Colonizing Space, Issue #2: Spin Gravity Demands Balance

This is ‘Voyager Station’, a proposed space hotel and/or business park proposed by Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC). Note the twenty-one ‘shuttles’ that look much like manned versions of the Space Force’s X-37B spaceplane. Considering the larger spacecraft docking, one suspects these smaller spaceplanes’ intended use would be as escape pods. Not a bad idea, really, but the absence of a few may present a major problem. (etreheureux.net)

Here’s a test for your mechanical engineering skills: how many apparent design flaws can you detect in the illustration of the proposed space station above? On the positive side there are notable features such as inflatable habitat modules and readily-available means of escape, but there’s a couple concerns, too.

In Issue #1 we showed the utter necessity of spin gravity to long-term human habitation in space. Unfortunately, it’s not just a matter of putting together something that looks cool to stockholders and investors. There’s thousands of multimillionaires who’d dearly love to head to low earth orbit (LEO) for a weekend or three, but few would want it to be a one-way trip. Unlike on Earth, life in space will be unforgiving. Design, simplicity, and redundancy are key to survival.

Obvious Flaw: The Space Station Is Unbalanced

Have you ever taken your car to a mechanic for wheel balancing, and then noticed how they would attach a lead weight to one part of the hub? Wheel balancing is:

the process of equalizing the weight of the combined tire and wheel assembly so that it spins smoothly at high speed. Balancing involves putting the wheel/tire assembly on a balancer, which centers the wheel and spins it to determine where the weights should go.