Some folk baked a lot of bread during lockdowns. Others assembled a team of scientists and figured out a practical way to turn asteroids into space habitats, by spinning them inside out and creating giant rotating, Manhattan-sized city-rings.

In the latter group are a team of University of Rochester scientists, who turned their attentions to a “wildly theoretical” paper now published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space. The challenge they set themselves: how to create a city-sized space habitat people could live on permanently, without the massive expense and challenge of launching all the materials into space from Earth.

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Asteroids represent big piles of materials, decided the team: “all those flying mountains whirling around the sun might provide a faster, cheaper, and more effective path to space cities,” says co-author and Professor of Physics and Astronomy Adam Frank. The trouble is, they’re nowhere near big enough to provide a useful amount of gravity. That’s a big deal; extended periods in zero- or low-gravity cause a range of health issues in astronauts, so the team decided on a minimum of 0.3g – a third or so less than you’d get living on Mars.

Read more: New Atlas