Orbital Settlement Design: Reformulating Recommendations for Planned Living Space within a Selfsufficient Habitat

Sustaining permanent human presence in outer space has become a goal of great technological, scientific, economic, nationalistic, and ideological interest in the last half-century. Space settlement potentialized a paradigm shift in humanity’s energy harvesting practices, renewable resource markets, and sociological and physiological evolution. Recent innovation in space construction and manufacturing makes feasible the concept of an orbital free-space settlement that would support thousands of lives as a permanent habitat.

This thesis re-evaluates the free-space habitat design choices jointly proposed by NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University multi-disciplinarians in their 1977 Space Settlement Design Report. Recommendations for determining space allocation per settler, diversification of space-use in residential and commercial zones, and modular construction techniques are put forth to reflect over 50 years’ worth of advancements across several fields. The literature suggests that optimal spatial delegation is highly dependent on settler composition, land use interweaving, and co-location of essential facilities in a polycentric urban design. It also finds that prefabricated structural frame components could offer relatively unsupervised building-design autonomy to settlers within the constraints of pre-planned mobility corridors and public spaces. Although this thesis does not examine the specific political or financial complications of orbital settlement development, the ramifications of sponsorship on urban design within the habitat is explored as a means for defining the scope of the recommendations. Additionally, more in-situ, experimental research is necessary to measure the psychological response to extended stays in extraterrestrial habitats, which is critical for planning a healthy and sustainable orbital city.

Yuchen Chai

Thesis Advisor: Siqi Zheng