Space stations - fact and fiction

My Morgan's Misfits series is often set in one of two space stations; Crossmar and Shar Burk. That's not special in science fiction, and I don't expect my space stations are anything special, either. I'm expecting that in the future habitable planets will have at least one space station to facilitate movement from the planet's gravity to the edge of space. Our very own rather rudimentary ISS is kind of a cubby house in comparison to the vast structures we see in science fiction movies.

The ISS above Earth

When it coms to fictional space stations I don't think you can do much better than the one in Stanley Kubrick's classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The movie came out in 1968, the same year I started university. 2001 was such a long way away back then. Humans hadn't walked on the moon yet, but it was imminent. Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the novella which provided the basic premise of the movie (The Sentinel, written in 1948, published in 1951), surely expected much greater things from NASA than have actually been achieved. The (unfinished) space station in the movie was the jumping off point to the moon base, and ultimately to the deep space explorer sent off to Jupiter.

Geez. Twelve men have walked on the moon. The last one headed back to Earth in 1972. We've got a loooong way to go to even match the space station. This was one of the magic moments in the movie.

There's so much to admire about this clip. The science is the best on offer. The wheel structure provides gravity through centrifugal force. The (Pan Am) shuttle aims at the station's center, rotating to match the station's movement. The shuttle pilots use computer screens which wouldn't exist for decades and in the station itself you can see people working in control rooms. Back in 1968 the film was a tour de force, with breath-takingly realistic special effects. And a wonderful classical music score.

Although some authors still use centrifugal force to provide space station gravity, many (including me) simply propose that we have developed a means of creating artificial gravity. Humanity won't be doing much interstellar travel without some form of AG. Our bones would atrophy and eventually break down without it. Even a few months in the ISS leads to serious degradation in bone density. 

Without the need to provide mechanical gravity, what a space station would look like is up for grabs. To quote from Elizabeth Moon's novel, Hunting Party.

"Most major space stations followed one of three basic, utilitarian designs: the wheel, the cylinder, and the zeez-angle for situations requiring specific rotational effect. When Heris called up the specs for Sirialis, which all her passengers called 'Bunny's Planet', she felt she'd taken another giant step into irrationality. A blunt-ended castle tumbling slowly in zero gravity?"

Another of my favorite fictional space stations is Linnea Sinclair's Dock Five which features in her (um) Dock Five series. This extract is from Gabriel's Ghost. "Dock Five was an ugly structure, long, somewhat cylindrical. Six levels at its narrowest, ten at its widest, each level crisscrossed with corridors. Gravity only worked at its core. In the outlying areas, beyond the core, it was all free-float, zero-g boots required."

I like the gritty, industrial realism of this slum in space, the proverbial den of inquity, frequented by the shadier side of the species as well as the military.

I tended to use the basic cylinder shape in my books – a cylinder with spokes extended from the central hub to accommodate visiting space ships, rather like a marina here on Earth. You could say Crossmar is a little like the Singapore of the Morgan Selwood Universe, but how it was in maybe the mid-1960's. Shar Burk could be compared to Hong Kong around 1850, a haven for pirates and privateers, run by the rich and corrupt. Like the cities on Old Earth, the space stations are important trading hubs where people from all over the Union go to trade, refuel, and pick up gossip. I'm sure that's how things will work when we're all living in a greater universe than one small blue planet.

Maybe if Laurie's vison of a space station in Venu's orbit comes to pass we might get to see a space station like this one. Wouldn't that be nice?