Orbital may refer to:

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In Iain M. Banks' fictional Culture universe, an Orbital (sometimes also simply called an O or a small ring) is a purpose-built space habitat forming a ring typically around 3 million km (1.9 million miles) in diameter. The rotation of the ring simulates both gravity and a day-night cycle comparable to a planetary body orbiting a star.

Its inhabitants, often numbering many billions, live on the inside of the ring, where continent-sized "plates" have been shaped to provide all sorts of natural environments and climates, often with the aim of producing especially spectacular results.

Construction

Structure

Banks has described Orbitals as looking like "a god's bracelet" hanging in outer space. Orbitals are ribbon-like hoops of a super-strong material (see also unobtainium) reinforced and joined with force fields. Each Orbital possesses a "hub", a station suspended at its rotational centre which houses the Orbital's governing Mind.

An Orbital is similar to a ringworld but is much smaller and does not enclose its primary star within itself, instead orbiting the star in a more conventional manner, making it much more intrinsically stable than a ringworld. Many different civilizations are known to use Orbitals sized according to the preferences of the builders; the Culture's Orbitals are approximately ten million kilometres in circumference, which, together with their rotational speed, creates gravity and day-night cycles to normal Culture standard. To put this another way, with a diameter of 3 million kilometres the orbital completes a full rotation once per standard Culture day to simulate normal Culture gravity via centrifugal force, and as the orbital is itself orbiting a star this in turn gives the day-night cycle. They have widths varying between one thousand and six thousand kilometres, giving them a surface area of between 20 and 120 times that of the Earth (but comprising significantly less mass).

Orbital is the first album from Orbital, released in 1991. It is often referred to as the "Green Album", to differentiate it from the band's second album, titled Orbital 2 (known as the "Brown Album"), which bears only the band's name on the cover.

The album

The original European release includes live versions of "Chime" and "Midnight". Orbital was released in 1992 with a significantly different cover and track listing in the United States, incorporating remixes and non-album singles. All tracks on the U.S. release had also been remastered using the Bedini Audio Spectral Enhancer (B.A.S.E.) to enhance their stereophonic effects.

Samples