This seems a tad ambitious. But it would be pretty cool.
14 thoughts on “A Next-Gen “Space Station””
Those renderings indicate some of the designers have been spending significant time playing Elite Dangerous.
At about 1/4 the Stanford Torus diameter, one of the rings might have 1/16 the 10 million ton mass of the Stanford Torus. Ignoring everything except the two tori, that’s about 1.25 million tons to lift or delivery from somewhere. At Falcon Heavy prices at $1.41 million/tonne, not counting leaving some in orbit when they’re at the end of their useful life to disassemble for building materials, that’s about 20,000 Falcon Heavy deliveries ($18B) or 12,500 Starship/Superheavy deliveries. Assuming they can get a bulk discount 90% off the Falcon Heavy per kg price for Starship/Superheavy, that’s $141,000 per tonne or about $1.8 billion for delivery assuming no lunar infrastructure or asteroid transfers or anything. Now if we add in engineering, manufacturing, assembly and pork, it probably gets more expensive.
“one of the rings might have 1/16 the 10 million ton mass of the Stanford Torus”
Yeah, but one interesting thing about that 10 million ton mass: 9/10 of that is radiation shielding.
The Strout/Globus paper recommends Low Equatorial Earth Orbit for its relatively benign radiation environment. You might even be able to get away with no shielding at all there.
One catch–at that altitude, with that surface area, drag is going to be a constant threat. What’s fuel consumption going to be for reboosts each year?
I just thought of something.
Would there be any advantage to constructing a fusion torus in orbit? And beaming the power to Earth (or the Moon) with microwaves?
If a workable fusion reactor has to be enormous, could there be some space-sourced supply of construction materials, such as one of those M-type asteroids we keep hearing about. Also, in space, there may be much less need for radiation shielding?
In space, a hard vacuum is also a usable resource. Just asking.
It’s an interesting idea, but not really for Earth application, but as an orbiting power-station for use off Earth. If you are putting outposts on the Moon or Mars, or even further out they could get their power this way and not have a valuable asset like a nuclear fusion reactor go to waste if the outpost has to move or to expand to new ones without the necessary stringing of power lines, etc. It might be easier to either re-task the reactor/power-sat to a new rectenna or easily add another one in orbit as needed. Or if a station is shut down the powersat can be retasked to another outpost with minimal infrastructure replacement. Of course this *assumes* you have already developed fusion generation technology to the point where such powersats are practical. The same tech however, could also be employed using not-so-exotic solar powersats.
Next generation? That’s… ambitious. And it will pay for itself? That’s… optimistic.
That said, I do think it is vital to gather data on long term human health under low gravity conditions. Sooner rather than later.
My preferred method of getting that data on low gravity effects on human health isn’t a LEO rotating space station. It would instead be a small lunar surface base that could accommodate 4 crew for up to six month long stays.
However, if LEO it is, then I like a rotating station concept that could exploit the unique qualities of the SLS. I mean, as long as the expensive beast persists we might as well get something useful out of it, right? Think Skylab, but with the core SLS stage left attached to serve as a deadweight to counterbalance the rotation of the station. I call the idea Skylab III. (Skylab III to avoid confusion with a NASA cislunar station concept called Skylab II)
The combined length of a core SLS stage and cargo payload fairing is enormously long. And normal SLS staging puts that heavy core stage at orbital velocity. It would be relatively trivial to circularize the orbit of the core. The cargo fairing could be used as the basis for creating a single module pressurized space station as massive as the 1970s Skylab space station, but with even more volume. So a single launch of Skylab III could place a complete 300+ foot long rotating space station into LEO.
It would probably be most convenient to rotate Skylab III so that most of the tip volume would have a force close to Mars gravity. It would be mighty fine to get some real health data before committing to a grandiose Mars project with a huge unknown hole in the mission design. What if Mars gravity is as bad for human health as microgravity? That could radically alter the preferred design of a manned Mars mission.
Astronomers are grousing about the Starlink constellation screwing up optical astronomy. I can just imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth about a 984 foot diameter satellite in LEO.
I think some kind of Bigelow Inflate-A-Ring might be a more affordable solution, even if its not for long-term use. A rotating inflatable dumbbell with something like an 80/20 weave for maximum axial strength might pack pretty easily for launch.
Pretty useless in LEO, as what’s it for there, but you’ll want something like this in orbit around Saturn, as a place for the crewfolk to live while they’re exploring a miniature solar system a long ways from home. Of course, once it has decent propulsion, you might as well fly it there (or anywhere) with the crew aboard.
That much tonnage lifted from earth to orbit sounds a bit much. Let’s start with lunar bases.
Develop the industrial base for this and the next thing you’ll build will be named Luna City.
How this makes money is anyone’s guess. And why bother with an orbiting structure? SpaceX can put the hotel in orbit and bring it back down with no extra parts. An all inclusive ticket which includes both in-air and out-air travel.
Sounds good, but we are captive to one organization which controls all access to space from the western hemisphere; the US government. Our regulating body, NASA, has given us a gradual reduction in capability for 50 years, with little hope of ever leaving the limits of air-breathing engines again. While we pinned our hopes and dreams of becoming a space-inhabiting nation on our leaders, they turned NASA’s early successes into just another federal jobs program which stifled competition, while all the while crowing about their brilliant plans for the future. Spacex is doing great things in short amounts of time. But they are not the only ones in the race. If we don’t have competition in orbit, we risk becoming captive to an organization which would become NASA, just off the surface of Earth. Let’s not put all of our eggs in one basket again.
Those renderings indicate some of the designers have been spending significant time playing Elite Dangerous.
At about 1/4 the Stanford Torus diameter, one of the rings might have 1/16 the 10 million ton mass of the Stanford Torus. Ignoring everything except the two tori, that’s about 1.25 million tons to lift or delivery from somewhere. At Falcon Heavy prices at $1.41 million/tonne, not counting leaving some in orbit when they’re at the end of their useful life to disassemble for building materials, that’s about 20,000 Falcon Heavy deliveries ($18B) or 12,500 Starship/Superheavy deliveries. Assuming they can get a bulk discount 90% off the Falcon Heavy per kg price for Starship/Superheavy, that’s $141,000 per tonne or about $1.8 billion for delivery assuming no lunar infrastructure or asteroid transfers or anything. Now if we add in engineering, manufacturing, assembly and pork, it probably gets more expensive.
“one of the rings might have 1/16 the 10 million ton mass of the Stanford Torus”
Yeah, but one interesting thing about that 10 million ton mass: 9/10 of that is radiation shielding.
The Strout/Globus paper recommends Low Equatorial Earth Orbit for its relatively benign radiation environment. You might even be able to get away with no shielding at all there.
One catch–at that altitude, with that surface area, drag is going to be a constant threat. What’s fuel consumption going to be for reboosts each year?
I just thought of something.
Would there be any advantage to constructing a fusion torus in orbit? And beaming the power to Earth (or the Moon) with microwaves?
If a workable fusion reactor has to be enormous, could there be some space-sourced supply of construction materials, such as one of those M-type asteroids we keep hearing about. Also, in space, there may be much less need for radiation shielding?
In space, a hard vacuum is also a usable resource. Just asking.
It’s an interesting idea, but not really for Earth application, but as an orbiting power-station for use off Earth. If you are putting outposts on the Moon or Mars, or even further out they could get their power this way and not have a valuable asset like a nuclear fusion reactor go to waste if the outpost has to move or to expand to new ones without the necessary stringing of power lines, etc. It might be easier to either re-task the reactor/power-sat to a new rectenna or easily add another one in orbit as needed. Or if a station is shut down the powersat can be retasked to another outpost with minimal infrastructure replacement. Of course this *assumes* you have already developed fusion generation technology to the point where such powersats are practical. The same tech however, could also be employed using not-so-exotic solar powersats.
Next generation? That’s… ambitious. And it will pay for itself? That’s… optimistic.
That said, I do think it is vital to gather data on long term human health under low gravity conditions. Sooner rather than later.
My preferred method of getting that data on low gravity effects on human health isn’t a LEO rotating space station. It would instead be a small lunar surface base that could accommodate 4 crew for up to six month long stays.
However, if LEO it is, then I like a rotating station concept that could exploit the unique qualities of the SLS. I mean, as long as the expensive beast persists we might as well get something useful out of it, right? Think Skylab, but with the core SLS stage left attached to serve as a deadweight to counterbalance the rotation of the station. I call the idea Skylab III. (Skylab III to avoid confusion with a NASA cislunar station concept called Skylab II)
The combined length of a core SLS stage and cargo payload fairing is enormously long. And normal SLS staging puts that heavy core stage at orbital velocity. It would be relatively trivial to circularize the orbit of the core. The cargo fairing could be used as the basis for creating a single module pressurized space station as massive as the 1970s Skylab space station, but with even more volume. So a single launch of Skylab III could place a complete 300+ foot long rotating space station into LEO.
It would probably be most convenient to rotate Skylab III so that most of the tip volume would have a force close to Mars gravity. It would be mighty fine to get some real health data before committing to a grandiose Mars project with a huge unknown hole in the mission design. What if Mars gravity is as bad for human health as microgravity? That could radically alter the preferred design of a manned Mars mission.
Astronomers are grousing about the Starlink constellation screwing up optical astronomy. I can just imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth about a 984 foot diameter satellite in LEO.
I think some kind of Bigelow Inflate-A-Ring might be a more affordable solution, even if its not for long-term use. A rotating inflatable dumbbell with something like an 80/20 weave for maximum axial strength might pack pretty easily for launch.
Pretty useless in LEO, as what’s it for there, but you’ll want something like this in orbit around Saturn, as a place for the crewfolk to live while they’re exploring a miniature solar system a long ways from home. Of course, once it has decent propulsion, you might as well fly it there (or anywhere) with the crew aboard.
That much tonnage lifted from earth to orbit sounds a bit much. Let’s start with lunar bases.
Develop the industrial base for this and the next thing you’ll build will be named Luna City.
How this makes money is anyone’s guess. And why bother with an orbiting structure? SpaceX can put the hotel in orbit and bring it back down with no extra parts. An all inclusive ticket which includes both in-air and out-air travel.
Sounds good, but we are captive to one organization which controls all access to space from the western hemisphere; the US government. Our regulating body, NASA, has given us a gradual reduction in capability for 50 years, with little hope of ever leaving the limits of air-breathing engines again. While we pinned our hopes and dreams of becoming a space-inhabiting nation on our leaders, they turned NASA’s early successes into just another federal jobs program which stifled competition, while all the while crowing about their brilliant plans for the future. Spacex is doing great things in short amounts of time. But they are not the only ones in the race. If we don’t have competition in orbit, we risk becoming captive to an organization which would become NASA, just off the surface of Earth. Let’s not put all of our eggs in one basket again.