Space Stations Without Compromise | Hacker News Reader

Space Stations Without Compromise

gravitics.com

57 pointsdanboarder27 comments

Color me skeptical. There have recently been a lots and lots of commercial space station proposals. Partly this is because Starship and for some people New Glenn might be ready sometime.

The other reason is that NASA is doing a Commercial Space station program (that is underfunded) and a lot of people wont in on that.

But I very skeptical of any of these actually making it anywhere close to orbit. The actual investment required to get this build and launched and operated is incredibly large. And the costumer base is questionable.

With about 60 of these and an angled interconnect of about 5.8deg you could build a rotating "Von Neumann ring" of about 200m diameter. Then depending on speed have up to 1g simulated at 3rpm...

Just casually pointing out also that their interior designs have floors and doors that are earth like. Along with the company name, I strongly suspect they are already thinking this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_regular_ring

60 is quite a lot to manage, they probably plan to use affiliated operators for some of them. Personally, I think a boolean ring would be more logical.

And then you're on your way to a topopolis.

The CEO says their ultimate goal is spin gravity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btuiMlMI2Po&t=257

They show off a (notional / early-stage design) ring station in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Typ9MEhkDmI&t=49

There's also this great talk from their Chief Engineer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QycmHTHav8

You don’t need to construct a full ring, it can be disconnected sections over the full radius with struts or just a partial slice of the ring with a counter weight.

>just a partial slice of the ring with a counter weight

AKA "Bolas," AKA "Barbell," AKA "Tumbling Pigeon"

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/artificialgrav...

I think the main reason people neglect this sort of design (which actually has a lot going for it) is because they don't look like that cool scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

unless they have figured out artificial gravity... none of these pictures or videos make sense. the only way I know how they can add gravity to these quarters is by spinning them...

the "floor" will be the curved sides (or I guess the ends) not the middle of the things?

What am I missing here?

Edit: oh, they ARE with compromise? no gravity. which makes the name "Gravitics" more than a bit cheeky.

I’m surprised the web site does not say which rockets this will fit in.

The USS Defiant, if we’re counting fictional vessels.

According to the PDF data sheet it has a diameter of 7.6m, length 9.8m. The only rocket I know of that could launch that is the SpaceX Starship - when it's ready.

I would go as far as saying this looks specifically designed for the Starships payload dimensions, 8m dia by 17m. Baring in mind that the front ~7m are in the nose cone of the rocket.

I think it's quite sensible for a startup to be working on space station designs that are utilising the expected capability of starship.

https://gravitics.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/StarMax_One_Pa...

See payload section on: https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf

With any commercial fairly extreme engineering activity, is safety not going to suffer?

Not thinking of any particular recent extreme (high) pressure endeavours.

The pressure differential for a sub at Titanic depth is almost 6,000psi, for a spacecraft in a vacuum it's 14.7psi. It's a very different problem.

But then again, don't most materials work better in compression than in tension ?

To some extent but the stark difference in pressures makes it inherently a different problem.

It's actually easer to build a balloon than a compressible can.

0.5mm hole in a space craft is a slow leek you can fill with epoxy (it's happened). The same in a sub at the depth of the Titanic, there is no fix and it's not a 0.5mm hole, it's an implosion.

I hope this means we'll get a Chesley Bonestell -style space wheel in our lifetimes.

gravity is truly the weakest force

This is just a recency bias thing. There are gigantic private cars, private ships, private planes and even private rockets used everyday all over the world. Not to mention gigantic mining equipment, huge oil platforms and so on and so on.

Safety is always critical and commercial and non-commercial projects both can have safety issues or engineer something very safe.

Wouldn't really talk about aviation. We're still killing lots of people due to dodgy maintenance. Lack of understanding brought us popular hits such as the Hindenburg, and cars/ships/etc don't fail as catastrophically but they break all the time.

If you compare everything to a perfect world where nothing ever happens then nothing is gone measure up.

Private aviation isn't special in terms of accidents either, though. There have been plenty of NASA spacecraft and military aircraft lost due to accidents, maintenance issues, and design flaws.

>Private aviation isn't special in terms of accidents either

Yes it is, because for what it does it has an incredible safety record.

It's pretty obvious that I was comparing it to government/military aviation and not other forms of transportation, and that I was saying it was safe.

>Wouldn't really talk about aviation.

But I would. Flying is incredibly safe for putting people in aluminium tubes kilometers above the surface of the earth and propelled by combusting fans of immense power.

The idea that flying has become a low risk means of transportation is absolutely incredible and a real testament to safety standards working.

>With any commercial fairly extreme engineering activity, is safety not going to suffer?

Many, many commercial companies work on safety critical systems. You ensure safety through standards, testing and independence. Despite recent lapses, e.g. flying is still incredibly safe.

Space stations are meaningless luxuries. We don't have a resource extraction industry in space.

non-rotating?

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