In terms of tech, it’s really just a big ass pressurized torus. There are a number of workable designs for building this kind of a station available already. What’s missing is the commitment to doing a project on such a scale.
Although, now that China is planning on building a moon base, that might end up being a better way launching point in the future. Launching stuff from Earth is always going to be incredibly expensive. However, it’s actually feasible to build a space elevator on the moon using current materials since the gravity is low and you don’t have to worry about atmosphere. Once you have a space elevator, moving stuff from surface to orbit becomes extremely cheap. It would also probably make the most sense to put the habitat in L1 or L2 so it could stay in a stable orbit.
I think we’re still years away from this technology, but if the USSR was still socialist and around, I agree, we might be at this level by now.
I mean it’s just a question of sending a lot of stuff into orbit, and there were good concepts back in the 1960s for doing that, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)
In terms of tech, it’s really just a big ass pressurized torus. There are a number of workable designs for building this kind of a station available already. What’s missing is the commitment to doing a project on such a scale.
Although, now that China is planning on building a moon base, that might end up being a better way launching point in the future. Launching stuff from Earth is always going to be incredibly expensive. However, it’s actually feasible to build a space elevator on the moon using current materials since the gravity is low and you don’t have to worry about atmosphere. Once you have a space elevator, moving stuff from surface to orbit becomes extremely cheap. It would also probably make the most sense to put the habitat in L1 or L2 so it could stay in a stable orbit.
Space elevators fascinate me.
It’s a really cool concept. The idea that you can just basically make a train that goes to space is absolutely awesome.