farmerben Posted July 6 Author Share Posted July 6 I hope we don't build another station for several decades. There are more important objectives like the Moon and Mars. But... eventually there will be another station. What should be the priorities of the next station? Centrifugal habitats for 1/3 and 1/6 g. Repositionable to the Moon, Mars or Venus. Inflatable and huge in size. ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisias Posted July 7 Share Posted July 7 3 hours ago, farmerben said: What should be the priorities of the next station? Centrifugal habitats for 1/3 and 1/6 g. Repositionable to the Moon, Mars or Venus. Inflatable and huge in size. ... I think a Mars Cycler would be the next logical step. That would cut transplanetary costs to a fraction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthgently Posted July 7 Share Posted July 7 10 hours ago, Lisias said: I think a Mars Cycler would be the next logical step. That would cut transplanetary costs to a fraction. Given Bezos' orbital focused goals and Musk's Mars City goals, an Earth-Mars cycler would seem strangely more possible Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AckSed Posted July 8 Share Posted July 8 23 hours ago, farmerben said: I hope we don't build another station for several decades. There are more important objectives like the Moon and Mars. But... eventually there will be another station. What should be the priorities of the next station? Centrifugal habitats for 1/3 and 1/6 g. Repositionable to the Moon, Mars or Venus. Inflatable and huge in size. ... How about a station that's also a ship? I'm very partial to the Spacecoach: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/shiptypes.php#spacecoach Essentially an inflatable space station with "water walls" as radiation shielding, passive open-loop life-support based on forward osmosis, and solar-electric thrusters which use water as propellant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted July 8 Share Posted July 8 6 hours ago, AckSed said: "water walls" as radiation shielding Water is good against heavy particles, but is weak against gamma (primary - from the space rays, and secondary - from the heavy particles, stopped by the hydrogen of the water). As a rule of thumb, the half value sickness against gamma (cm) is 23/density(g/cm3) for nuclear blast and 13/density for its fallout. And iirc from the ESA Martian flight study, it was considered conditionally appropriate to have 27 g/cm2 protection for a 3 year long Martian travel (under assumption that the cancer won't happen before average lifespan for most of them), while here on the Earth we have 8000 m* 1.225 kg/m3 = 10 000 kg/m2 = 1 000 g/cm2 above head. The Project Horizon docs (webarchived from wiki), an interesting read, was providing for 1 m of lunar ground above the dug moonbase modules. This means 3 000 kg/m2, or 300 g/cm2. The local cheap anti-radiation vaults are computed to weaken the radiaton by 500..1000 times (i.e. being 9..10 half value thickness layers) to leave them after 2..3 days of hiding inside. So, the water protection should be several meters thick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtualgenius Posted August 10 Share Posted August 10 Hand the whole lot over to the private sector to maintain manage and upgrade the thing it comes apart so replace the old outdated stuff with new why de-orbit when you dont really have too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AckSed Posted August 10 Share Posted August 10 If there was a list of private sector companies that have the time, the money and the inclination to take on such a massive project, I suspect it would have one name, maybe two: SpaceX and Blue Origin. I don't know if they'd want to be responsible for when bits start falling off and the atmosphere leaks get worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nuke Posted August 10 Share Posted August 10 (edited) you could probibly rig the station up with ion thrusters, use the power from the solar array to power them. a couple kegs-o-xenon and you got yourselves a tourist attraction. after some significant burn time anyway. you would have to depopulate and shut down all unessential kit. more power for whatever the state of the art hall thruster you plan on using. also de-bulk to remove superfluous mass, remove everything you dont need from the internal spaces to maximize acceleration. Edited August 10 by Nuke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmerben Posted August 10 Author Share Posted August 10 (edited) Maybe for 100 kg of xenon we could park it at L4. Or better yet argon. Edited August 10 by farmerben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 Yes. push it up by the ions, and then finally 0.2 kt. Because a century later it will be a horrible mess of undockable metal scrap, requiring a crew of heroes to deliver the 0.2 kt for its final utilization. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted September 14 Share Posted September 14 https://spacenews.com/case-for-international-space-artifacts-museum/ Spoiler That's how it began... Spoiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PakledHostage Posted September 14 Share Posted September 14 (edited) I had this video in a playlist because, when I first saw it late one night years ago, I had to get out of bed and go downstairs to play it again on the big screen. I just showed it to my kids, and was reminded how beautiful it is, so thought I would share: Edited September 14 by PakledHostage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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