High Steel Titan Orbit An Orion’s Arm future history project image. Building large scale habitats and stations in free fall requires means to handle the mass of large scale structural elements. Foreground is a vehicle configured to maneuver and position large prefabricated structural-panels (on the order of 200 feet by 150 feet, length and width respectively, massing hundreds of tons each) – the same kind of job for which, on present day Earth, we might use self-erecting tower cranes of the type which climb up the sides of large skyscrapers under construction. Vehicle operation cab is visible, details are its docking umbilical, x-band radar (nearly lost in shadow on left side of cab), and spotlights for illumination during night-side orbit work. Crew is pilot, copilot, and flight-engineer. The spacecraft has main thrusters mounted in quad-arrangement with additional reaction control quads for pitch-roll and other fine control. Vehicle main thrusters are positioned to align thrust through the center of mass, in this case centered on the cage-like frame within which the payload is secured on a carriage which, when the vehicle lands upon the station-segment under construction, will extend foreword and lift the panel into place to be secured – details of this procedure to be shown in my next image. In the distance a two thousand foot diameter wheel shaped frame is under construction – at full view a multitude of construction vehicles are just visible. Eventually this wheel shaped frame will become one end cap of a large cylindrical station (composed of duel counter-rotating cylindrical sections) of the same diameter. Out of frame in this image another wheel-shaped frame and the axial-hub which eventually will join the two, are all under construction at the same time. When each element is completed the sections will be maneuvered into alignment and joined. The rims of the wheel-shaped frames will be spanned by connecting framework before the entire construction is set rotating. The final phase of construction will be under-spin – and, obviously, techniques and equipment will be of a character different from the free-fall phase of construction. The vehicle (and its payload, structural panel) are destined for the axial-hub segment – which will be featured in the next image in this sequence. This post is a continuation of the exploration of specialized spacecraft used to construct and maintain large scale space habitats in and among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Theme begun with my posts: Link: R.E.M. Repair & Engineering Module Link: R.E.M. Damage Inspection Link: Enceladus Station Link: Outward from Enceladus Image would fall between the +300 year mark and the +750 year mark on my future history timeline, context link below. Future History Timeline Context Link: Orion’s Arm Future History Timeline. Composition Notes: Composition set up with Celestia. Titan is PIA14924, Courtesy NASA/JPL, a natural color view acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 6, 2012. Image has been enlarged from the original. Saturn is PIA12533, Courtesy NASA/JPL, a natural color view acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 27, 2009. Image has been enlarged, sun-phase adjusted to match Titan sun-phase. All models are my own Bryce creations, constructed in Bryce 6.3, rendered in Bryce 7 Pro. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.