Syd Mead
The sad part is that we have the technology to day to build stuff like that, but instead we invest resources into shit like wars.
The technology for this has been around for decades, if the Soviet union didn't fall we would have been to mars by the 2000s. Once the cold war ended all the funding and government support for human crewed missions virtually vanished, and we've been stuck in low earth orbit ever since. Human space exploration literally got set back several decades because of this, and we're probably going to take another couple of decades before we can even get back to the moon. Something that was possible in the 60s.
Indeed, this is another huge loss that came out of USSR dissolving. I guess now that there's a cold war with China ramping up, the US is going to have to start investing space again.
Correction: *America not "we"
China is livin the dream babee
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China is really the one ray of light in all this, pushing peaceful scientific progress to new heights each and every year. I'm really excited about the whole moon base finally happening.
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.
It's a really cool concept. The idea that you can just basically make a train that goes to space is absolutely awesome.
