This is the era where all those old science fiction fantasies are coming out for real. Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC) recently unveiled new details about its ambitious Voyager Station, which is projected to be the first commercial space station operating with artificial gravity.
OAC, a manufacturing firm centered on the colonization of space, discussed Voyager Station during a video press junket late last month. The Jan. 29 “First Assembly” virtual event served as an update for interested investors, marketing partners and enthusiastic vacationers hoping to someday book a room aboard the rotating Voyager Station.
The manufacturing firm introduced the idea focused on the colonization of space in a Jan. 29 virtual event updating investors and marketing partners about the “rotating Voyager Station,” Spry wrote.
The company has plans to include a “space hotel” in the rotating resort with working toilets, showers, along with innovative ways for jogging, according to Spry.
Voyager Station is patterned after concepts imagined by legendary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, one of the main orchestrators of NASA’s Apollo program. The 650-foot-wide (200 meters) wheel-shaped habitat will spin with an angular velocity high enough to create moon-like levels of artificial gravity for occupants.
“Designed by Gateway Foundation executive team member and lead architect Tim Alatorre, Voyager will become the biggest human-made structure in space,” Spry said.
Voyager will house 24 integrated habitation modules, each of which will be 65 feet long and 40 feet wide (20 by 12 meters). At near-lunar gravity, the rotating resort will have functional toilets, showers, and allow jogging and jumping in fun and novel ways.
But first, the question many may ask is how is this even going to be possible?
“OAC needs to test both building a station in low Earth orbit and prove the viability of stable artificial gravity in space,” Spry wrote.
Currently, the machine is undergoing commissioning and shipping. It will then be completed and tested in California.
“The prototype will produce a truss section roughly 300 feet [90 m] in length in under 90 minutes,” Clements revealed during the live-streamed event. “DSTAR weighs almost 8 tons in mass, consisting of steel, electrical and mechanical components.”
OAC is also creating a robotic observer drone for remote viewing via a virtual reality headset as its first in-house development project.
“The gravity ring is going to be a key technology demonstration project that we plan to build, assemble and operate in low Earth orbit in just a few years’ time,” said OAC co-founder Jeff Greenblatt.
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