Orbital Ring This may be considered an aside to the Mars terraforming image series. It’s really all Scott Lowther’s fault. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. (Joke: insert irony font.) For those who do not know, Scott Lowther is the aerospace blogger & CAD artist @The Unwanted Blog In September Scott started a CAD project to model Space Station V from 2001 a Space Odyssey -- built for accuracy. Scott Lowther’s Space Station V project for those who may be interested: Space Station V update Space Station V & Orion III Ta-da... Scott’s updates and progress reports inspired (along with a review of Kubrick and Clark’s masterpiece) and, already involved with my own narrative (how serious effort to terraform Mars might drive the expansion of industrial civilization out to the furthest reaches of the solar system) I was motivated to capture something of the elegant wheeled space station. I say this is an aside because, well … A slight scaling error early on led to dimensions which lay at the, grand end of the spectrum – For example the viewing gallery windows would stand two tall stories--one can imagine them opening on mall like public spaces of restaurants, shops, and meeting rooms. Engaged in pure pursuit of design I ventured into realms which are perhaps more appropriate to the System States era, hundreds of years further on in my future history timeline – an era of luxury and wealth resulting from endeavor, and vigorous interplanetary trade. Wealth and the rewards of hard labor not being dirty words in my philosophical universe. Perhaps one can imagine the station as the result of an entire culture engaged in pursuit of a program of the scale necessary to terraform a planet, which produce its own Howard Hughes type genius with a taste for White Star Line grandeur and the industrial and financial might to back it. Station Dimensions: Station Ring Diameter: 4300 FT Hub Length: 1900 FT Hub Maximum Diameter: 900 FT Radial Spoke Length: 1400 FT Rim Cross-Section Height (Inner Rim to Outer Rim): 250 FT Rim Cross-Section Thickness: 110 FT In the lower left corner of the image (seen in a station-keeping orbit well beyond the ringed habitat) a Callisto Crew Vehicle is seen docked to its orbital servicing vehicle – which itself approaches the length of a Jupiter transit fuel stack. In the upper right corner of the image the Orion service module prepairs to mount impulse charge magazine stages on a spent power-pack stage. Two Nuclear SSTO’s are seen in the image, one docked at the central core engaged in freight unloading, the other involved in approach docking maneuvers. The hub of the station houses fabrication and workshops, the ring is all habitat, and at the extreme end of the hub the the nuclear power station with its duel 400 FT x 100 FT radiator panels can be seen. Scale disambiguation notes: Nuclear SSTO Length: 460 FT, Width: 100 FT, Height: 80 FT. Callisto Crew Vehicle Length : 375 FT Diameter: 200 FT. All models are my own. Models constructed in Bryce 6.5 and rendered in Bryce 7 Pro. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.