Hello, SFIA audio listeners.

In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

So today we'll be looking at the concepts of statites or static satellites, slash Isaac Arthur, and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

So today we'll be looking at the concepts of statites or static satellites, and several variations of them like the ligite, quasi-mach, magsail, and solar moth.

One of the difficulties of doing a show focused on space and the distant future, and the cool

things we might find and build out there, is

that we often have concepts we use a lot that are not even vaguely household concepts, and

I end up discussing them quickly in an episode focused on something else, but which requires

that topic. I created the megastructural compendium a couple years back as a handy reference

for a lot of them, but as I was writing and

recording this month's episode on Lagrange Point Settlement, I found myself discussing

lagites and statites, and I explained them, but neither they or the compendium really allowed

us to discuss what these things are, what all their variants are, and what their limitations

and changes are, and any of the really cool things we

can do with them, some of which, like starlifting or chicata thrusters, have their own episodes.

We should start with the basic concept, though.

Smaller things orbit much larger bodies at a rate determine from that bigger object's mass

and how close it is, The further away you are,

the slower you orbit, and the more massive it is, the faster you orbit. This means around

...