Space Island Concept

[NSEP]

Although outdated, its still pretty cool

 

[Nibb31]

It was a rubbish idea. The changes made to ET would have been huge and required a major redesign. For example, the foam would degrade and flake off, so the whole thing would end up floating in a massive orange cloud of debris.

[linuxgurugamer]

ET go home

Edit:  meant to say:

ET Phone Home

Edited November 15, 2017 by linuxgurugamer

[Guest]

That's pretty awesome.

[PB666]

Too many hours of EVA required.

[DDE]

A large pressure vessel alone does not a space station make.

[linuxgurugamer]

43 minutes ago, DDE said:

A large pressure vessel alone does not a space station make.

Neither does a nice video

[YNM]

23 hours ago, NSEP said:

Although outdated, its still pretty cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYIo-0qo9FA

Waay too KSP though, less realistic.

 

(EDIT : Seriously, the video's picture looks like some bizzare thing a "normal" KSP player would happily make in-game about orange-tanks fuel depot. I wonder which really came up first, this idea or the idea for KSP ! Or at least the orange tanks.)

Edited November 15, 2017 by YNM

[linuxgurugamer]

7 hours ago, YNM said:

Waay too KSP though, less realistic.

 

(EDIT : Seriously, the video's picture looks like some bizzare thing a "normal" KSP player would happily make in-game about orange-tanks fuel depot. I wonder which really came up first, this idea or the idea for KSP ! Or at least the orange tanks.)

I remember when this was first being talked about, it was many years before KSP

[PB666]

Well the Orange tank was kind of patterned of the ET. Functionally though they are very different. The ET was a side-mounted tank with side mounted boosters. The 64 is a stack mounted tank with generally engine under tank.
The ET was spaced mostly for liquid H2 the 64 was designed for a much more dense fuel (such as Kerosene).

Its would not have been a bad idea if you had at the other end and ION drive and some panels to pushed the tanks into a garbage orbit and then collected them, maybe in the future use them. The big problem with the tanks is the shape is not really suitable for station construction.

We really don't need a science station or a space hotel, the thing we really need from a station point of view is a factory for assembling bulk ships in space (such as ION driven space craft). The new lightweight panels of the future can be assembled in the factory and attached on ships using robots for appreciable light weight structures. Get the panel weight down to say 0.1 kg per square meter and ION driven space craft really take off.

[kerbiloid]

23 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

It was a rubbish idea. The changes made to ET would have been huge and required a major redesign. For example, the foam would degrade and flake off, so the whole thing would end up floating in a massive orange cloud of debris.

The Earth would get an orange ring. Isn't that cute?
Anyway, the tank doesn't need the foam to keep being pressurized.

[PB666]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The Earth would get an orange ring. Isn't that cute?
Anyway, the tank doesn't need the foam to keep being pressurized.

The foam also insulates from the temperature variations of space.

[kerbiloid]

14 minutes ago, PB666 said:

The foam also insulates from the temperature variations of space.

That's the Skylab way. It was made of a bare tank with the inner plastic insulation.

So, they should make one launch more delivering this:

Spoiler

Also, that's way to make the station more rad-protected.
They should deliver this:

Spoiler

and pour it into pockets along the hull, before covering this with the foam.

Edited November 15, 2017 by kerbiloid

[PB666]

YEs and those 500 degree hull temperatures certainly wouldn't cause the gunpower to explode. Then it really would be kerbal style. And to think Nibb was worrying about insulation breaking off and contributing to space junk collision risk, Good ole Jebs arm is nice and soft, certainly kerbonaut body parts are not as dangerous as orange foam insulation.

Really, seriously dude you have radioparanoia. That gamma inside of a double hull isnt a risk, certainly no reason to insulate the hull with small game load.

Just put the aluminum foil hat on and close your eyes and the pain will go away, I promise.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

Really, seriously dude you have radioparanoia. That gamma inside of a double hull isnt a risk, certainly no reason to insulate the hull with small game load.

I just take the radiation seriously.

Edited November 15, 2017 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

43 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

I just take the radiation seriously.

And such serious gamma shielding is utter overkill, and it also exacerbates the charged cosmic ray impacts. Have you tried, I dunno, something more versatile like water?

[YNM]

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also, that's way to make the station more rad-protected.
They should deliver this:

  Reveal hidden contents

and pour it into pockets along the hull, before covering this with the foam.

Apparently, you might want to use something lighter.

But yeah, radiation is still quite an issue for manned spaceflight. Plus a lot of other things, like vision degradation.