dimensions of the whole station?
I'm a humanities and political science geek. I took advanced math in High School, but finished with a C, and have spent the intervening years forgetting it. It doesn't help that I think in metric, and all real estate is calculated in Imperial. =P
Currently I'm kicking around making it roughly 100 acres of land that was boosted into orbit. A hemisphere with a 1200 foot radius. Does that work? My sense of scale is also a little whack.
This is a high estimate; it could probably afford to be very, very much smaller, perhaps half or 2/3rds of that stated size. I don't want to edge on Bob's territory of "OH MY GOD THAT THING IS FUGGING HUGE", but the Island does need to be of significant heft, and, well...
...I proposed the general idea first, I just never established how big mine was supposed to be. =P
-- Acyl

[M Fnord]

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So...how many acres would be reasonable for something that's essentially a flying megamall and hotel? How many acres for the base landmass, I mean? What does that mean for the external dimensions of the whole station?

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Well... I can't find any good sources on the actual physical *size* of the damned thing, but according to the Source of All Knowledge On The Internets the Mall of America has about 230,000 square meters of floorspace, which comes out to about 57 acres. So a 120-acre plot would give you plenty of room to expand. How you arange it is completely out of my league, though.
120 acres on a circular plot with a radius of roughly 366 meters sounds about right.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

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