The Gateway Foundation

[NSEP]

http://gatewayspaceport.com/

The Gateway Foundation could maybe build a space hotel in the future. This looks like the BFR could build. This also looks like a place i would LOVE to pay a visit to.

I remain skeptical, since it is far-fetched, but if the Gateway Foundation gets funding by someone big, and the BFR flies routinely, this might be my actual first destination when i got to space.

[Bill Phil]

2001 strikes again.

Also, von Braun's old ideas. Rotating space station, lunar ferries, the whole nine yards. 

[StarStreak2109]

 

[p1t1o]

Things named "foundation" always make me suspect a cult...though admittedly this would be a rather unusual one!

[YNM]

Gateway Foundation...

As long as it's not the foundations for the Imperial Vortex I guess.

[Wjolcz]

On 4/28/2018 at 10:28 PM, Bill Phil said:

2001 strikes again.

Also, von Braun's old ideas. Rotating space station, lunar ferries, the whole nine yards. 

Its components would be 3D printed though. And there are only so many ways you can build a rotating space station.

I like the idea. It depends on cheap space transport though. If BFR is successful it will be very likely to be built. All they would have to do is to set up the welding/3D printing factory and then just transport cheap components there.

[Scotius]

Or drag a NEO to a nearby orbit and start a side business mining space rocks

[kerbiloid]

Those jointed tentacles on the second video look strangely familiar...

Spoiler

We can await for the further Gatewat Foundation proposals.

Spoiler

***
Video 1.
03:18  A legless android...
03:26. .. and his legs they cut off to prevent his escape or mutiny.

05:00 A little mismatch between the shuttle and the station rotation axes, and they will reproduce a Mir-Progress rendez-vous scaled up for a hundred times.

05:20 How are the passengers walking through the glass corridor, when the docking port is exactly next to the rotation axis, so there is nearly zero-G?
But wait. This corridor is perpendicular to the floor, so it's placed radially. They should not walk, but fall in that direction through it to 1 g zone with faces down.

Of course, where are energy sources and radiators and other dull stuff, nobody cares.
No solar panels, no word about nuclear reactors. (Would they be placed in 20 meters from the tourists?)

How should they evacuate the humans from an uncontrolled station when docking arms are out of order?

***
Video 2.
02:16 Why are the android and the girl shaking with the left arm while the carriage is passing by? A nervous tic?
And how many pairs of knees does the girl have if this android is designed to repeat her motions?

Edited July 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Bill Phil]

@kerbiloid

As long as all the First Ones leave afterwards, I'm fine with that.

[K^2]

On 4/28/2018 at 1:28 PM, Bill Phil said:

Also, von Braun's old ideas. Rotating space station, lunar ferries, the whole nine yards. 

It's not like there are any options besides rotation. Starting with a massive wheel sounds a bit overambitious, though. For comfortable stay, you need a ring half a kilometer across. You can shrink that a bit by going to lower gravity and slightly higher rotation speed, which can cause problems for some visitors, but there's only so far you can push it before people start feeling sick.

On the other hand, 500m is not a problem if you simply have a tether with a counterweight. In fact, this might be great for a nuclear-powered design, where reactor is more than a quarter mile away from habitat. We really should be working on something like that as an intermediate stage between stations we have now and such giant structures as rings.

[Bill Phil]

18 minutes ago, K^2 said:

It's not like there are any options besides rotation. Starting with a massive wheel sounds a bit overambitious, though. For comfortable stay, you need a ring half a kilometer across. You can shrink that a bit by going to lower gravity and slightly higher rotation speed, which can cause problems for some visitors, but there's only so far you can push it before people start feeling sick.

On the other hand, 500m is not a problem if you simply have a tether with a counterweight. In fact, this might be great for a nuclear-powered design, where reactor is more than a quarter mile away from habitat. We really should be working on something like that as an intermediate stage between stations we have now and such giant structures as rings.

I was referring to the infrastructure they propose. Seems very Von Braun to me. 

There's not much evidence backing up the need for that size, even at 1g. It's just commonly accepted. Coriolis effects would be weirder on smaller structures... We'd need to study it more in depth, to find out the comfort issues.

I do think that a pair of bolas would be a good intermediate system. Only real problem would be getting people to the rotating modules in a comfortable way. 

[StarStreak2109]

I think these plans are certainly ambitious. Here are some thoughts of mine:

• We have built big infrastructure projects on earth that are positively ginormous. Think the Eiffel tower, deep-see oil rigs, the first sky-scrapers, the Gotthard tunnel. Doing so in space is certainly more challenging, but in my humble opinion feasible, once the right tools have been built and tested.
• The big issue is transport and logistics. Once the materials are in LEO, it comes down to construction. Transport requires a cheap means, which currently does not exist. BFR and Skylon seem to be logical candidates, but they are on the drawing board currently.
• Funding is IMHO the biggest issue. Would this lottery idea work? No idea, honestly. But even then I believe, that there has to be some kind of industry/political/public partnership, since money alone won't get this thing off the ground.

If this works, it will most certainly be a major multiplier for space tourism, space-based industry and further space exploration. Imagine have the industrial base to mine resources from moons/asteroids, refine them somewhere and then use something like this station to on-orbit build ships for e.g. Mars exploration.

Certainly this is all a vision right now, but I think one worth following.

[kerbiloid]

Btw, Rotating wheels were described decades before Von Braun.

3 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

a pair of bolas would be a good intermediate system

Until a lesser CoM offset turns it into a spiral, and then into a ripped string with crew imprinted into walls of two modules flying away.

P.S.
The most funny part of a gravity wheel: you hardly can test it scaled down.

Edited July 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[K^2]

6 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

There's not much evidence backing up the need for that size, even at 1g. It's just commonly accepted. Coriolis effects would be weirder on smaller structures... We'd need to study it more in depth, to find out the comfort issues.

We do need more study, of course. But the few experiments that have been done seem to indicate 2 RPM (give or take) as a rough threshold for people developing discomfort. What we don't know is whether it's something that gets worse over time or you get used to it.

Either way, though, we have to start somewhere, and a module-counterweight system will always be easier to build than a balanced ring for any given radius. So while end goal might indeed be rings, or even long cylinders eventually, that's not where we should be starting. Whether it's a proof of concept module for ISS or a totally new station, building out a full ring makes very little sense.

6 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

I do think that a pair of bolas would be a good intermediate system. Only real problem would be getting people to the rotating modules in a comfortable way.

I don't think hubless is going to work very well, and it's not a significant enough simplification. Adding a hub pretty much solves the problem. Docking port on the hub-facing side of the habitat, a corresponding port on the hub itself, and a small module that can slide along the cables with ports on either side. I'd call it the space elevator, but the name's taken by something stupid. And if the rate of rotation is slow enough, matching it shouldn't be a problem for any ship approaching the hub. So you have a simple way to get in and out.

Edited July 12, 2018 by K^2

[SaturnianBlue]

@K^2 Something like 4 RPM might actually be acceptable—any people might need a few hours or some training to adapt. Therefore, it might be possible to construct a much smaller settlement.

[kerbiloid]

NASA 1960s project. Orbital hotel for 400 persons.

Spoiler

A wise compromise between tethers and toruses.
Could be assembled without hitech. Could be relatively easily balanced.

Edited July 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[HebaruSan]

7 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

• Funding is IMHO the biggest issue. Would this lottery idea work? No idea, honestly. But even then I believe, that there has to be some kind of industry/political/public partnership, since money alone won't get this thing off the ground.

I find the lottery idea almost worse than having no plan at all. They realized they need billions of dollars that they don't have, so they went with the first thing they could think of that's associated with large dollar values. But "get more money" is a goal everyone has; if this strategy had a prayer, everyone would be running a lottery!

[K^2]

6 hours ago, SaturnianBlue said:

@K^2 Something like 4 RPM might actually be acceptable—any people might need a few hours or some training to adapt. Therefore, it might be possible to construct a much smaller settlement.

If you double RPM, you can cut the diameter in 4. Maybe you'd also be ok with half-gravity. So optimistically, you are still looking at over 60m in diameter. By circumference, this is several times longer than all modules of ISS put together lengthwise, plus you need a hub, plus you need structural supports that will actually be under load. Doable? Yes, but about an order of magnitude more expensive and complex than the largest thing we've put into space so far.

I'm also a bit weary of a proposal to build a structure you need to acclimate to as a "hotel" or orbital way-point. This is why I usually stick to 2RPM value. It's something majority of people will be just naturally ok with without requiring an adjustment period.

Like I've said before, the ring idea is solid in principle. It's what we should be aiming for long term. But this should not be our first artificial gravity project. We should be aiming for a counterweight-based design first, regardless of whether we want to get an Earth gravity at comfy 2RPM for general stay, or we just want a Mars gravity 5RPM proof-of-concept research lab that we can stick trained astronauts into and which we can probably slap onto ISS. Lets just not immediately jump into building out a full ring either way, unless there is some very specific safety or cost-saving reason involved.

[Shpaget]

"Space Shuttles" land in the center of the hub, where there is zero G. The passengers then disembark and walk down the tunnel, but artificial gravity there is lateral, not downward. Walking there would be very awkward.

Nano material technobable does not sound convincing. 

Giant windows of the size depicted are a no go. The force of 1 atmosphere of pressure would pop them right off.

Giant open space promenades are a no go for the same reason.

First time space visitors jumping of some platform as their first zero G experience? HA! They'd be smacking their ragdoll bodies all over the place.

Financing through worldwide lottery is not going to happen. Lotteries are strongly regulated and governments have  defacto monopoly on them. On top of that it would take a huge investment to fund the marketing campaign to start the worldwide lottery, with all the risks and difficulties of managing a lottery in dozens of countries each with its own laws and regulations.

[Scotius]

Would curved corridors help?

[K^2]

^ Having the same twist for up and down stairs is a bad idea. Imagine going the "wrong" way on one of these a bit too fast, and Coriolis force making these effectively vertical all of the sudden. Might not be terrible on the way up, but if that happens on the way down, you're going to have a VERY bad fall. In general, I'm not sure I want stairs on that thing. Elevator with padded walls might be a better call.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Giant windows of the size depicted are a no go. The force of 1 atmosphere of pressure would pop them right off.

And btw where are these windows in a lounge/hall/whatever with red chairs scene.

6 hours ago, Scotius said:

Would curved corridors help?

Would be funny to look at the near-center corridor part, mostly zero-G. How do they imagine walking there.
And why the elevator shafts are straight? The elevator carriage would be scratching one wall.

 

Btw, As the shuttle is attached to the floor, and rotates together with the station, inside the shuttle they should be falling on a wall.

Edited July 13, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Nightside]

14 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

I find the lottery idea almost worse than having no plan at all. They realized they need billions of dollars that they don't have, so they went with the first thing they could think of that's associated with large dollar values. But "get more money" is a goal everyone has; if this strategy had a prayer, everyone would be running a lottery!

Well, most governments run a lottery, and it seems to be working OK for them.

Also, this project has pyramid scheme red flags all over it.

[Shpaget]

13 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Well, most governments run a lottery, and it seems to be working OK for them.

Yes, governments. Private lotteries a bit rarer beast to find.

Then there is the whole problem of getting the money out of multiple countries you run lotteries in, and I'm pretty sure there are plenty of money laundering and similar laws that will be in your way if you attempt to do that.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

They can first find a platinoid asteroid, sell it for mining, and get money.