In 1869, Atlantic Monthly writer E. Everett Hale imagined what a primitive space station might look like. It involved a lot of brick. Given NASA’s looming cuts, it may very well be all they can afford in the present!
Ha! NASA budget jokes! So topical, yet so sad. Anyway, there are a number of space station concepts from the past century, and while none saw the light of day, some of their features did, and could even help astronauts on missions to the Moon and Mars, if they ever happen.
There’s artificial gravity, for instance, which many scientists agree will be important if we’re to travel to Mars and beyond. It was first imagined as far back as 1929.
Then there’s the inflatable station, which was initially discussed decades ago. It’s made a resurgence as of late because it’d be cheap and easy to launch into orbit.
Lastly, there are designs that probably seemed pretty fantastical when artists conjured them up oh so many years ago, but in reality were kind of spot on. Like this one:
Then again, there’s this:
George Lucas, you got some ‘splaining to do! [Scienceray via Neatorama]
Luke
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 7:00 PMHa… I would like to see a space station made of bricks and motar. I wonder how much the brickies would get paid for that job.
Sam Brady
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:23 PMH.G Wells designed a space ship that was a 3m wide, round glass jar with a big plug and shutters on the outside. Astronauts would keep warm by bringing a blanket into space with them and would otherwise occupy themselves with a newspaper, as it took a few hours to get to the moon way back in 1912 and it could get pretty boring. Also it used a material which excluded gravitational fields like superconductors exclude magnetic fields. Yep.