Space stations and habitats in fiction

The concepts of space stations and habitats are common in modern culture. While space stations have become reality, there are as yet no true space habitats. Writers, filmmakers, and other artists have produced vivid renditions of the idea of a space station or habitat, and these iterations can be categorized by some of the basic scientific concepts from which they are derived.

Space stations

Space stations in science fiction can employ both existing and speculative technologies. One of the earliest images was the rotating wheel space station (such as the Stanford torus), the inertia and centripetal force of which would theoretically simulate the effects of gravity. Stations using artificial gravity are still purely speculative.

Space stations allow characters a relatively constrained setting, serving either as plot site or as safe refuge to which one can retreat. Since they are literary devices, there is no scientific imperative for their evolution to have followed the logical succession of scientific progress as it exists in reality; they may contain any artifact or device demanded by the plot, and can be provided by design or mere happenstance.

Space stations are often used as headquarters for organizations, which are thus linked to, but independent of, their place of formation, as research facilities in which experiments too dangerous for planetary settings can be carried out, and as the relics of lost civilizations, left behind when other things are removed.

Space stations rotating for pseudogravity

Space stations using artificial gravity

Other space stations

Habitats

Spherical habitats

Dyson spheres

Bernal spheres

The Bernal sphere is a rotating sphere housing tens of thousands of people.

Toroidal or annular habitats

Illustration of a ring, with no apparent hub

Tori

A rotating torus sometimes quite large in diameter makes possible extensive artificial worlds.

Bishop rings

The Bishop ring design is a ring 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) in radius and 500 kilometres (310 mi) thick, capable of supporting populations into the tens of billions. It requires mastery of carbon nanotubes.[1]

Other rings

Cylindrical habitats

NASA artist Rick Guidice's depiction of a pair of O'Neill cylinders

O'Neill cylinders

O'Neill's Island Three design, commonly called an O'Neill cylinder, consists of a pair of counter-rotating cylinders, each 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) in radius and 32 kilometres (20 mi) long, housing a population of up to 10 million.

McKendree cylinders

The McKendree cylinder design is a scaled-up O'Neill cylinder with a radius of 460 kilometres (290 mi) and a length of 4,600 kilometres (2,900 mi), capable of supporting populations in excess of 100 billion. This design requires mastery of carbon nanotubes.[3]

Other cylinders

References

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