ROTATING SPACE HABITATS - PROPOSED & IMAGINED
For diameter d in meters, habitat populations very roughly scale as: d2/100
DIAMETER SPIN YEAR DETAILS ========= ==== ==== =========================================== STATIONS - Up to hundreds of humans 4m x 1998 ISS 7m x 1973 Skylab 7m x 2016 Bigelow B330 12m 5s 1964 Discovery One - 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) 13m x 2019 Bigelow BA2100 15m 6s 1974 Baseline L5 30m 9s 1903 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky - first spinning habitat proposal 76m 12s 1956 Von Braun Station 110m 15s 2016 Kalpana Two 190m 19s 2015 Gateway Von Braun 200m 20s 1974 O'Neill C1 260m 23s 1979 Drax Station - Moonraker (film) KILOSTRUCTURES - TORUSES (mostly) - Thousands of humans 342m 26s 2014 Cooper Station - Interstellar (film) 458m x 1966 Enterprise (saucer) - Star Trek (TV/films) 500m 32s 2006 Kalpana One 512m 32s 1976 O'Neill Island 1 - The High Frontier (book) 537m x 2003 Galactica - Battlestar Galactica (TV) 640m 36s 1974 O'Neill C2 840m 41s 1993 B5 Station - Babylon 5 (TV) 1.0km 45s Min diameter for human ear comfort. 1.6km 57s 1976 O'Neill Island 2 1.8km 60s 1975 Stanford Torus 2.0km 63s 1974 O'Neill C3 MEGASTRUCTURES - CYLINDERS (mostly) - Millions of humans 4.0km 90s Max diameter for passive transit. Rim speed ~500kph. 6.4km 1.9m 1974 O'Neill C4 8.0km 2.1m 1976 O'Neill Island 3 - The High Frontier (book) 16km 3.0m 1929 Bernal Sphere 20km 3.3m 1973 Rama - Rendezvous with Rama (book) 60km 5.8m 2013 Elysium Station - Elysium (film) 120km x 1976 Death Star I Star Wars IV 160km x 1983 Death Star II Star Wars VI 200km 11m Tensile limit of steel. GIGASTRUCTURES - RINGS (mostly) - Billions of humans 920km 23m 2000 McKendree cylinder 950km x Ceres 2,000km 33m 1997 Bishop Ring 2,000km 33m Tensile limit of carbon. 3,500km x 1969 Moon 6,800km x Mars 10,000km 1.2h 2001 Halo Array - Halo (game) 12,700km x Earth. You are here. Probably. 140,000km x Jupiter 3.7Mkm 1.0d 1987 Banks Orbital - The Culture (book) IMPOSSIBLE STRUCTURES - RELATIVISTIC RINGS 18Mkm 2.2d Relativistic shearing. Rim speed 0.1% c. 2.0AU 9.0d 1970 Niven Ring - Ringworld (book) - Rim speed 0.4% c. 1.0LY x Time distortion. 1.6LY x Tensile limit of space. Rim speed = c.