Space Station V
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Space Station V is a fictional space station seen in a movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is large, international, wheel-shaped space station used as a transfer point from low Earth orbit to the moon and other planets. It also functions as an orbital hotel. Rotation of the station provides artificial gravity for people aboard the station. The station contains two docking bays for docking spacecrafts, placed on its rotational axis at the opposite sides of the construction. By the time of events depicted in the film it is being still under construction; a second wheel section is being added.
[edit] Scientific Basis of the Rotating Wheel Space Station
The rotating wheel depicted in the movie is quite realistic in concept, and both scientists and science fiction writers have thought about this concept since the beginning of the 20th Century. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote about using rotation to create an artificial gravity in space in 1903. Hermann Noordung introduced a spinning wheel station with a 30 meter diameter in his Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums (The Problem of Space Flight). He even suggested it be placed in a geostationary orbit. In the 1950s, Werner Von Braun, writing in Colliers Magazine, updated the idea, in part as a way to stage spacecraft headed for Mars. He envisioned a rotating wheel with a diameter of 76 meters. In 1959, a NASA committee opined that a space station was the next logical step after the Mercury program. [1]
NASA did not attempt to build a rotating wheel space station. First, such a station would be very difficult to construct, given the limited lifting capability available to the United States and other nations, most notably Russia. Assembling such a station and preassurizing it would present formidable obstacles, which, though not beyond NASA's technical capability, would be beyond available budgets. Skylab, Mir and the International Space Station are all examples of space stations that are composed of pressurized modules which can be lifted into space and deployed using existing rocket capability.
Second, NASA has considers the International Space Station as a valuable, relatively large scale zero-gravity (see Weightlessness) laboratory. The agency says launching the station as a zero-gravity environment was a conscious choice.[2]
[edit] References
- http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/space_station.html
- http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2001/news-homehome.asp
| The Space Odyssey series | |
|---|---|
| Films | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) |
| Novels | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) | 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) | 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) |
| Comics | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1976) |
| Short stories | "The Sentinel" (written 1948, first published 1951 as "Sentinel of Eternity") |
| Characters | HAL 9000 | David Bowman | Dr. Chandra | Walter Curnow | Heywood Floyd | Frank Poole |
| Vehicles | Discovery One | EVA Pod | Leonov | Orion III | Aries Ib | Space Station V |
| Locations | Earth | Moon | Clavius Base | Tycho | Jupiter | Europa | Io | Ganymede | Saturn | Iapetus |
| Cast | Keir Dullea | John Lithgow | Gary Lockwood | Helen Mirren | Douglas Rain | Roy Scheider | William Sylvester | Leonard Rossiter | Margaret Tyzack |
| Crew/creators | Arthur C. Clarke | Peter Hyams | Jack Kirby | Stanley Kubrick |
| Interpretations | Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey |
| Music | Alex North's 2001: A Space Odyssey |
