Origyn

PREMISE

Physicist Stephen Hawking in 2017 reasserted his view that humans must become an interstellar species in the near future or risk “being annihilated”.

“The Earth is under threat from so many areas that it is difficult for me to be positive,” the professor said in a speech given via video link to the Starmus science conference in Trondheim, Norway.

Hawking has previously predicted that climate change, epidemics, and population growth all pose major threats to our survival on Earth. In November of 2016, he said humans would need to find a new planet within the next thousand years.

In May 2017, he shortened that prediction to 100 years.

“It is time to explore other solar system. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth” Hawking said. “To stay risks being annihilated.”

With almost every human has a responsibility for the boundaries of how human civilizations survive and thrive - Architects and designers are no different. We need to push into the sky as soon as we can with whatever we have to make sure we expand before we go extinct.

 

 

PRESENT

With our childhoods full of stories about space odysseys, and missions like Appollo - Voyager - Saturn V, we have been surrounded by these adventures of human-kind raising the bar in the last century. But as we entered the 21st Century there has been an unignorable slowdown in how humans are pushing towards space.

A major reason for this has been the wave of accidents/launch fails and budget restraints due to the shift in political agendas in the 21st century. This has caused Government lead space agencies - to slow down with only them having the collective responsibility of space exploration.

Our take on earth conflicts has also changed how we see and spend our resources today. The argument begins where people compare spending for space exploration with a much huge population to feed. It's surprising to note that the defense budget of many front-lining countries is 30 times more than their space exploration budget. It clearly indicates human conflict as a major priority for humanity today than exploration, which is somehow a reflection of what people want in a predominantly democratic planet.

In the ’60s (during the first manned mission to the moon) USA had 4.5% of total GDP spent on the space program, and by 2018 - that spending has been shrunken to 0.5% today. At the same time mining out earth resources at an alarming rate combined with pollution, wars, and climate change - the responsibility is not just left to space agencies but the people of this planet as well.

 

And that’s where Space Race 2.0 has begun

 

 

The change of course in the space industry

Back in the 19th century when the industrial revolution was taking shape, designers were in a similar dilemma to participate in shaping the industries/work environments. Eventually industrial age today not only stands as an example for human production/manufacturing breakthroughs - but also as a time when human living - working conditions were pushed to the extremely inhuman limits whose evidences are visible even today.

It took us a century to realize that design cannot stay far behind when technology takes the lead, and in this case when human survival is the aim. 200 years ago it was industries and today it is the colonization of space.

The shift is majorly visible when we see practices like BIG and Foster+Partners taking the leap in crafting ideas that are educating the fraternity with brave concepts of how our future colonies could look like. Building on that we need to capitalize on how we see designers and their ability to shoulder these ideas hand in hand with cutting-edge engineering.

 

Challenge

The challenge here is to design a space habitat for 2000 Astronauts / Space travelers / Recreationers which should be expandable to 10000 codename: Or1gYn.

Or1gYn is the first space settlement commissioned by planet earth collectively in the year 2040 - which will host as a staging area for all our space missions here on. This staging base will be a point of interest for space recreations at the same time a part of it will also be the origin of all the space programs in the coming 3 decades in our endeavor to explore the solar systems and beyond.

The primary functions of this space habitat will be:

1. Staging,

2. Re-Fuelling,

3. Recreation,

4.  Research-Training,

5. Service / Maintenance

The Or1gYn space station will be situated in Low Earth Orbit, not on a planet or moon. Orbits are far superior to the Moon and Mars for early and long-term settlement, and other planets and moons are too hot, too far away, and/or have no solid surface. The materials for these settlements, however, must have to be imported from Earth, the Moon, or Near-Earth Objects (NEO’s - asteroids and comets)

 

 

Who will inhabit this?

The major users for this space habitat would be: You. or People a lot like you. Space habitats will be a place for people from the earth.

It’s reasonable to expect that the vast majority of space settlers will be ordinary people - In Individuals or Families. Eventually, most people in space settlements may be born there, and someday they may vastly exceed Earth’s population in the longer run.

In today’s scenario only highly trained and scrutinized selected astronauts go to space. A space habitat system will need inexpensive, safe launch systems to deliver thousands, perhaps millions, of people to orbit, like the Space Race 2.0 companies are already making. A space habitat like this is not very far if we are already able to achieve 100s of faster recyclable space flights every year.

A part of this habitat will be dedicated to space exploration and technical missions which will further propel our explorations in the future. This staging area can also be a place to expose astronauts to a zero-gravity environment for longer durations (or artificial gravity) - before they explore deep space travel. And there can be many modes of Zero-G (or artificial gravity) recreation that popularize space travel as well.

 

 

How the space habitat will work?

The purpose/function of space habitat Or1gYn would hence be:

1. Staging - For all future space missions in the coming 3 Decades and beyond
2. Re-Fuelling - Refilling all the Moon and Mars exploratory space crafts
3. Recreation - Recreation for enthusiast space travelers
4. Research & Training - For Space Organizations and experimentations
5. Service / Maintenance - Maintenance of Launch vehicles before the begin next missions.

This also makes Or1gYn the beginning point of our first orbital habitat.

One of the major issues with a lot of space missions is associated with the exit and reentry of launch vehicles through the earth’s atmosphere. Not only do the launches destroy our atmosphere with a massive amount of fuel burning at the same time it makes the launch expensive as well. During re-entry, the launch vehicles have to face massive heat - and tension to land back into the surface which has cost us a lot of loss (life and resources) in past.

Or1gYn station eliminates the need to enter - exit, Earth’s atmosphere again and again by these launch vehicles. There also can be a possibility of a huge catapult (Mass driver) will propel these launch vehicles from earth to almost a Quarter or Halfway without any fuel after which these frequent flying vehicles will dock to Or1gYn. Once resources, equipment, and humans are staged here - they will leave for outer space on exploratory vehicles - instead of all the payloads entering back to earth to land. Thus increasing the frequency of space exploration. The same can happen for missions that mine resources from the moon.