A Better Space Station?

[RPWalther]

1) Don't forget that one of the main purposes of a space station is doing research in weightlessness.
2) Moving around in such a station (from center to border or turning one's head while walking or climbing) or changing angular speed several times a day would probably cause endless space sickness!

But: For a spaceship to Mars consisting of two identical ships connected by a 200m long truss (with an elevator), 2 rotations per minute would generate Mars gravity (about g/2) and might very well help astronauts to stay healthy during their 2 year voyage! You could even do surgery! Furthermore you have a backup ship if one part is damaged.

RPWalther

[MrcACrl]

Coriolis effect- still unknown at this point. How will astronauts react? Why spend $50 Billion just to find it doesn't work? We can investigate this later.

I think this can be fixed by allowing transfer from the central to the outer ring o be slow. There are some issues we probably can't overcome, so some people will work in the micro-g section then transfer to the higher-g section as necessary (and vice versa).

Balance - If the mass in any place changes, by just a little, the whole station can begin to violently wobble. Just having astronauts walk around the station would not be tolerable without some sort of active balance system (read high maintenance, prone to failure, dangerous). Loading and unloading people and supplies would be very difficult.

This is just a matter of station keeping, isn't it? Boeing did it way back in the day with its spin stabilized satellite buses (and they kept the dish staionary in the centre while the rest of the sat spun away). Otherwise sats are actively stabilised so that they can point at specific places on the planet or stars light years away. One solution could be the use of balat, moving from one part to the other to balance things out.

Vibration - most of the arguments for building the station was as a research center, but the experiments require microgravity and extreme stability. A rotating station would not provide either. There would have to be a portion of the station that was not rotating, that would remain fixed in its orientation requiring motors (read high maintenance again).

Again look to the Boeing spin stabilized buses. They did it somehow and I've never heard ot a situation where the system locked up. I think some of their GOES weather SATS were/are spin stabilized.

Solar power - solar panels require a fixed platform facing the sun at all times. In order to get power, you need to mount a counter-rotating strut permanently fixed to the hub of the station.

Or you can cover the whole external structure with solar cells, like Boeing did.

Safety - all of the other issues aside, a rotating ring or wheel is inherently unsafe since the only point of egress is through the hub which also happens to be the only place to mount experiments, for the solar power panel struts, and a docking ring.
Docking - A hard dock in which two objects are physically connected so people can transfer easily between the two in a shirtsleeves environment is preferable to a soft dock

Docking would be difficult, I have to say. So the 'stationary'/counter rotating central bit is the best place for approach. That said, however, if the radius is big enough, it might not be impossible for an approaching craft to match the positive rotational speed of an outer dock, esp. if flexibility is built into it.

[MrcACrl]

Continued:

Weight - is another issue. A rotating structure would require much more strength in structural members which complicates design and launch requirements. Flexibility - as mass shifts in a wheel, the wheel gets out of shape requiring a lot of flexibility in joints between units and components.

Not impossible to engineer. Low statistical reliability but still possible. Just really expensive.

Attitude adjustment - how could the station's orbit be modified. Again, placing rockets and propellant around the central hub doesn't sound like a great idea to me. They would also need to be refueled. A visiting rocket would have to push ecxactly along the axis... Listen, this is getting too complicated.

What's so hard about just coming close enough and having spacewalkers or smaller, more maneuverable vehicles or Canadarms do the rest regarding attachement of umbilicals?

Finally, if the rotating docking hub seizes up, goodbye. No hard docking, maybe not even soft docking. If a ship is hard docked at the time, the forces between a rotating station and a stationary space shuttle could rip both apart.

Again, Boeing did it without probs and it's one of the first satellite buses they designed. The first thing that came to their minds... Not that difficult.

For a real emergency, where would escape vehicles be? You don't have time to suit up and space walk over to a co-orbiting vehicle. Escape "pods" in sections of the ring would be terminal. The first to leave would destroy the entire station, throwing the remainder off balance, ripping it apart.

Why??? You have an an airlock with the station on one side of the door and the escape pod on the other. Two stage escape process. Enter airlock, airlock closes behind you, enter pod, gone.

Clearly there are lots of issues to be worked out.

Clearly, but there are solutions though. Modularit might make it a lot cheaper than we think. Just design and develop 3 things essentially, central hub, trusses, and pods at the end of the truss. Can even put a flexible joining mechanism between the outter ring pods to make transfer from one to the other a breeze.

[bushwhacker]

one practical problem. if the center hub is not rotating, how would you dock there and transfer either to the spokes or outer ring?

[Exopaleon]

I think it's a waste of time and money, pouring big $$ into something that's just doing science. Take the money and start building shelters on the moon, so we can get going on some mining of the metals and H3. the odds of getting taken out in one of the shelters, or on the moon itself is extremly low, where as living in the space station, it's only a matter of time before it gets taken out by space junk. Setting up science stations on the moon would be the most logical next step. The space station is like a boat you sink money into, and never get your dollars worth. You can send a lot of shelters and mining equipment to the moon for the same dollars, and the reward would be a lot greater!

[habbuilder]

The BEST space station right now would be one ON the MOON or one able to get materials from the moon quickly and efficiently (using a mass driver?) so as to be able to process the materials and make more modules for the space station or more space stations (emphasis on the plural) and more space craft. I do not understand why we do not have a REAL shuttle capable of leaving the ISS and changing course to go to another orbiting object (say the hubble or a satellite in geosynchronous orbit) for repairs or modifications. Heck, we should even be able to recover dangerous space debris (garbage) and render it non-dangerous as well as recycle the materials. Its seems we could make the space program PAY for itself if we had these abilities. We need to quit screwing around with always taking things to space (expensive) and build it in space (eventually self-perpetuating). Why should this take so long? I thought the costliest part of space travel was the surface to LEO part??? Let's go NASA and Bigelow--go get those moon resources (As is stated in a recent news item the Japanese have discovered Uranium on the moon--just another reason to get there quickly and use the resources available!)

[MeteorWayne]

It's obvious you are young

After watching funding for space exploration for half a century the two things you can be assured of are:

Funding cannot be relied upon because it changes every year,

and

Funding will never be at a high enough level that I'd like my tax dollars to go for

Wayne

[Jazman1985]

Habbuilder, a space transport capable of repairing or modifying existing satellites or removing space garbage would be fantastic. Unfortunately the energy required to change the orbit of anything capable of collecting garbage would make this approach unrealistic. It would require vast amounts of fuel. Hence why the shuttle could not dock to the I.S.S. during it's hubble mission. Other than them being at different altitudes, their orbits are very different. Altitude can be made up easily, chance in velocity/direction, not so easily.

Any space station in orbit might serve as a first stop before heading to the moon or a last stop before reentering Earths atmosphere. Any new Space Station will not be there for "just" science, it will serve many functions. Most futuristic vehicles suited to enter LEO from Earth will most likely not be suited to space travel. A space station will make a good spot to switch rides. Even if a vehicle were to continue from Earth to the Moon, refueling with moon mined resources would be far cheaper than taking it all from Earth with you.

[Basketcase]

I personally think this is an awsome idea. Why dont we make LARGE rockets to be eccentually used as the segments. Make the rockets as complete as can be on the inside for all your lliveing quarters and such. Send them up unmaned at first or something if that is even possiable. To save on a return trip for the passengers cause if you use the rockets as segments what are they going to ride back into the atomoshere on. Make these rockets so the ends can connect to each other one way or another. I have no idea what the largest size rocket diameter or length would be, but if we can lanch a shuttle into space with sections for the ISS inside it then we should be able to make a rocket with as much or as little extras inside for it to get off the ground. Maybe have them Segmented or something so the propulsion system can breakaway when it reaches orbit, or even some how re-use that. I believe in re-useing as much as humanly possiable when it comes to large and costly endevours. Heck send up smaller rockets for the spokes. Put the stuff in a geo orbit and when you start asymbling it start reeling them in one by one. Turn it into a huge errector set. I think we can do a better job on building the pieces on the ground myself. But if you do that there is tons of weight invalved. So a large vehicle will be needed. This way it is the vehicle. No need for return trips or recovery and damn near rebuilding it lilke the current shuttles for the next trip. Fire one off and yell NEXT! But im no engineer. And what i propose may very well be impossiable. But that is what i think of when i hear lets build a better space station.

[pmn1]

The original design of the Space shuttle had larger external tanks that were going to be used as building blocks for a large wheel-like Station. Great idea making use of every part that you used all that energy to get to orbit. For some stupid reason (they quote monetary and political) they killed the plan and went with a smaller tank. Could you imagine the size of a station we would have today if we had over 125 external fuel tank sized building blocks in orbit? And now with the shuttle program winding down I'd say we missed a golden opportunity.

What was the extra size and weight involved in this proposal?

[ThereIWas2]

The original design of the Space shuttle had larger external tanks that were going to be used as building blocks for a large wheel-like Station.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy used exactly this technique to build the vehicle that took the first 100 settlers to Mars.

[tampaDreamer]

If they could make a centerfuge just for sleeping, perhaps that could solve the problem? That'd be 6-8 hours of gravity, and you'd only be worried about the sea-sickness aspect of it, not the coordination for precision tasks part. Furthermore I'm thinking they could test the sea-sickness bit here on earth.

[dreada5]

Engineering complexity.

I don't think such a space station is impossible, but neither do I think it's as easy as we imagine. ISS has taught us much, and as simple as ISS seems compared to a spinning station design - look how much trouble, in an operational sense, ISS gives NASA in terms of maintenance! I don't think we're ready, technically, yet.

As we turn over LEO to the private sector, I would hope commercial space industry can pursue something like this in decades to come. While NASA and other govt agencies focus on getting us onto the lunar or martian surface.

[rod]

hi guys i'm like some of you and don't have a lot of science data but i like the idea of an inflatible central 0-g facility with th spin and docking structure shipped up and then the inflatible section put on over or assembled latter . the spokes and framework could be made in orbit with beam machines a fancy version of what the seamless siding people use to make ribbed siding for homes, just make a structural beam instead. also has anyone thought of a spray on system ie. epoxy system to provide a sealed and reinforced structure -might work better on a moon base know that a lot of the process is liquid and may be h2o based Just a thought tho. i think segments for the rim could be like the esa's new cargo ships , why deorbit them stick the trash in a reinforced bag and let it burn up not a muti million dollar potential habitat.
love reading what you guys have to say keeps me on my toes reaching for the stars
rod