[HN Gopher] Space colonies of the future as imagined by NASA in ...
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Space colonies of the future as imagined by NASA in the 1970s
Author : rlv-dan
Score : 238 points
Date : 2021-11-23 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
| yboris wrote:
| My favorite exploration of the possible future technologies is
| from a 1990 book:
|
| _Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition_ by Ed Regis
|
| It includes a great section on space travel and space living.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mambo_Chicken_and_the_Tr...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Great-Mambo-Chicken-Transhuman-Condit...
| kristianp wrote:
| These drawings are in Gerard k o'Neill's book, "the High
| Frontier". I remember reading it in the 80s, my local library in
| Australia had a copy.
| pensatoio wrote:
| If you enjoy fantasizing about these feats of engineering, mega-
| structures and space travel, I'd recommend checking out the
| Bobiverse Series by Dennis Taylor!
|
| Super funny, and very relatable, if you're a creator or engineer.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Besides Halo, are there any great videogames or VR experiences
| that allow you to explore toroidal space colonies like this?
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| The future was so much better in the past.
| whalesalad wrote:
| It was all the cocaine!
| chadwittman wrote:
| This feels like it would be an amazing concept for a RTS or turn-
| based strategy game.
| etxm wrote:
| Those lakes are going to be a real bitch when belters hit these
| rings with an EMP.
| codeulike wrote:
| I remember seeing some of these actual pictures in the late 70s,
| early 80s, they were very striking and mindblowing to me as a
| child, the idea of huge pieces of structure with lush green parks
| and farmland in space. They are really memorable and probably
| shaped a lot of peoples imaginations about what might be possible
| one day.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I had a kid's encyclopedia of science that had a section that
| featured these pictures, I must have spent hours staring at
| them, they were mesmerizing.
|
| It's feels strange to look back and think how much the world
| has changed since I was a child in the 1980s, and yet how
| little it changed in the ways I thought it would.
| ilamont wrote:
| These were regularly featured in _Omni_ magazine, along with
| other fantastic science-fiction artistry.
| wefarrell wrote:
| Instead of perpetual manned space missions I'd like to see an
| experimental off world self sustaining biosphere. Put it in
| orbit, on the moon, or Mars and try to keep it alive while
| maintaining or increasing biodiversity. Make it modular so that
| it can be expanded and over time gradually introduce more complex
| forms of life.
|
| There are many experiments of various types of organisms in space
| but I'm not aware of any that test and try to sustain entire
| ecosystems, something that's essential for prolonged human life
| off of this planet.
| idlewords wrote:
| We can't even do a self-sustaining biosphere here on earth
| (apart from the entire planet) yet. It's a hard problem!
| qayxc wrote:
| That's not true. You can easily make aself-contained
| biosphere yourself using just a glass bottle, some water,
| dirt, and a few select species of plants, algae, or
| insects/orthopods [0]
|
| You can even buy them [1].
|
| [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/T
| he-...
|
| [1] https://eco-sphere.com
| mLuby wrote:
| Like Biosphere 2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
|
| Improvements in space life support technology should have
| significant and positive applications on Earth as well.
| wefarrell wrote:
| Biosphere 2 was too ambitious and they had humans so they
| needed to cheat. Also the gravity and background radiation
| levels are no different. We really need to do it outside of
| earth.
| anthonyaykut wrote:
| Wow, I can see where Neill Blomkamp got his inspiration for
| Elysium :)
| Qem wrote:
| Love the films by this guy. I still hope to see a District 10,
| and the shorts Rakka and Zygote made into full movies.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I recently listened to the audiobook of Arthur C Clarke's
| Rendezvous with Rama. It's full of great descriptions of a
| habitat akin to one of these, especially with the experience of
| getting from the entry-point at the axis to the outer wall.
|
| It might be the only book that's ever given me the feeling of
| agoraphobia with some of the descriptions. I'd love to see some
| kind of adaptation, but it's not sure if a TV screen could ever
| do justice to the scale.
| mattkevan wrote:
| One of my favourite books as a kid wa 'The Usbourne Book of the
| Future', which outlined the next 5000 years of human development
| and featured a lot of these illustrations.
|
| I'm still bitterly disappointed that the timeline it proposed was
| not accurate.
|
| Check out the amazing cassette futurism illustrations:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usborne+book+of+the+future&t=iphon...
| noneeeed wrote:
| Usbourne really did make some terrific books. Some of them
| really defined my childhood, from their book about Ghosts that
| was in our primary school library and gave me nightmares, to
| the BASIC programming book that was foundational in me becoming
| a programmer.
|
| They still seem to be making some of the best non-fiction kids
| books, my kids have some great ones.
| ncmncm wrote:
| To me the definitive SF treatment of these things is Alexis
| Gilliland's Rosinante series.
|
| The idea of mirror flaps swinging around as the cylinder rotated
| was ridiculed, and brilliantly replaced with the Mitsubishi
| Dragonscale Mirror Array, a cone of millions of individually-
| steered mirrors. Clever re-uses of that drove major plot points
| both as a weapon, a la Archimedean defense against ships, then as
| the light pump for a beam weapon, which then became remote power
| for vapor-phase asteroid ore refinement, and then for a capital
| ship, all background for solar-system-scale political intrigue.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| _Seveneves_ features O 'Neill habitats. Can't wait to see the
| movie version.
| kache_ wrote:
| A utopia that was once common across America.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| highly dependent on who you're asking
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Yeah, I felt pretty ripped off by NASA :-) As a kid I fully
| expected to be spending vacations on the Moon by 2010. If
| Starship meets about 65% of the vision SpaceX has for it I have
| some hope that I might be able to go into orbit before I die.
|
| All in all though, what NASA really needed to make this stuff
| real was what SpaceX is working to provide, sending tonnage into
| orbit at an economic price.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| NASA didn't rip you off, Congress killing NASA's funding did.
| cletus wrote:
| What a lot of concepts ignore is material requirements, which is
| super-important.
|
| A good example is Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's a cool idea in
| the early days when people were thinking about mass-to-living-
| area ratio but to produce Earth-like gravity at an Earth-like
| distance would require the thing to spin at (IIRC) ~1.5m km/h.
| The centrifugal force would tear that apart.
|
| Likewise, people mistakenly view a Dyson Sphere as a rigid shell
| around a star. That was never the concept. This misconception is
| so common it's led to the term Dyson Swarm, which was always the
| original intent: a "cloud" of orbitals around a star all moving
| independently.
|
| The likely future of space habitation is (IMHO) going to use the
| humble O'Neil Cylinder [1]. This is nothing more than a cylinder
| a few miles wide and maybe a couple of dozen long. Such a
| cylinder could potentially house millions. They're large enough
| such that spin gravity wouldn't be disorienting and small enough
| such that they don't require exotic materials (eg space elevators
| for Earth require exotic materials we haven't even theorized yet
| other than possibly graphene).
|
| So an O'Neil cylinder can be built of nothing more sophisticated
| than stainless steel.
|
| You have options of joining them to other cylinders. You can
| build a "ladder", which is a series of orbitals all in the same
| orbit but slightly displaced. You could even run cables for
| transportation between them. You could construct networks of
| these things.
|
| You put solar cells on the outside and a window at one end,
| possibly using refractive materials down the center to create
| more pleasing diffuse light and the whole thing is reasonably low
| tech and low maintenance.
|
| You could even build them by hollowing out asteroids and other
| space bodies.
|
| The mac daddy to the O'Neil Cylinder is the McKendree Cylinder
| [2]. Instead of being a few miles wide, it might be hundreds of
| miles wide and much longer. This is beyond the tensile strength
| of stainless steel but within the theorized limits of graphene.
|
| Such a cylinder could comfortably house billions of people.
|
| As much as it's cool to have things like the micro-gee
| environment of the ISS, I honestly wish we'd start building
| prototypes for spin gravity. This would greatly simplify living
| in such an environment for extended period of time.
|
| To give you an idea of how efficient thing is for living area,
| IIRC the estimate is about 1% of the mass of Mercury could
| consume essentially be a complete Dyson Swarm around the Sun and
| comfortably house a quintillion (10^15) people.
|
| Planets are nice and all but are horribly inefficient uses of
| mass to create living area and come with some serious negatives,
| not the least of which is the energy cost of entering and leaving
| such a gravity well.
|
| This is also why looking for the signature of such a Dyson Swarm
| as evidence of extraterrestrial spacefaring life makes way more
| sense than pretty much any other approach. Saying that we're less
| than 1000 years away from having this kind of space-industry is
| beyond conservative. 1000 years ago we were throwing spears at
| each other.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder
| ortusdux wrote:
| I was thinking about these drawings yesterday when I saw the
| mockup of a ring made from 32 Starship fuselages. Welded end to
| end, 32 pieces would net a 1/4 mile diameter ring with a volume
| ~85x the ISS.
|
| Elon estimates that the refueling procedure necessary for
| interplanetary starship missions would require 8 fuel tanker
| starship launches, but this could be cut in half if the tankers
| were stripped of the elements needed for reentry and landing.
|
| I could see the economics working out to where it would make more
| sense to launch stripped down single use fuel tanker starships,
| and then sell the empty orbiting shells to someone interested in
| building in space.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/science-upside....
| rtkwe wrote:
| The exterior structure is a fraction of what you need for a
| working station though. It is a limiting factor on size because
| traditionally the module needs to fit in a faring but doing
| that doesn't save much cost because you still have to haul up
| all the other equipment.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Exactly. Many reusable starships flights would be needed to
| ferry up all the trappings of a working station, while
| returning reusable elements like the engines from the now
| mothballed fuel tanker ships.
|
| I just meant to point out that a stripped down starship would
| consist of 30+ tons of easily weldable steel pre-fabricated
| into a reinforced pressure vessel. Spacex's interplanetary
| goals would benefit from treating the tanker starships as
| expendable, and if someone was inclined to start building
| habitations similar to those depicted in the link, they could
| buy up the building-blocks for a song.
| idlewords wrote:
| Nothing is easily weldable in space, and empty hulls aren't
| habitrail elements that you can connect into something
| useful (unless a lot of design goes into it up front). Even
| if the hulls were free, the cost of creating such a space
| station would be prohibitive.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Nothing is easy in space, but 304L SS is easier to weld
| than 2219 Al or Ti, the main structural metals on the
| ISS. Welding in space has been well studied by both NASA
| and Roscosmos. Most testing was done in the 60s and 70s
| in preparation for possible repairs due to high-velocity
| impacts. More reciently, testing has been focused on 3d
| printing via additive welding.
|
| The main issue with welding in space is the lack of
| convection based cooling, which means the welds take
| longer to cool through conduction, which can result in a
| larger HAZ. Increasing the mass and heat capacity of the
| adjacent material greatly reduces this.
|
| The lack of an atmosphere and contaminants makes space a
| near ideal welding environment.
| idlewords wrote:
| The lack of welders who can breathe vacuum makes space a
| challenging welding environment.
| ortusdux wrote:
| They are already using robots to weld starships. Doing it
| in space removes variables like air, humidity, and
| shielding gasses.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The difficulty is on Earth you have a convenient stable
| mass to anchor your robot to while in space everything is
| unmoored and unstable if you start swinging around a
| robot arm.
| jandrese wrote:
| I assume you would build in a rail that the welding robot
| would clamp onto.
| politician wrote:
| Don't metals spontaneously weld in vacuum?
| ortusdux wrote:
| Yes, under certain circumstances. Two pieces of identical
| metal, with no surface coatings or oxides, will directly
| bond if placed in intimate contact. Done properly, the
| weld would be as strong as the metal. As Feynman put it,
| the atoms have no way of knowing they are in different
| pieces.
|
| Similar results can be reliably recreated on earth.
| Ultrasonic welding rubs two pieces of metal together
| until the oxide breaks apart leaving pure metal to fuse.
| Explosive welding creates a plasma that strips off the
| oxide layer, and then propels the metals into each other.
| This method has the benefit of bonding dissimilar metals,
| and usually produces bonds that are as strong as the
| weakest metal.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's not perfect and you wouldn't want to trust it for a
| habitat. It requires the surfaces to be pretty
| meticulously clean and it's not as strong as traditional
| welds.
| wnkrshm wrote:
| They also become brittle due to cosmic particles, if one
| e.g. wants to think about interstellar travel.
| ggerules wrote:
| In someway this reminds me of the wonderful 1940s and 1950s
| artwork by Chelsey K. Bonestell.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Bonestell
| matchagaucho wrote:
| Stewart Cowley defined 1970s space illustrations. No other Artist
| inspired me more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Cowley
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Looking at these images, I can't help but feel that any real
| space colony like this will be like Singapore on steroids.
|
| For all its issues, Earth is actually pretty resilient. To
| ability to destroy civilization is pretty much limited to very
| large nation states.
|
| Not so in a spinning space colony. A small group could easily
| destroy it. Thus, there will be ubiquitous surveillance and huge
| social and legal pressure towards "correct" behavior.
| dsign wrote:
| That's the plot of "Red Sky-Ceiling", where one person
| infiltrates a space-habitat with a lethal virus and everybody
| needs to go into self-isolation. Cool thing though, they could
| tint red their sky to signal bio-hazard.
|
| By the way, I've done the math, and a habitat like the one in
| that book would need to fuse 18 metric tons of Deuterium per
| day to produce "solar light" for an area equals to Virginia
| state's. Pumping heat out of that thing must be a similarly
| hairy challenge.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Images of O'Neil cylinders captivated me as a child, and they
| still do now. So familiar and yet so weird.
|
| Something similar is depicted in the film 'Elysium'. But it is a
| open torus, rather than a closed cylinder and they never explain
| how they keep the atmosphere in.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| > they never explain how they keep the atmosphere in.
|
| not familiar with the design, is there gravity? that's why our
| atmosphere sticks around, right?
| adwn wrote:
| There's no gravity on Elysium's habitats, but there's a
| centrifugal force caused by the rotation of the torus.
| However, that wouldn't be nearly enough to keep the
| atmosphere in, because the walls are only a couple 10s of
| meters high. For comparison, Earth's atmosphere stretches out
| for several 10s of kilometers.
|
| And even if their atmosphere wasn't lost, the inhabitants
| would quickly suffocate and die due to low air pressure. On
| Earth, there's 10 tonnes of atmosphere pushing down on every
| square meter at sea level, compressing the air to 1 bar.
| Reduce that ~100 km column of air to ~100 m, and the pressure
| would be very much lower.
| rm999 wrote:
| This doesn't seem right to me, why don't astronauts
| suffocate on the International Space Station? You can
| pressurize air in a spacecraft, I believe the ISS is kept
| at ~1 atm.
| numpad0 wrote:
| The habitat in Elysium is quite bizarre. The entire donut
| is built Cabriolet style flying LEO and protagonists just
| lowers commandeered space helicopters through inner
| perimeter. It could be said the Chekhov's gun principle
| applied beautifully but quite bizarre.
| f00zz wrote:
| Also there's a scene at the beginning where the main
| character looks up and it's just hanging up there,
| seemingly stationary. At LEO it should be zapping across
| the sky (the ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes).
| rtkwe wrote:
| The Elysium habitat in the movie is open topped with
| walls on a spinning torus not a sealed container like the
| ISS. On Earth this works because of the combination of
| gravity and the size of the atmosphere pressing on
| itself.
|
| https://image-engine.com/case-studies/elysium/
| vimacs2 wrote:
| OP is referencing an open air habitat so a comparison
| with the ISS doesn't make sense. Open air designs do
| actually work once you scale up the size of the habitat
| enough. This is where we get the idea of Bishop rings
| which use a wall a hundred or so km in height to keep the
| air in. Mckendree cylinders (which are a supersized
| version of O'Neil cylinders) can also have end caps that
| are open provided you have a high enough wall.
|
| The main advantage of open air designs is it allows you
| to use aerobreaking when approaching the habitat which
| could be a significant save in fuel.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The Elysium habitat in the film has (from memory) walls
| only hundreds of metres high. So there is no way that
| would contain an atmosphere for any length of time. I
| guess their could be some sort of high tech field that
| kept it in, but it would have to be something that
| doesn't stop a shuttle entering (as they do in the film).
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| There is no apparent roof in Elysium, that's the
| difference.
| genedan wrote:
| O'Neill cylinders are also frequently depicted in the various
| Gundam series.
| TomAbel wrote:
| Off Topic but I finished my last exam today and I wanted to
| start watching Gundam. I wanted to know if you have any
| recommendations for which Gundam series I should start with
| first as someones who likes anime but has never watched
| Gundam.
| dta5003 wrote:
| Gundam Wing! It's not a huge commitment either - 50
| episodes plus a couple movies.
| [deleted]
| TomAbel wrote:
| Thank you for the recommendation.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's definitely one of the more kiddie Gundam series, but
| it touches upon the themes of the original 1979 show, and
| is one of the few to depict the Stanford torus rather
| than O'Neill cylinders.
| kuraudoOishii wrote:
| I recommend the universal century, one year war movies to
| get you started: The mobile suit gundam movie trilogy
| followed by 0080: war in the pocket (a masterpiece of both
| storytelling and animation).
|
| In fact, starting with 0080 war in the pocket isn't a bad
| idea given the self contained story.
|
| From there, I'd check out 0083: Stardust memory and move on
| to the Zeta Gundam tv show.
|
| Then, for a completely different experience, you can check
| out the alternate universe shows like Mobile Fighter G
| Gundam or After War Report Gundam X
| [deleted]
| TomAbel wrote:
| Thank you, I will check those out.
| ranger207 wrote:
| If you want a super short intro to the series, _Gundam
| Thunderbolt_ is very good and self-contained. There's
| currently two hour-long OVAs that compile the first and
| second season. A third season and movie is planned, but
| it'll be a while before it's released.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The Gundam podcast Colony Drop has a good episode about the
| franchise's depiction of space colonies:
|
| https://colonydrop.podbean.com/e/space-colonies/
|
| For actual in-depth scientific exploration of the colonies of
| Gundam, Dyar Straights is pretty great:
|
| https://www.dyarstraights.com/gundam-test/
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Ringworlds, Culture Orbitals and Halo Arrays are also open-
| faced. Centripedal force?
|
| _How tall do atmosphere retaining walls on rotating space
| habitats need to be?_
|
| https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/119739/how...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Short answer: really tall. 100 km is not enough.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I doubt it's possible.
|
| It doesn't matter what frictionless calculations say, the air
| will climb through any wall you create until it gets out of
| the station.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The atmosphere falls off exponentially (IIRC). No matter
| how high the wall is there will be some loss as energetic
| molecules reach the top of the wall and fall out of the
| side. But the loss would be very small for a wall that is
| 100km+ high as very few air molecules will be energetic
| enough to get that high.
|
| According to the stackoverflow entry above, a 10km high
| wall on a ringworld would leak about half the atmosphere
| every century.
|
| Obviously the wall would have to be airtight.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The atmosphere falls off exponentially (IIRC).
|
| Yeah, with constant gravity and no friction.
|
| 100km isn't enough because no height is ever enough,
| because friction exists. Any wall will have a flow of air
| near it going away into space, as a result, the pressure
| will fall much slower than exponentially.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Half of the atmosphere from a Ringworld is a stupendous
| amount of gas
|
| Yes. So you would need to build it multiple of 10km.
| Assuming the pressure falls of 75% for each 10km (which
| seems about right from a quick glance at some tables), if
| it was 100km high the loss would be 0.25^10 of what it
| would be at 10km. So 100km wall would be ~million times
| less loss than a 10km wall.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Yeah, with constant gravity and no friction.
|
| The gravity would be constant if the rotation was
| constant. No sure what you mean by 'no friction'.
| Friction against the wall?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The gravity would be constant if the rotation was
| constant.
|
| Hum... No. The gravity reduces linearly with height.
|
| And yes, friction against the wall.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I was referring to gravity being constant at the surface
| over time.
|
| I'm not convinced friction with the wall is going to
| result in any additional air loss. There is no 'upward'
| (towards the top of the wall) force component.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You keep the walls in permanent shadow. Convection keeps
| the air near them moving downward.
| jandrese wrote:
| Half of the atmosphere from a Ringworld is a stupendous
| amount of gas. 100 years is basically nothing on the
| timescales you need to think about when building a
| Ringworld.
|
| You might be able to slow down the loss of gas by putting
| lips on the tops of the walls and maybe even air jets
| blowing downward though. Or leave it mostly closed except
| for a few openings for spacecraft to enter or leave.
| Also, working out the practical considerations for a
| Ringworld is an exercise in futility anyway. You are
| already well beyond practical when you start building
| one.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Iconic and beautiful but there's no way there'd be that much
| green space. We can barely agree to prioritize green space on
| earth and it's outrageously easier here.
| idlewords wrote:
| That's why the first inhabitants on an O'Neill cylinder would
| have to be a suburban zoning board.
| kijin wrote:
| Priorities might change when you need all that oxygen simply to
| survive.
| f6v wrote:
| I'd imagine there's going to be easier way to get oxygen.
| Like genetically engineered bacteria/algae.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Easier to prioritise if everyone dies of asphyxiation without
| it, perhaps.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| You'd think, but it seems we're currently hurtling an entire
| planet towards mass climate-related migration and food
| instability...
|
| Regardless, by the time we're creating massive space colonies
| we'll probably be manufacturing oxygen rather than
| maintaining massive forests.
| undersuit wrote:
| >we'll probably be manufacturing oxygen rather than
| maintaining massive forests.
|
| What's the difference?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Scale, time, labor, reliability. Forests are vulnerable
| to disease and replacement parts take years and years to
| grow.
| wnkrshm wrote:
| Oceanic photosynthesis is what you want to also look at to
| protect, more than half (est. 50-80%) of our oxygen comes
| from oceanic life like plankton, algae, bacteria. If the
| oceans go, we're screwed.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I would think a space colony would have to be far more
| authoritarian than the earth. In space much more can go
| wrong without a central authority with almost absolute
| power which makes it easier to dictate green space.
| wruza wrote:
| It boils down to energy (there may be no free safe/good-
| enough sun in space). When you have to power a forest
| yourself, it is probably _much_ easier to power a direct co2-
| >co+o2 reactor.
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| Maybe- theres certainly a lot of frozen CO2 in comets
| available for harvesting. Where would the CO go, however?
| It's not the sort of thing you just want piling up next to
| your habitation zones.
| calebpeterson wrote:
| As a child my local public library had a series of books with
| these and similar futuristic artwork.
|
| I loved those books!
|
| By chance does anyone know what they might have been?
| davidw wrote:
| "Rick Guidice" seems to be a familiar name behind the artwork.
| I too read books with this kind of illustration as a kid
| growing up and it makes me very nostalgic.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Gerard K. O'Neill, _High Fronteir_ and T.A. Heppenheimer,
| _Colonies in Space_ were two of the better-known ones. Both
| have distinctive covers.
|
| https://www.worldcat.org/title/high-frontier-human-colonies-...
|
| https://www.worldcat.org/title/colonies-in-space-a-comprehen...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| These pictures always make me smile for several reasons.
|
| One, they had a significant impact on the science fiction that
| came after them. We see recapitulation of this imagery in a lot
| of '70s-'90s anime (less often in live action, which I attribute
| to cost to film it).
|
| Two, I believe when we get anywhere near a technology level to
| try something like this, the result will look radically
| different. I'm reminded of the way that old depictions of the
| Earth from space rarely included the clouds, which are
| omnipresent and unavoidable when actually looking at the planet.
| Some things, a person just can't imagine until they're there.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > One, they had a significant impact on the science fiction
| that came after them. We see recapitulation of this imagery in
| a lot of '70s-'90s anime (less often in live action, which I
| attribute to cost to film it).
|
| Don't forget Gene Wolfe's marvelous The Book of the Long Sun!
| motohagiography wrote:
| The toroid colony image seems to make an appearance in the
| movie Interstellar as well.
|
| Given the risk of random super high speed/energy collisions
| with space objects, I would wonder if a more resilliant craft
| shape might be based on something nested and self-simlar,
| literally, "bigger on the inside," or like a disconnected
| formation that isn't physically connected. An orbital craft in
| a relatively stable solar system that used a planet as a lower
| energy "mooring ball" might allow for simpler geometric craft
| forms, but there's probably a maximally optimal shape for deep
| space starfaring vehicles. (oumuamua was very oblong and
| cylindrical, which might be a hint).
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The craft in Interstellar WAS a long cylinder, not toroidal.
| And I think it's plenty resilient. The heaviest structure is
| on the outside, perhaps several meters thick. It'd take a
| pretty huge space rock, easily detectable with radar and
| almost on the order of something hazardous to the Earth, to
| puncture straight through 10 meters of rock shielding and
| steel structure.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I stand corrected, I had interpreted that Cooper Station
| was a toroid and not a cylinder. Indexing on not getting
| hit at all seems more plausible than being resiliant to
| impact, unless our eventual interstellar travel involves
| some kind of space distortion that avoids collisions with
| anything below a certain mass/energy. Mental reference for
| effects of impact was something like this:
| https://bigthink.com/hard-science/heres-the-damage-a-tiny-
| sp...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Oh sure for actual interstellar travel. I was thinking
| interplanetary speeds (~10km/s) not interstellar travel
| speeds (~30,000km/s). In the film, they're cheating by
| using a wormhole so never travel at those near
| relativistic speeds.
| rootbear wrote:
| Agreed on both points. I remember seeing some of these images
| back in the 70s when space colonies were first seriously
| proposed. The idea that I might live to see such things built
| was thrilling. But looking at these images now, they seem very
| naive. I suspect the reality of space colonies, should we ever
| build them, will be much less like an idyllic space suburb and
| more like a dense urban complex.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I think what space colonies end up looking like in reality
| depends entirely on the infrastructure we build.
|
| If we're stuck with rockets that either lift tiny payloads or
| are ludicrously expensive to launch (see SLS' $2B-$4B
| estimated cost per launch), I think your predictions are
| right on the mark. In that situation building anything even
| remotely luxurious is not practical.
|
| If we assume the existence of something like
| Starship+Superheavy as it's currently planned, that starts to
| change. You're still not going to see O'Neill cylinders, but
| simple ring stations with interiors nice enough to be resorts
| are within grasp.
|
| To achieve things as fully as depicted in these images,
| extraction of resources and manufacturing in space will be
| necessary. Even with cheap superheavy launch, lifting all the
| required material to orbit isn't a practical consideration.
| Achieving those prerequisites is helped quite a lot by
| Starship though, because it's more than enough to bootstrap
| asteroid mining operations and the like.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| If we do build 'space colonies' I'm not sure that they'll be
| that different. The main reason behind these designs is to use
| centrifuge force to create artificial gravity. So until and
| unless we do invent some real Sci-Fi artificial gravity this
| remains our best approach and so are these spinning designs.
|
| I think we'll actually see more of similar designs, even if
| much smaller, e.g. in spacecrafts for human journeys beyond the
| Moon and, indeed, space stations.
|
| Interestingly, many very recent Sci-Fi movies involving
| realistic-ish human space travel feature spacecrafts with
| spinning toroidal living quarters.
| stickfigure wrote:
| The future isn't what it used to be.
| dsign wrote:
| I have been doing a lot of flying over the deserts using flight
| simulators. There is so much space still on the planet! At the
| same time, we can't afford to use any more of it. Let's face it,
| we never were a benign species for the other ones[^1], not even
| when we were naked and mostly ate roots.
|
| But without space to live, grow, and try new things, our humanity
| is maimed. The path of least losing is leaving the planet alone,
| and making our own habitats.
|
| [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
| edgyquant wrote:
| Plus if we figure out rotating habitats and how to grow nature
| within them it'll be a lot more comfortable to live in one of
| those than to live in the desert
| ncmncm wrote:
| They seem overwhelmingly more appealing than squatting on
| Mars. But so vulnerable to attack. Or neglect.
|
| It would be way easier and cheaper to build one unrolled out
| onto an actual desert. And safer. Maybe try that first?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| you might be a fan of paulo soleri's architecture, as
| illustrated in the book "city in the image of man" - he
| designs utopian megastructures (arcologies) that exist in
| spite of desolate conditions while still respecting our
| connection to nature: residences are at the edge of the
| city, so that the wilderness is always in view.
|
| You can stay in the guest rooms at Arcosanti, the city he
| started building in the 70s, it's wonderful having a glass
| wall looking out to the barren desert, knowing i can walk 5
| minutes up the path to a whole "city" of a cafe, theater,
| and workshops.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am a self taught programmer, not a structural
| engineer or physicists.
|
| What you say is true but with a couple of caveats.
|
| 1. Yes it would likely be cheaper to build domed habitats
| in the desert. But how long will that be the case? In the
| desert you have to build on top of sand (or dig way down
| and build a crazy foundation that would likely cost close
| to a space habitat) and there may be local governments who
| aren't keen on random immigrants coming and building giant
| domes in their territory.
|
| 2. Humans have lived on Earth for a hundred thousand years
| and have barely colonized the most extreme deserts (both
| frozen and unfrozen.) The reason thus far is because there
| isn't a good economic reason to do so. We're talking about
| colonizing the solar system, for resources or whatever, so
| the idea is that colonizing the desert isn't sufficient.
|
| 3. Space is empty right now so we have to bring everything
| up from the surface. In a future where people have an
| economic need to colonize Mars it would make sense to have
| infrastructure in space that allows for mining/etc so that
| you don't need to lift 100% of the resources off the
| planet. In which case, and with decent automation, it may
| become cheaper to build habitats in space than it is to
| build buildings on Earth. If it's early and there is no
| infrastructure in space there likely isn't an economic need
| and thus those who lived there would be doing so for their
| own pleasure and would pay a premium.
|
| To clarify: My argument isn't that we should build these
| habitats or we should colonize anywhere at all. But if
| people are wanting to colonize Mars it would be cheaper and
| nicer just to build rotating habitats with Earth like
| gravity and whatever weather you choose. I know if worked
| on Mars I'd prefer to live in a sunny paradise orbiting it
| than live below the surface while only having 1/3 gravity.
| jandrese wrote:
| This sort of talk always kills the dreams of orbital
| living. There's no point building a colony on mars if we
| can't even build a self-sufficient lunar habitat. But
| there is no point in a lunar habitat if we can't build an
| orbital habitat. But there is not point building an
| orbital habitat if we can't even build a self sufficient
| desert or ocean or underground habitat.
|
| If we were really serious about this we would have a
| followup to the Biosphere projects that finally solved
| the issues they identified. We should have several fully
| self contained habitats on Earth before we consider
| building them in orbit or on another planet. People are
| trying to skip all the way to the end without doing all
| of the hard work in the middle. It's doomed to failure.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Exactly the point. Every detail of the most hostile spot
| on Earth is overwhelmingly more viable as a place to
| homestead than the best imaginable site on Mars. The
| middle of the Sahara Desert, bang at the South Pole,
| under the ice at the northernmost bit of Greenland, on a
| tepui in Venezuela without permission, on a desert island
| where typhoon waves wash all the way across, all are more
| pleasant and less likely to kill everyone who goes there
| in the first year.
|
| So, pick such a place, and try it there first. If you
| aren't even talking about that, you are far from ready to
| make a go at someplace massively more hostile to your
| very existence.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_N3EYMgya4
|
| Looking at what the past thought space exploration would become
| is really fun. Disney and Wernher Von Braun collaborated to make
| a happily imaginative view into space exploration back in 1955.
| mongol wrote:
| I recognise these illustrations, they were used for cover for an
| edition of a Swedish translation of Rendezvous with Rama by
| Arthur C Clarke. Probably borrowed by the publisher but I assumed
| they were made for the book.
| WiggleGuy wrote:
| I find it hilarious they expected to waste massive amounts of
| expensive real estate to rear cattle in space.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| The 70's were just such a great decade!
| wdb wrote:
| Love the drawings.
| mabbo wrote:
| One thing many of these designs don't bring up is long-term
| growth. Is the plan to build it once and that's it? Boring, and
| too prone to failure if the project runs into trouble at any
| point in time.
|
| What I'd prefer to see is a space construction that is
| continuous. Imagine a ring station, but one that is cellular in
| nature- lots of smaller modules that together form the huge
| station. This allows one to construct and add further modules
| over time, growing as needed.
|
| The beauty of this design principle is that we could start
| _today_. Design the first iteration of these modules, with the
| intent to fit them into SpaceX 's Starship (or whatever heavy
| rockets come next). Launch 10 or 20 of them, connect them, and
| spin them up to 1/5th gravity, something not too hard to do. Add
| modules in the centre of the ring that are zero-G, where zero-G
| things can be done- but allowing those who live on station to
| live in mild gravity at least.
|
| All the while, you can dream big. You can plan for how this
| station goes from 10 or 20 small modules to thousands.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Seeing these designs I thought about using a double helix,
| which would support growth, and be a poetic choice.
| 5faulker wrote:
| Dream big. Aim small.
| idlewords wrote:
| I find it interesting that so many people claim spinning stuff
| up to create artificial gravity in space is "not too hard to
| do" and yet it has never been attempted, for a series of pretty
| compelling reasons. Everything is hard in space!
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's done all the time on Station inside machinery. We also
| can easily making spinning rooms on Earth. merrygorounds are
| playground equipment for children.
|
| It's don't commonly on Earth. Most of the point of LEO space
| stations is to study microgravity so you wouldn't even want
| it.
|
| It is indeed pretty easy, but annoying to do for technical
| reasons. Easier not to.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The big obstacle for spinning artificial gravity is that it
| won't really work on a small spacestation. It has been not
| tried because we never had the option of a so large station
| where it would make sense to try - I'm not saying that it's
| _not_ hard, however, the fact that we haven 't attempted it
| is not evidence that it's hard, it's fully explained by the
| needs and restrictions of our size-limited spacestations like
| ISS for which each module is limited to a 4.5 meter tube
| because of launch vehicle limitations.
|
| Another reason why it's not done is because one of the
| reasons why we have a space station is to do microgravity
| experiments, and having artificial gravity only hurts that.
| phreeza wrote:
| Not really, you can do it with a cable tether and a
| counterweight. I think Zubrins Mars Direct called for such
| a setup.
| nickff wrote:
| There was a plan to have a 'spinning module' on the ISS,
| but NASA cancelled it. NASA has never really supported
| artificial gravity, likely because none of the NASA Centers
| is really focused on it.
| qayxc wrote:
| > likely because none of the NASA Centers is really
| focused on it.
|
| That's what I thought until I started looking into it.
| The module has actually been built (several versions in
| fact), but never completed and launched.
|
| It turned out during tests and simulations that the
| station's structural integrity was at risk and so it was
| decided not to attach a centrifuge to it.
|
| Whether these concerns were warranted I cannot say, but
| engineers at NASA deemed it too risky to try.
| mabbo wrote:
| You're not wrong. But I feel that like most things, it's only
| hard because it hasn't been tried. Once we've done it a few
| times, it's routine. That's human nature.
|
| We've also done some experiments already. There was, I
| believe, a Mercury mission where they spun the ship up. If I
| recall, it didn't go super well. But hey, we've had 50+ years
| to think of how to do it bette!
| rytill wrote:
| What are some of the first compelling reasons that come to
| mind?
| hinkley wrote:
| Scott Manley on artificial gravity:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxeMoaxUpWk
| f6v wrote:
| It has to be really huge or spin really fast? Sorry, my
| physics knowledge evaporated.
| arethuza wrote:
| Speaking of "really huge" - Culture Orbitals are about
| the ideal: ~3,000,000 kilometres across, 1g at surface
| and rotation time of 24 hours so no need to stuff like
| the shadow squares of Ringworlds.
|
| Sadly, they do rather require "magical" technology....
| wruza wrote:
| 1km - 0.95 rpm. 100m - 3 rpm. 10m - 9.5 rpm. 1ly -
| 0.0000003 rpm (once in 6.2 years, tagential speed is
| around c).
| chanc3e wrote:
| Seems right.
|
| Being huge means less inner ear dizziness, spinning small
| and fast is stressful on materials and makes humans sick.
| And docking would be a major POA.
|
| If we are talking km diameter structures holding station
| in system, making it rotate isn't going to be a drama.
| DemocracyFTW wrote:
| there's a calculator for that: http://www.artificial-
| gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/SpinCalc.htm#c...
|
| From a radius of ~300m onward you'll see green lights (=
| good for people) for all considered parameters. RPM drops
| from 1.7 to 0.5 for a radius of 3000m.
| idlewords wrote:
| 4 rpm is about as fast as you can spin to avoid vertigo
| when turning your head. So for 1g that requires a
| diameter of 56 meters (about the size of the leaning
| tower of Pisa), which is big.
|
| Other challenges include how to spin it up (and down)
| safely, how to dock with non-spinning things, how to deal
| with changes in mass distribution, and how to put
| thrusters on it for use when it's spinning. None of these
| is impossible, but together they create a serious
| engineering problem, and the size of the whole thing is
| ultimately the dealbreaker.
| jandrese wrote:
| The ISS is 109m end to end so a 56 meter diameter isn't
| an impossible dream. I've toyed around with a design that
| uses basically a shell around Starship that would be
| bolted together in orbit to form the station. I was
| aiming for 2 RPM however.
|
| Docking would be via a central hub. Ships would have to
| match rotation to dock, but it shouldn't be too hard. My
| conclusion is that if the money and/or political will
| were there we could start doing this today, but the
| project would be hugely expensive (even with SpaceX
| cutting launch costs to a fraction of what they were only
| a few short years ago) and once you have it built it will
| be looking for a purpose. It would be cool for people to
| basically commute up to the central part (via elevator)
| to do zero-g research stuff, then commute back to the
| ring to live and avoid the various health problems with
| long term zero-g living like bone density loss.
|
| You can even build a simple starter station that has only
| two segments on opposite sides of the central hub. This
| is less cool since you don't get the jogging path around
| the station. If stability is an issue you could also
| include a computer controlled mobile counterweight on the
| ends. I also had the concept of building it as a double
| hull with a layer of water between the inner and outer to
| reduce radiation flux and absorb micrometeorite impacts.
|
| But in the end you are still talking about a hugely
| expensive project that solves problems that aren't all
| that bad yet. About the only way I could see this being
| built is if Elon decides to go all in on space and
| liquidates his fortune to build it. The instant some
| annoying bean counters ask the question "is this the best
| way to spend this money" the project is dead.
| nradov wrote:
| It was attempted in 1966, albeit in a very limited way.
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/watch-
| th...
| kijin wrote:
| That sounds like what they did with the modules of the
| International Space Station, only bigger. :)
| Bobylonian wrote:
| Exactly, only op does not account, that some Russian[insert
| the one that at that point is at lowest development
| capability] module on joining would create space colony
| quakes and add other hazards... maybe even huge hole in the
| structure.
| hinkley wrote:
| Connecting pressure vessels together is a challenge. Each
| vessel and each joint is a failure opportunity, and having to
| go through bulkhead doors all the time doesn't scale well
| beyond mission crews. Plus you have to get the location of
| those doors right during initial planning.
|
| For modularity it might make more sense to use nesting. A
| building inside a building has no seams. Doors only need
| footpaths between them, not hard structures. The inner building
| can be used for shelter in case of an accident, and can be run
| at higher pressures than it could in hard vacuum.
|
| In the tinker toy model you would tend to have to keep
| repurposing buildings because while the size may be
| appropriate, the older structures may get pushed farther and
| farther from the center of the action, rather than staying in
| the center of the action.
| AlanSE wrote:
| I'm not getting the nesting argument here. At least in the
| early days, a window to space will be a key selling feature.
| That means that the surfaces will have greater value, like
| with skyscrapers, but worse. Worse because pressurization
| demands that surfaces bulge out to contain the atmosphere. So
| while a large sphere might be the best engineering solution,
| funny shapes held together by weird superstructures might be
| the most profitable option.
|
| When we get into the more utilitarian phase of space
| development, then I think you would want something like
| shipyards where there really is a big micrometeorite shield
| (yes, as a sphere) with the inside filled with scaffolding.
| Robots scoot around do work with old and new hardware.
|
| If you think about nesting ROTATING structure inside of other
| pressure-envelope structures, then you're getting into some
| really crazy stuff. Are there designs that might make sense?
| Maybe, I don't know, I guess I wrote a blog about it
|
| https://gravitationalballoon.blogspot.com
| hinkley wrote:
| You could build rings around rings. A couple of the designs
| on that page have multiple 'floors' in the same ring. I
| suppose those could be built incrementally in either
| direction (stacking new rings, or adding another floor to
| an existing one).
|
| I think my train of thought makes a bit more sense for moon
| and asteroid bases rather than free-floating orbital
| structures. And asteroid bases - on the right asteroids -
| are probably going to house most of the people.
|
| The ISS design definitely doesn't scale up. Everything off
| axis is a lever arm and the bigger you make it the more the
| whole thing tries to twist itself apart.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think you're doing a lot of math there to determine
| pressure and the fact is that pressure in a space station
| is going to be dictated entirely by biology - partial
| pressure of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide for mammal
| metabolism first, and comfort and plant metabolism later
| on. By the time logistics of managing or building out a
| real habitat, you're in a +-5psi range. Anything outside of
| that died on the design room floor.
|
| Windows are at a huge premium on cruise ships. It'll be
| much worse on space ships. But it's possible that inside
| windows will eventually look out onto something more
| interesting than the black void of space, so an inside
| window may be preferable. One of the reasons we look out
| the window in a car or on a boat is to establish the
| horizon and fight motion sickness. If you look 'outside' of
| a rotating space station - especially a rotating space
| station orbiting a planet or moon - you'll head rapidly in
| the exact opposite direction.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Calculator for creating artificial gravity via centripetal
| acceleration: https://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/
|
| Basically, we would need to make something hundreds of meters
| in diameter to have any hope of a comfortable living situation.
| This is a huge amount of mass to get into space, which is
| notoriously expensive, but getting cheaper every year. Maybe
| one day we'll hit an inflection point where this is reasonable.
| mabbo wrote:
| Not necessarily. Andy Weir's 'Hail Mary Project' describes a
| way you can get the best of both worlds: don't make a full
| ring, but spin two objects separated by cables.
|
| Split the initial station into two stations with a large
| number of cables connecting them securely. Now on your
| calculator, put in a 70m radius and a gravity of only 0.3g.
| All green dots.
|
| But how do you get between the halves?" you ask? I think
| there's a simple answer to that: have cables complete the
| circle. A small car riding those cables can carry you around
| the radius. Then over time, you add more cells until the
| circle is complete!
| ncmncm wrote:
| If you give one half of the station twice the mass of the
| other, you can test out living in lunar gravity and Mars
| gravity at the same time. Maybe only one of those will turn
| out to be enough to stop bone loss. Maybe neither one. It
| would be better to know that before building a base.
|
| The zipline would be trickier to make work, then. Probably
| you have a gadget that walks up the tether, and then you
| flip around and it walks down to the other end.
| monocasa wrote:
| To be fair, the ISS is already about 100m long, albeit not
| pressurized sections.
| zabzonk wrote:
| The very first program I ever wrote (apart from hello world)
| was one to do this on a Research Machines 380Z, in BASIC,
| back in about 1979.
| jandrese wrote:
| Put in 3RPM and it spits out a 100m radius. This is big for
| sure, but in the same order of magnitude of the ISS. If you
| are willing to live with only 0.5g instead of 1g you can slow
| it down to 2RPM at that size and be safely within human
| comfort limits.
|
| That would give you a circumference of around 628m. That
| sounds like a lot, but if you could build it in 80m segments
| by bolting each segment to the outside of SpaceX Starship
| (which is 120m tall) that would take 8 launches to get the
| ring in orbit. Plus some more launches for the hub and spokes
| and panels and everything else of course. Still, 15-20
| launches is not outside of the realm of the feasible. If
| there were the political will (or personal fortune) to build
| this it could be done.
| davidw wrote:
| Strong Towns...but for space! I like it!
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Space sprawl?
|
| Not in my cosmic neighborhood.
| majjam wrote:
| You might like this article if you haven't already read it. The
| author discusses using starship segments to create habitat
| rings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305544
| cgriswald wrote:
| The rings should be modular to ease building and to aid in
| compartmentalization. However, adding to existing rings could
| be difficult in terms of planning or engineering, since you'll
| be changing the balance of the entire system and you'll
| probably want the module to be in a particular position.
|
| If you instead make the rings "super-modules", you can connect
| as many as you like along a central axis of rotation. As long
| as the individual rings are balanced you're good to go. If they
| spin freely relative to each other, you could even build a
| super-modular ring in place and only spin it up after it is
| complete.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you plan to add more rings you're going to run into the
| Dzhanibekov effect
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_racket_theorem, which
| was still a Soviet state secret at the time space habs were
| being imagined, and might have still been a secret when they
| filmed 2010. That station would have been wobbling like
| crazy.
|
| I'm pretty sure that phenomenon even kills the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder, especially
| once you introduce liquids and soil to the interior. It's
| likely that we have to spin the cigar along the long axis to
| keep from killing everyone, which would greatly reduce the
| usable surface area and screw up the artificial lighting
| situation.
| GeorgeOu wrote:
| You don't even need to complete the ring so that you can start
| with a lot bigger radius. The larger the radius the less the
| weird gyroscopic effects when people turn their heads in
| certain directions and the closer it replicates earth's
| gravity. Then you can expand the ring by increasing the arc
| coverage.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Right, start with three cans, two of them swinging at ends of
| a cable, one at the hub with a docking port. Add onto that,
| two cans at a time, lowered from the hub; link them up to
| existing cans. When the ring is full, tada! Then, extend the
| center can out a ways, on the axis, and start over, nestling
| new cans honeycomb-wise. Or maybe give the next ring a bigger
| radius; each existing can gets a pair of basement cans.
|
| Or, just extend everybody's cable a notch so there is room to
| shoehorn in the next pair of cans. As you add cans, the
| radius grows.
|
| "Cans" is the only practical way to think of building a
| rotating station. Of course, the cans are really Starships,
| hanging by the nose. Passageways between cans are fabric
| tunnels. Each can has a mass on a column that is
| automatically raised and lowered as people and things move
| around, to maintain rotational stability, and keep the hub
| centered.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So optimistic.
|
| I miss those days.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| As a kid of the 70s I know all that stuff promised to me.
|
| All I got was confusing USB cabling and Zoom that has problems
| detecting my camera and sound.
| ttGpN5Nde3pK wrote:
| This must be where the idea for Halo came from.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld
| cblconfederate wrote:
| So boring. So, like the earth except a lot more expensive and
| trapped in a tube. Meanwhile, with a little bit of genetic
| engineering we could turn ourselves to self-propelled, solar-
| powered, AI-augmented interstellar rockets.
| lost-found wrote:
| Boring is not the takeaway I got from this.
| melling wrote:
| The life of Dr Gerard O'Neill is worth a read:
|
| http://ssi.org/the-life-of-gerard-k-oneill/
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Jeff Bezos was an O'Neill protege. I was so excited when he
| started Blue Origin and when he started funding it at $1B per
| year.
|
| But instead of O'Neill cylinders he seems to be spending his
| money mostly on lawyers.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| The High Frontier: The Untold Story of Gerard K. O'Neill
| _uncovers the legacy of Princeton physicist and space
| visionary, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, who wrote the 1977 book,_ The
| High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. _The book and O'Neill's
| subsequent activism sparked a grassroots movement to build
| Earth-like habitats in space in order to solve Earth's greatest
| crises; a vision that is still alive today. Through old stories
| of "Gerry" as many called him, and the social impact he made on
| the world, this documentary pays tribute to the unsung hero of
| today's space race, while hoping to inspire all ages and walks
| of life to reignite our planet's space venturing spirit._
|
| https://thehighfrontiermovie.com/
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I also originally saw these images in another
| 1977 book I checked out from the library as a kid, _Colonies
| in Space: A Comprehensive and Factual Account of the
| Prospects for Human Colonization of Space_ , by T. A.
| Heppenheimer. Here's a link to a 2017 reprint edition:
| https://www.amazon.com/Colonies-Space-Comprehensive-
| Prospect...
|
| Pricing on Amazon for new copies seems to be a little fucked,
| but there are several used copies available for reasonable
| prices.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Pretty sure this is the mothership for all that. (huge PDF)
|
| NASA SP-413
|
| _Space Settlements: A Design Study_
|
| Edited by Richard D. Johnson, NASA Ames Research Center,
| and Charles Holbrow, Colgate University
|
| NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office, 1977
|
| http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/martelaro2/doc
| s...
| dekhn wrote:
| yeah, I think that's where I remember it from (I distinctly
| recall the cover).
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Don't forget to support these rapacious eugenicists by wasting
| your hard earned cash on doge coin the silly meme lol facebook is
| fun.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Just looking at the designs - almost all have a rounded base -
| pretty sure that would cause a weird 'gravity' direction anywhere
| except the centre-line of the ring.
|
| (Sorry I've been readying The Expanse series too much and it's
| making me very pedantic about spin gravity)
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yeah? How so? Weird in what way?
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| If the floor is curved, then the direction of gravity would
| not be perpendicular to the floor (except at the exact apex
| of the curve), so you'd have a weird sensation of standing on
| a slope all the time.
|
| Instead, you'd probably want either a non-curved structure,
| or a flat false floor inside of it that is perpendicular to
| the direction of gravity. That would probably work ok though,
| since it would give you an easy place to run e.g. cabling,
| air handling, fluids, etc.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| You need the edges to be curved for structural reasons.
| It's also a giant pressure vessel and pressure vessels
| don't take right angles very efficiently. Also, gentle
| hills are fine.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >so you'd have a weird sensation of standing on a slope all
| the time.
|
| I mean, lots of people live on slopes here on Earth. It's
| actually a pretty desirable terrain, as long as you're not
| farming it. You can see in many of the toroidal stations
| that the hillsides are terraced and treated like slopes.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| Sure, but as you mentioned, they're usually terraced, and
| you wouldn't e.g. build a house on a slope without
| leveling the site first, so your floors are perpendicular
| to gravity.
| kijin wrote:
| The edges of the habitable area should be treated as if they
| were hills getting gradually steeper.
|
| The direction of gravity won't be perpendicular to the
| curvature of the hull, but who says you need to stick to the
| hull? Even on Earth, people don't stand diagonally on
| hillsides. We build stairs, towers, and terraced gardens, with
| man-made floors perpendicular to the direction of gravity.
|
| Some of the illustrations are more realistic than others in
| this respect.
| dekhn wrote:
| I really loved these when I was a kid and it was a major reason I
| was so enamoured with human space travel. Nowadays I look at this
| and think "who'd have the cash to build and operate that?"
| ciroduran wrote:
| Once I read the headline I thought of the fantastic books by
| Usborne (or Plesa in the Spanish speaking world), Future
| Cities[^1] and the Book of the Future [^2]. These illustrations
| are super inspirational.
|
| [^1] https://2warpstoneptune.com/2014/03/04/usborne-publishing-
| th...
|
| [^2] https://www.murrayewing.co.uk/mewsings/2011/04/17/the-
| usborn...
| vhodges wrote:
| If you like the art, you might enjoy https://spacehabs.com/ too.
| bni wrote:
| I love these pictures, and also the description of something
| similar in Neuromancer.
|
| Someone should do an open world game that took place in one of
| these.
| davidw wrote:
| Big nostalgia. I was born in the mid 70ies, and remember having
| books my parents got me with these sorts of techno-utopian
| illustrations. It all seemed so cool, and maybe we were headed
| that way.
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