Exploration is the hallmark of humanity, and pushing the boundaries of human experience is embedded into our DNA. This thesis explores the design and establishment of what will become a permanent community in Earth's orbit called the Celestial Harbor Experience. It will provide visitors the opportunity to experience life on a space station, dividing their time between simulated gravity and degrees of weightlessness.
As I began to collect my primary and secondary research, I quickly began to appreciate the complexity and massive amount of material I was about to amass. In order to stay organized, and hopefully, to easily communicate with my thesis advisors, it occurred to me that I needed a simple but effective way to share this information as I recieved it. As a result, I chose to create a blog of my research. Click on the image to access it.
A a blog site, it was easy to organize and search for imformation, from technological advancements to design inspirations. The first issue that I concluded that needed addressing is microgravity, and the short and long term challenges it brings to any proposed long-term existance apart from Earth. Simulated gravity by way of cintrifugal force became an important foundational part of the Celestial Harbor's design. This led to the next challenge, which was size.
For simulated gravity to work, the station would need to be very large, which makes it prohibitably expensive using conventonal building methods. This led me to my second design cue, the Hoberman sphere. If a station were made from nested isododecahedrons, one could conceivable create a large station which would be relatively inexpensive to transport into orbit and deploy and assemble. Once parts of the station were spinning, artificial gravity could be maintained, and other parts of the same station would be unmoving, creating a single station with multiple gravity environments that one could use according to the needs presented. The final station design came as a direct result of this research.
The main goal of this exercise was not to simply design a space station, but to explore the Celestial Harbor Experience from the perspective of Experience Design. This was challenging, as it divorced the concept of Experience Design from standard limitations normally associated with this emerging discipline. This was not designing a tourist eperience, a food experience, hotel, transportation device, research laboratory space, or microgravity playground. It was not one of those things because to some extent, it was all of them, all at once.
This led to the first question: "Who wants to go?" It was no longer acceptable for me to simply raise my hand and say "I would". There needed to be more than one, and I felt confident that I wasn't alone. So the first challenge was do some persona development based upon my research. In the end, I used three personas: Adventurers, StarGazers and Researchers. What was most interesting to me is how these personas intersected and related to each other. With each persona, there are common attributes that bring them together. This is good, because in a space station, everybody is bound to run into each other sooner or later.
From the start, it was my hope that this would not be a single use destination. Disneyland is for amusement only. The Los Alamos National Labratory is only for research, and Broadway is for engaging and involving oneself in artistic performances. What made this project more difficult is that I wanted the Celestial Harbor Experience to encompass all of these aspects of the human experience. My rationale came from the idea of creative cross-fertilization. When very different disciplines intersect, opportunities for "out of the box thinking" abound. The Experience of Celestial Harbor is the creation of the best that Earth has to offer in microchosm.
Secondly, it became evident that an exploration of what kinds of activites could be performed at the Celestial Harbor Experience. The activities needed to answer two distinct challenges. First, that each potential activity would be desired by one or more of the three personas developed for this project. Secondly, the activity has to be unique to, or have be greatly improved by performing this activity in orbit.
Some activities are obvious, such as star gazing, earth gazing and otherwise being blown away by the views from orbit. For some, this makes it worth the trip by itself. The second "obvious" reason is the ability to experience microgravity, or weightlessness. Numerous activities are made possible or are given a very unique twist by the absence of Earth gravity.
As it turns out, there is a wonderful, bizarre, and completely unexpected side effect with emulating gravity through centrifugal force. Putting it simply, gravity isn't seen in binary terms, like "on" or "off", but by degrees. This can be used and exploited for some very interesting opportunities.
Picture an empty cylinder spinning in space. Spinning at the correct speed, you can create the effects of Earth gravity. The formula is fairly straight forward.
Perhaps "straight forward" only works if you had the right math classes in High School. Simply put, the faster the station spins, the stronger the pull on anyone and anything inside the station. The larger the station, the slower the station needs to spin in order to aprroximate the effect of Earth gravity. Note that this is not gravity. It just has a similar effect.
Here's where things get interesting. The closer to the center ofthe revolving sphere, the weaker the centrifugal effect. If the spinning cylander was big enough to allow for multiple floors, the "first" floor, or furthest floor out might have Earth like gravity. The second floor would have 75% Earth gravity. Floor three would have 50%, and so on until you get to the very center of the cylander, where you would have no gravitational effect at all.
What does this mean? Effectively, you could have the gravity of Earth, Mars (33% Earth Gravity) and the Moon (12% Earth gravity) and space (weightless) all in the same place at the same time. How does this affect living on such a station? It gives the opportunity to answer a lot of questions. How would farming work on Mars or the Moon? How about a quick game of basketball with 50% Earth gravity? The possibilities are endless. Better yet, at the end of a long day, you can go to sleep in the comfort of Earth like gravity. You can eat food on a plate when you're tired of chasing after an errant pea. Better yet, unless you want to, you don't need to take all your food from a tube or straw.
Upon conferring with my thesis advisors, we decided that the best audience for this thesis are those who will be the architects and end users of services like the Celestial Harbor Experience. Today they are between the ages of 6-9 years old. With this in mind, I put together a children's book to introduce them to the idea of visiting, working and ultimately living in Earth's orbit, and beyond. Although the end product is a physical book, you can read a digital version of it by clicking on the book graphic to the right.
View the final Prezi! thesis presentation by clicking HERE.
