Megastructures are very large man made objects, ranging from ziggurats, to skyscrapers, to hypothetical, star-sized artificial constructs. One requirement of a megastructure is that it is self-supporting; other criteria such as rigidity or contiguousness are sometimes also applied (so large clusters of associated smaller structures may or may not qualify). Megastructures are the products of megascale engineering (building things larger than 1000 km, e.g. the Great Wall of China) or astroengineering (building in outer space, e.g. the International Space Station).
Most megastructure designs could not be constructed with today’s level of industrial technology. This makes their design examples of speculative (or exploratory) engineering. Those that could be constructed easily qualify as megaprojects (construction projects in the billion dollar range).
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The Daily Omnivore 