Written by Amyole
Science fiction is filled with examples of humans living in space. However, so far, humanity have only established an Air BnB in space. Or perhaps we should call it Space BnB? In any case, whilst there are no permanent space residents (yet), space stations have been in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the 1970s. An object is in LEO if it is no more than 2000 km above the Earth and if it revolves around it - the Hubble Space Telescope is a good example of an object in LEO.
LEO is where we tend to squat. GPS satellites orbit higher, in Medium Earth Orbit, and communications and weather satellites orbit higher still, in High Earth Orbit, but so far all of our focus on establishing temporary accommodation outside of Earth’s atmosphere has been in LEO.
The fact is that space is not yet fit for permanent human habitation. This is mainly due to how much radiation there is out there, which Earth’s magnetic field helps protect us from. Outside of the bubble of this field, however, and our squishy human bodies are exposed to a whole host of nasties. Lack of gravity is also an issue. Human bodies were made to experience gravity—constantly. These are two of the biggest hazards to overcome.
Space stations are our answer so far to these problems and to establishing a human presence in space. They are by nature, temporary, and no human can yet calls space their perennial home. Among the most well-known space stations are the former Skylab and Mir stations, and the currently-in-orbit International Space Station (ISS).
These space stations are still very dangerous for humans. They orbit within the Earth’s magnetic field but do not get the full effect of the shielding that found on the planet surface, so humans in LEO are exposed to a lot of radiation. Space stations presently also lack gravity, so astronauts on these stations must contend with weightlessness due to microgravity, which can wreak havoc on the body. Muscles atrophy from lack of use and some astronauts have experienced blurry vision due to their eyes changing shape with the absence of gravity.
Space Colony Designs
For humans to live permanently in space, we need to address many issues. The two main ones I’m focusing on, as you might have guessed, are radiation and weightlessness.
The space habitat will need to shield the humans from space radiation. It will also need provide gravity. The only way we currently know how to simulate gravity, to produce the force strong enough to keep your body healthy, is by spinning - centrifugal force. This works like the Gravitron ride at amusement parks where you lay against a cushion as the enclosed ride spins, or that old ‘magic’ trick where if you whirl a bucket of water in a circle fast enough, the water won’t tip out. Like the amusement ride, the space habitat will need to be symmetric around the axis of rotation to keep it balanced.
The speed of rotation (revolutions per minute, ‘rpm’) and the radius/diameter of the colony will determine the amount of artificial gravity felt by the inhabitants. If the radius/diameter is kept constant and the rotation speed is increased, the inhabitants will feel more of a force, such as in the amusement park ride.
The radius/diameter will have be set by the builder and there is a tradeoff the builders will have to make. The larger the radius/diameter, the less revolutions per minute need to be made to simulate Earth gravity (good!), but the more expensive it is to build (bad!). None of the space stations so far have rotated to produce artificial gravity, so we are not sure exactly how much gravity is needed to sustain healthy humans (and allow them to be able to return to Earth). It is thought that, to accomplish this, the weakest strength artificial gravity can operate at is 90% of Earth’s gravity. It’s also suspected that the fastest rotation speed humans can tolerate is 1-2 rpm; however, some studies suggest that humans could adapt to live in up to 6 rpm, though visitors will take longer to adapt (Globus & Hall, 2015).
Depending on the rotation speed and amount of artificial gravity desired, the radius/diameter can be determined. The table below summarises the radius in meters needed to achieve different percentages of Earth’s gravity artificially, and the rpm speed.
NASA has conducted studies into designing these permanent space habitats and while others have done research in the area as well, the NASA designs from the mid-1970s are perhaps the most well-known. These include the Bernal Sphere, the Stanford Torus and the O’Neill Cylinder. Each design is shielded from radiation and each uses one or more mirror to direct sunlight into the colony to simulate a Terran day. Below are very brief descriptions based off the NASA studies.
Bernal Sphere (aka Islands 1&2)
The Bernal Sphere, also known as Island One, is a hollow ball on a skewer, which rotates. Humans live in the hollow sphere. Outside of the hollow sphere are hollow donuts, which also spin to simulate gravity. The hollow donuts have different levels, some for agriculture and some for livestock.
Island Two is the same design as Island One, but bigger. Spherical colonies are seen in the Cosmic Era timeline (Gundam SEED/Destiny).
Stanford Torus (aka Alternative Island 1)
The Stanford Torus, Alternative Island One, is a torus (a hollow donut) rotating on an axis. Humans live in the hollow donut, alongside agriculture and livestock. The torus is divided into different wedges which contain different levels. Some wedges are for humans, some are for agriculture, and some are for livestock, and so on.
Toroidal colonies are seen in the After Colony timeline (Gundam Wing).
O’Neill Cylinder (aka Island 3)
The O’Neill Cylinder, also known as Island Three, is a pair of attached hollow cylinders, which rotate opposite directions of each other. Humans live in the cylinders with the agriculture and livestock. The cylinders are divided into alternating sections (lengthwise) of glass and living sections.
Cylindrical colonies are the most common colony types in Gundam series. They are seen in the Universal Century timeline, the After War timeline (Gundam X), the Cosmic Era timeline (Gundam SEED/Destiny), the Advanced Generation timeline (Gundam AGE), and the Post Disaster timeline (Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans).
Other designs exist, but many are these basic shapes: sphere, torus, cylinder. In the Gundam universe we also see a few other locations humans have settled, namely of course the Lunar Base on the moon. MS Gundam also identifies one of the Martian moons, Phobos, as ‘Lunar II’; (Lemontrash Edit: I added this comment to Amyole's post but made a mistake - the moon it identifies is Juno, one of Jupiter's moons. This imo is ridiculous in all contexts, as they have nothing to do with Mars in MS Gundam, and no settlement on the red planet which would have made more sense than relocating a moon. In Gundam Wing, they're just about getting down to business around Mars at the end of the series, so to suggest they could earlier have travelled as far as Jupiter and dragged a whole moon back is plain daft. )
(Lemontrash EDIT 2: So Juno is in fact, an asteroid in the asteroid belt. It's on the far side of Mars but not as far as Jupiter. Harotype on the Discord chat thinks they may have gone as far as Jupiter in UC, even in 0079, maybe in search of a rare isotope, but we have yet to confirm that. TL;DR, this is why I'm not the primary author of this post. Rest of the post has been edited to reflect the corrections above.)
The asteroid is mined out and whilst not a base or a colony. operates as a stepping stone or way-station. We see others of this type briefly in Gundam Wing as well. Finally, by the end of Endless Waltz in Frozen Teardrop, we start to see efforts to colonise Mars, albeit these efforts are still in their infancy.
However, the mainstay habitations in space in the Gundam Wing verse are the ‘L’ colonies. L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5. Also known as the Legrange point colonies.
Lagrange Points
Lagrange Points (sometimes called libration points) are points that arise when one body in space orbits another. Gravitational forces operate in fields and where two objects interact, they create a quiet point. In simplistic terms, entering a Lagrange point is like finding a calm pond in the middle of a busy ocean. Any objects pushed into one of these points will stay in place, relative to the two bodies, whilst outside of a Lagrange Point, the gravity of the objects will seek to push or pull it about. If, for example, a colony is outside of a Lagrange point and pulled hard towards Earth, the colonists would be in for a bad day with a fast and fiery end.
Lagrange Points arise in the Sun-Earth system and the Earth-Moon system (as well as any other star/planet/moon system where one orbits the other). Or in other words, the solar Lagrange (Sun-Earth system) points are NOT the same as the Lunar Lagrange (Earth-Moon system) points. Many diagrams online are for the Sun-Earth system; however, the same corresponding points arise if the Moon switches into the Earth’s place and the Earth switches into the Sun’s place. Space colonies in the Gundam series are in the Earth-Moon system. Descriptions below use the Earth-Moon system in order not to have to use Body 1 & Body 2, but the same general descriptions work for any system.
L1 is located between the Earth and the Moon:
L2 is located on the far side of the Moon, on the same line as L1:
L3 is located on the other side of the Earth opposite the Moon, on the same line as L1 & L2:
L4 is located on the orbital path of the Moon, ahead of the Moon, forming an equilateral triangle with the Earth and the Moon:
L5 is located on the orbital path of the Moon, behind the Moon, forming an equilateral triangle with the Earth and the Moon:
Anything located at L1, L2, or L3 (for any system) is not stable, so without station-keeping nudging the station back in place, a colony located at one of these points would eventually drift away. If the ratio of the two orbiting bodies is big enough, L4 and L5 will be stable and require no or very little station-keeping. These points are stable for the Earth-Moon system. In contrast, these points are not stable for the Mars-Phobos system - If Phobos is even still in its original location. In MS Gundam, it’s been reduced in size by mining, and punted out of its orbit to a more convenient location near the moon. (Lemontrash edit: Correction of my own error. Phobos IS still in its original location; it's Juno that was moved.)
Colony vs Colony Cluster
In Gundam series, the Lagrange points are each home to multiple colonies. Each colony is its own structure (or two connected ones in the case of O’Neill Cylinders). A colony cluster is a group of separate colonies. Colonies are frequently referred to as islands as they are entities unto themselves. A colony cluster is like an island chain/archipelago.
When characters reference L1 (or any Lagrange point), they are referencing the entire archipelago, not an individual island. In Gundam Wing, the individual islands have alpha-numeric “names” with one letter and multiple numbers.
There is no official pattern to the “names” and the named colonies do not all share the same pattern. Some say the numbers follow the pattern Year-Month-Day without dashes, which fits some of the names we see, but Quatre destroys Colony 06E3, which does not follow the convention. I haven’t seen anything official for the naming convention, but it’s very interesting, nonetheless. I have my own head canon on this, and LemonTrash has her thoughts on the matter from a human psychology angle as well. More on this perhaps in another blog post!
In the series Gundam Wing, they refer to Colony Area D. I have no idea what this refers to, but if I had to take a guess, in the orbit around a Lagrange point, it’s not a continuous stream of colonies, so perhaps the Cluster is made of “bunches” which share a letter. Or Lemontrash wonders if perhaps each Legrange point is further divided into zones.
And as a final a-Side....
In the Universal Century timeline, some Lagrange points have multiple colony clusters orbiting around the points. These are called 'Sides'. No other Gundam timeline contains Sides and it's unclear what the exact difference between a Side and a Cluster is. Some of these have specific names rather than numeric designations and some are large-scale military bases, as opposed to true colonies. Luna II on the diagram below is Juno.
Interested in writing your own guest post? Have some burning extended meta to share and Tumblr's horseshit new paragraph limit getting you down? Come into orbit! Contact me at Lemontrash or leave me a message via the 'pineapple' button on the website :)
References
Bernal Sphere. Retrieved Jan 2019, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere
Globus, A., & Hall, T. (2015, June). Space Settlement Population Rotation Tolerance. Retrieved Jan 2019, from NSS: https://space.nss.org/media/Space-Settlement-Population-Rotation-Tolerance-Globus.pdf
Johnson, R. D., & Holbrow, C. (Eds.). (1977). Space Colony Art from the 1970s. Retrieved Jan 2019, from NASA: https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArt/art.html
Johnson, R. D., & Holbrow, C. (Eds.). (1977). Space Settlements: A Design Study. Retrieved Jan 2019, from NASA: https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/Table_of_Contents1.html
O'Neill Cylinder. Retrieved Jan 2019, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
Space Habitat. Retrieved Jan 2019, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_habitat
Stanford Torus. Retrieved Jan 2019, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus
Further Reading: