The Stanford Torus Space Settlement
During the summer of 1975, NASA’s Ames Research Center and Stanford University joined to complete an imaginative project entitled, Space Settlements: A Design Study. Tackling the question of feasibility, professors, technical directors and students in a variety of disciplines began to construct a vision of permanent human presence in space. The result? A toirodal colony by the name of the ‘Stanford torus’.
Resembling Space Station V from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the doughnut-shaped ring would rotate roughly once per minute at Lagrangian point L5, maintaining between 0.9g and 1.0g of artificial gravity. Inside, the torus would be large enough to simulate a “natural” environment with space designated for residential, agricultural, and commercial purposes. Capable of housing approximately 10,000 permanent residents, such a colony could hypothetically accommodate NASA’s JPL workforce twice over. With its artificial upward curving valley and the seemingly convincing illusion it would create, these new arrivals would no doubt need time to adjust to their new home’s topography.
While strictly conceptual, the Stanford torus was designed during a period in American space history where our intrinsic hunger to explore and discover continued to exemplify a dream-building force. As NASA Administrator James Fletcher describes in the study’s conclusion, “Space offers a new frontier, a new challenge, and a hope to humanity, much as the New World offered a frontier, a challenge, and a hope to Europe for more than 4 centuries.” As long as we continue to reflect on our presence within the frontier Fletcher speaks of, the imaginings of the past could very well become the endeavors of the future. What better reason is there to support NASA than this?
Let Congress know that you support doubling funding for NASA:
http://www.penny4nasa.org/take-action/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus
http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/stanfordtorus.htm
http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10014656.html
To view ‘Space Settlements: A Design Study’, visit:
http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/Table_of_Contents1.html
