With Ley taking authoring credit, an instalment titled “A Station in Space” described von Braun’s ideas about a space station, supplemented by lavish illustrations by famed space artist Chesley Bonestell. Central to the article was a wheel-shaped space station designed by von Braun but identical in many critical details to [Slovenian rocket engineer Herman] Potocnik’s, though more than twice as big. Von Braun’s station would be 76 metresin diameter, house 80 crewmen, use solar power collectors along the rim, rotate at 3 rpm to produce artificial gravity . America’s greatest rocket scientist proposed a 76-metre, triple-decked, solar-powered space station, and it would be the equivalent of a giant space-borne inner tube, made of soft, inflatable material, specifically reinforced nylon fabric. The movie gave a big boost to the image of a centrifugal wheel used in a space station.

Source: thestar January 29, 2017 17:01 UTC