NASA and SpaceX are partnering to build Space stations using SpaceX Starship. NASA and SpaceX have not revealed or developed plans for their Starship based space stations. Cuzza Futurism has some designs for space stations built using standard and redesigned SpaceX Starships and some other components.
The first is a space station built using 16 SpaceX Starships and cargo from 30 other launches. It has no rotating structures for artificial gravity. It has 24 large solar panels.
The second space station built with SpaceX Starships has a rotating section for artificial gravity. It is about 13 megawatts of solar power.
The rotating section is 200 meters in diameters. This would be 4 times more than the 50 meter height of a standard SpaceX starship. The space station design imagines larger version 2 SpaceX Starships.
The fictional Space Station V shown in 2001 a Space Odyssey has a diameter of about 980 feet or about 300 meters.
One of NASA’s actual space ship designs, Nautilus X, has a rotating simulated gravity section.
Cuzza Futurism’s design has heat radiators and solar panels.
The Vera Space Station design would be about the same size as the fictional Space Station V from 2001. The center section is 84 meters wide. The overall station is about 300 meters wide.
VERA is a Torus-type space station. The National Space Society lists torus-type stations as one of the most efficient design options for a space station. With 369,523 cubic meters of pressurized volume, VERA station can easily accommodate 1000 guests and 200 crew with plenty of elbow room.
The Inner Torus (84 meters wide) of VERA Station will house the crew quarters, pod and drone maintenance, and station control. This smaller torus will be built before anything else (Outer Torus, elevators, Hub…) so that the construction crew will have a very large staging area to build the other station components. The Inner Torus is by no means small, its volume is 85,278 cubic meters.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Vera doesn’t seem spindly…white graphene maybe?
Love the concept of a torus building machine but the concepts of using starships are too much. How about a simple duo decagon hub, big enough to fit inside a starship and attach 10 starship living units for a spherical cluster capable of housing a thousand people.
The Vera station concept seems interesting, until you realize they have no serious funding, engineering nor test platforms launched.
I mean, even a basic ring printer, tested in the ground where they can add the ring plaques by hand.
It’s basically PowerPoint rocketry at its worst.
Concerning the space stations from Starship blocks, they seem very feasible and I do believe they will exist. And this will happen as as soon as Starship is tested for longer periods in orbit, and someone can pony up the cost of a few dedicated Starships. NASA will probably be the first customer, just to replace the aging ISS.
Real hardware trumps intentions, after all, and so far the competing plans seems to only have PowerPoint rockets and modules.