Inflatable Space Stations
22 points
4 days ago
| 3 comments
| worksinprogress.co
| HN
aDyslecticCrow
46 minutes ago
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I suspect without ISRU production of bulk orbit sheet metal, the most feasible solution is to repurpose rockets in their whole.

Building a station this large is gonna be costly even within the cargo hold of starship. But six of them, gutted of insides as welded end to end could provide the vast majority of the bulk mass.

This assume rather sophisticated orbital welding and object manipulation; but its feasible we could do it with robots.

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ceejayoz
21 minutes ago
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This was considered with the orange Space Shuttle fuel tanks; they went almost all the way to orbit anyways.
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maxcan
37 minutes ago
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I never understand why the rotating station concepts seem to all have rigid tethers, either in the form of a central boom or a rigid circular structure. It would seem like you could get a much larger diameter, so less rotational velocity and more comfort, by attaching rigid, or inflatable in this case, structures with a tether. Compressive loads are non existent, you just need to resist tensile loads.

Maybe I'll go ask the AI.

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_dain_
15 minutes ago
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Stationkeeping would be a problem. And difficult to stop it precessing away from the rotation axis you want.
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peteforde
53 minutes ago
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Anything that can be inflated can usually be deflated.
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aDyslecticCrow
46 minutes ago
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so what? it's only one bar of pressure. Bring some gum.
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