(Not) Space Habitats

When it comes to permanently living in space, there are three possibilities: a torus, a sphere, or a cylinder.

Wheel-shaped space stations were first proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1903 and were popularized by Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley in the 1950s. These space stations are known as von Braun wheels. However, they were designed for only temporary occupancy. A permanent wheel-shaped space colony (including spokes) was designed at Stanford University in 1975 during a NASA Summer Study. This design came to be known as the Stanford torus. Other proposals for toroidal space habitats include the Niven ring (or ringworld), the Bishop ring, Halo arrays, and the Dyson ring.

The first spherical space habitat was proposed by John Bernal in 1929. His design, which is now called a Bernal sphere, comprised a non-rotating hollow sphere filled with air. Other proposals for spherical space habitats include bubbleworlds, asteroid terrariums, and a variation of the Dyson sphere.

Cylindrical space stations were the most recent to be conceptualized. The first proposal was made by Hermann Oberth in 1954. In 1976, Gerard O'Neill proposed what is now called an O'Neill Cylinder. It actually consists of two cylinders rotating in opposite directions to cancel out any gyroscopic effects.

I asked Stable Diffusion to draw these different types of space habitat. It didn't understand any the terms.

(Not) Sphere Habitats