Torus shaped Space Station construction video
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- Опубліковано 1 тра 2022
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• We could build this hu...
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Hello everyone! Nice to hear such broad support and enthusiasm for this amazing space station and the Sargon Systems that will build it.
Number one: How will the Sargon Construction Ring (CR) get out of the way as it nears completion of the torus? As Sargon reaches a point where about 10 Panel Rings are left, we extricate the machine from the construct (the torus) and produce the final "wedge" of rings ( all one piece, like a pie wedge) and insert it into the gap where a special weld ring of vertical EB welders will weld it into place. The Sargon CR will then start creating another Torus, and the special vertical seam welder inside the torus will be dismantled and removed so it can be used again to complete the next torus.
Answer two is about concerns for funding this venture: How will Offworld Industries with our big ambitions build VERA Station and develop all of the needed equipment to build it?
We plan to create an entire video outlining our intentions to acquire the needed funding. However, I will tell you about a few important items that will be in the video right now.
There is an old motto in business that is still true: First, you crawl. Then you walk. Then you run.
First, we will build a ground demonstrator to show our investors how we can weld panels in an automated fashion in a vacuum chamber. This is very affordable and will retire a lot of risk.
Second, we will build a scaled-down version of Sargon to create a "tube" in orbit made of welded panels. After we make the tube we will weld in place spherical end caps and pressurize it. One of the end caps will have an airlock built into it. The other end cap will have a docking port.
Do you see what we just made? The first habitable module made offworld in history. Investors like to make history!
BTW, this will be made by an 8m Sargon construction ring (CR) that will later be used to create the elevator shafts for VERA Station. 8m is the maximum size we can fit into a Starship fairing without dismantling it.
After that, we use our new module to house workers who will build, first, the big 24m Sargon CR, and then use it to build the Inner Torus. The Inner Torus can hold hundreds of people comfortably; workers and paying guests. This will allow us to generate revenue before First Rotation of the full VERA Station. After the Inner Torus is done, we build the Hub, elevator shafts, and the Outer Torus, then spin it up (lunar gravity).
Welding:
Our research showed us that each 2m weld made by the EB welders would require 5-6 Mega Joules of energy (12MJ per panel). For reference, a Tesla Power Wall unit has 179 MJ/cubic meter of energy(that's 15 panels). Those huge batteries over the panel magazines are about 20 times larger than a Power Wall. We expect the batteries (there are 32 of them) to last until the Inner Torus is 1/2 complete before they need a recharge. For your information, EB welding is very efficient compared to other types of welding.
This first station will take us years to build because we will be learning a lot. But the second one will take only months, and the third one, only weeks. - JB
Thanks for the update. I have a few more questions:
1st: Why use batteries to power the equipment instead of solar panels or a least a combination of both? The station needs those PV-Panels anyway. In a sun synchroniouis orbit i dont see the point for batteries when having a almost constant consumption.
2nd: I see the panels have an integrated Whipple shield. But how is cooling archieved on the hot side that faces the sun? Shall these wall panels have intergrated cooling using ammonia?
3rd. I have thought a lot about welding / cutting (for repair) metal in space. I read that electron beam welding aluminum in space can result in problematic material properties near the weld. Can you give me a literatury porposal to dive in deeper into this topic? I do not know electron welding very well.
4th do you have any plans for a community forum for Crew Members?
@@TheGatewaySpaceport The last question is the most important: will there be a forum for crew members to discuss design etc.?
@@johgude5045 Yes, for Crew. But we would need to have moderators for that. I am too busy. Are you Crew?
@@TheGatewaySpaceport I would help to moderate the Forum :)
A few observations: 1. You can ship the Sargon ring folded and use an inflatable structure to unfold it, to avoid fairing limitations. 2. Patrick Colvin's observation about building in two separate halves and joining them is a good one. 3. The magazine size needs to be harmonized better to the ring size (ex. if you make it 12, 84 ring segments/12 panels per magazine = 7 reloads). 4. You can reload all the magazines simultaneously if you inflate a structure that holds them, like a revolver speed loader and push all 32 into the open magazines at once. 5. The fewer reloads, the better for process efficiency. 6. Consider shipping a gigantic pre-loaded magazine set and not reloading at all, as long as the inner ring clearance permits it to be long enough; that's 0 reloads. 7. There's a real argument for not welding at all, instead using a folded fabric torus with the panels joined on to it and inflating it in orbit, at least for the inner ring; it's not as rigid and changes the design, but reduces in-orbit operational complexity (0 reloads and 0 welds); you get a habitable structure very quickly and you can still have a machine crawl along the outside using the attachment points and add welds later if needed. 8. Ignore the haters; most people have no idea how innovation works ;)
Congratulations to the graphic-designer for portraying the thrusters as rays of light instead of the ubiquitous billowy plumes that are only seen in an atmosphere but nevertheless abound in sci-fi films and animations. Didn't quite get the same high standard for the welding sparks though. Great work overall! 🙂
Im thinking this is more just for the general public to get an idea of what they are planning and not exactly the actual physics simulations
The sparks got me too...
@@coreytaylor5386 there's nothing wrong with constructive criticism, especially on a detail oriented presentation.
Thunderf00t 😂😂
Those magazines are small, holding a limited number of panels each. It's going to take an awful lot of SpaceX Starship launches, practically every few hours to keep that thing fed. Unless that magazines are going to have higher capacity...
I don't know... We'll see how it goes.
Good luck. I'll continue watching you guys and hope for the best.
Did a little counting, the torus has 70 rings (inner torus). Each magazine seems to hold nine panels. So that would be 8 refillings (Not sure how many could fit in starship, for now assume 8 launches?). Not unmanageable, after all many of the panels could be sent up in advance.
Lots of other problems they would need to work out (largest of all they don't have nearly enough money), but I don't think that the magazine size would be an inhibitor.
Well if Elon Musk follows through on a cost of 2m per launch to LEO this thing would be cheaper to construct than a modern Skyscraper here on the surface by far, especially with repeated use of the construction ring.
@@ericshetka3655 when has Elon musk ever realistically followed through on any promise he's made?
This is a fantasy animation with zero chance of being reality in the next 20+ years - the company is just a pointless ponzi.
Just doing some basic maths you can see there is 1500+ panels, you'd have to have a 100% success rate for about 200 launches full of panels
So you've spent 400m dollars on getting panels to space, just getting them there.. let alone the cost of actually manufacturing them, packaging them for launch, building a machine to construct the Taurus in orbit..
The cost is astronomical, quite literally, There is no way in ANY conceivable future that it would be cheaper to build in orbit than on earth.. you need to pull yourself out of sci-fi fantasy..
@@sonacphotos Probably not as low as 2M but wayyyyy cheaper than Falcon 9. Not throwing away any upper stages like F9 does
Many people will be skeptical until they see some working prototypes.
The assembly machine is HUGE. Will take time to assemble it and alot of spacewalks. How is it powered? How will the last ring segment get into position? Fancy graphics and big dreams are not enough, a solid plan and some realism is much better ;)
Have you seen this: ua-cam.com/video/s-XlWP4Q4Ds/v-deo.html
@@TheGatewaySpaceport 1:00 Driving a forklift in LEO. Sign me up!
@ Hardly a dream, my degree is in engineering. This fellow has it right. Just a matter of funding and construction.
@Zack Smith Your claim requires evidence on your part, not mine. The mathematics are on his side, as is your necessity to prove me wrong.
So, as a summary, basically you removed all but three videos from channel, you have never shown anything but nice renders and ideas, but you still sell memberships and ask us to trust you ! So far, so good !
How would you prove this right now? It requires starship and funding first.
Im so excited!!!!
The music explains so much. What wonderful narrative!
How do you weld the last torus ring? Should we think about a large door to enter/exit large parts? Maybe people working on submarines can tell us about how to enter/exit large equipment from their hule.
Hull, stupid.
I'm also wondering this. I think it may be best to use these machines to build sections and create a different machine to join the sections.
@@ericchin739 Maybe this company won't be successful, although I wouldn't totally just write them off, but this basic concept is probably pretty similar to how these sorts of things actually end up getting built.
I spoke with a friend in aerospace who's gotten welds certified for space before. While she thought the idea of Sargon was cool in principle, she's not confident a single pass by a robot would be anywhere near safe enough for this scale of project on a human-rated vessel.
That could be what they mean by "the first one will take years." When every technique is experimental, it's impossible to have routine ones.
That's what I was thiniking as well
Perhaps we could have people operate the welding equipment remotely, the x-ray emissions from the electron beam welding could facilitate real time imaging of the weld.
it would be great if we could spray some kind of nano foam that rewires the molecular bonded lattice structure of the metal to sort of cold weld, very slow but very strong as if one piece and durable for it then could self-repair in the future...
@@beire1569 Interesting suggestion. Does stuff like that even exist?
I think I'd start by launching just one of the 32 magazine/assembler/welder builder segments of the full Sargon, and build each hab ring by working that single builder around the ring. Each ring segment is slightly different due to taper, but something more like a 3D printer gantry could follow the appropriate trapezoidal plate weld with a single welder head. This would also give you lots of space to dock to the material tree, and add the heat radiators and comms and everything else needed in a real system. Once a single builder is flight proven, you can increase the production rate by adding builders working independently before it makes sense to link them together into a full ring.
Certainly going to be a big job designing and testing all the systems needed to run such a automated assembler unit. But i think Elon Musk has been quite inspiring with the work hes done with space X. I could see these assemblers going through design iterations quite quickly when starship ( or maybe we should start calling it ''StartShip'') finally gets up and flying like Falcon. The tapering should not matter as long as the welder head has enough space to move in, much like a router would, but then in a curved plane. Will be great to see how they design it since the carry rails for the welder head has to be able to curve dynamically in one plane. A job a simple robot arm in any assembly plant is more then capable to fulfill. In the end its building tunnels in space. just without dirt and a bore and such. ^^
@@willemdewilde1735 As I understand it, metals in space have a tendency to cold weld together, that might be a real problem to deal with?
Thank you once more. It's the videos of your dreams that keep our hearts filled with excitement. Let's hope one day they can become true.
You may have just reinvented the Wheel. Well Done!
How does the station assembling machine handle completing the torus. Wouldn’t it be like a ring around another ring? Does the assembler come apart to free itself from the torus shaped station?
I think, it has to separate itself from the Torus before it reaches the already assembled begining of the torus. So a slice of the Torus will remin open. But i don see a issue with the Sargon- assembler building that specific slice separate. And than slice and Torus are assembled together by more "Manual" /conventional means, manipulated in Position by the spacetugs they show in the video (spot welded a couple of points to keep it together?!) and the final welding need to be performed by a diffrent, smaller unit that can operate from within the Torus. I think its feasable but adding complexity to the operation.
But you hit a very important point that should be clarified and demonstrated to future investors. And i also think this point will impact the use case for the Sargon-Assembler, cause I think there will be a minimum viable Torus size to make Sargon effective.
Exactly. This is what I was thinking as well. Also, the act of putting in the last ring. Many potential problems there not explained. Unless I missed it.
@@SG-xi5dx The assembly machines works very similar to the non-cutting face of a tunnel boring machine, fitting pre-made panels along the tunnel wall as the machine advances. the video misses out on the huge amount of work to fit out the interior and I don't see crews being happy about no airtight partitions. I suspect they have to insulate the against radiation as well and how does this thing dump heat?
It looks like a bracelet to me, so I imagine it would work the same way. Just an assumption though without anything to back it.
@@Colinpark In the previous video they show the panels have built in insulation or a water shield.
Regarding the interior fitting, there's nothing truly groundbreaking necessary, just another part of the logistical nightmare they have to solve. I guess some part of it will have to be done before the initial spin, or maybe not if existing tools and methods work better with some amount of gravity. Then you have a pressurized space where you can work
Suggest you do a live chat upcoming for all the great questions being asked. It's an interesting approach I hope you succeed with.
This thing looks almost exactly like the model of a space habitat I made for my first verbal presentation in 6th Grade Language Arts back in the late '80s! Super excited :)... My question is based on the artwork looks like there are 6 to 8 planned decks in the outer Taurus, so is each deck independently sealed, and what is the planned ceiling height? I would think that in simulated Lunar Gravity conditions a safe ceiling height would be 13 to 15 feet...
Unless you wear lead shoes lol
Hello Gateway Spaceport, 👍🏻👍🏻! This is indeed fabulous but however, I (& hopefully many others) wanna see this VERA one & Voyager built and Sooner the better‼️ BECAUSE once things actually start getting built old people will shush up with comments like"THAT FRIVOLOUS FANTASY NONSENSE" etc etc And Start taking the Space Industry seriously.
oh fyi Congratulation & many thanks too the Graphics artist and everyone at this Company. + also @Elonmusk & @spaceX whom without them and their Starship / Starship2.0 freight ship making such projects possible
100%USA
Keep up the great Work 😊
Very cool! I want to be there...
That is cool!
very tantalizing. great music too!
Just keeps getting better and better. I'm very impressed which isn't easy can't wait to see what happens next!!!
this is a really cool station concept and I really hope its gonna get build
cool stuff
Die fertige Station könnte dann das Gerüst für einen noch größeren Space-Drucker sein, usw, usw..Fractale Bauweise und die Natur als Vorbild.
I wish you guys all the best with your vision
Appreciate the graphics and plain terms used to describe something very complex.
Nice video. Now get to it!!!😁
love to see it happen, wish I could be one of them
God I love advanced tech.
@@buddyleestryker I know it's a digital description. But it's what we want to make and can make happen. Look up the realistic latest tech for every part of life. You'll see.
Nice CGI. What about the real world? Plans, partners, budget, timeline, prototypes, dates, etc?
Looking great. How are you going to control the orbit during construction. Would love to see this asap.
Looks cool, nice video.... need wayyyy better music though. Need to engage your audience, not make them want to mute the sound.
great concept
Sweet jams
This is INSPIRING!! 😁❤️🔥❤️🔥
This has a lot of potential, I suppose the first step would be a small prototype sent to space as proof of concept.
@@grantadamson3478 I’m not sure how this is surprising, at some point someone needed to start thinking on how to simplify such complex construction process. If you have better ideas, then please I am interested.
Be great to see when it's actually finished :)
I love
After the initial framework of the station is complete, as shown in the video, what length of time is expected to furnished the interior and make it habitable?
First thing, these guys need a billionaire backer to give prestige to the project. Hopefully, that will happen soon. This is very cool.
I would love to work there once its up and running!!! Im in the food industry i wanna be a part of it
You should upgrade your intro sound... its kinda 80's...
So true.
Elon Musk should be investing into this, not Twitter in my opinion. I pray this becomes a reality 🤞🙏.
You dumb? He is working w them, starship is from SpaceX
Elon Musk IS investing in this project by promising 2m dollar launch costs per Starship to LEO, at that price slapping up a VERA Station would be cheaper than building a Skyscraper on the surface.
The last section or maybe the last few would have to be manually fixed but I’m sure nasa could get some good welders for that bit
It will need propulsion during the construction phase to maintain the appropriate orbit
Wow that’s incredible! Hope this happens and Elon is watching.
Dune: "Beginning is a very delicate time" Where these 4 arms capsules reload their carburant? And where their pilots live? Do we need a vera ground zero station to start vera 1? The ISS?
You better call that station Laplace.
Those tiles look like they interlock. How do you replace a damaged tile in the completed torus?
go boys
Nice concept and video. Only next time get a better soundtrack.
What is the advantage of using thrusters to shuttle heavy stacks of metal back and forth vs something like a canadarm which uses no propellant?
very good point. there could be one arm docking the whole Material "Tree"to the "Sargon" assembly platform and another to put the panels to the station
how are you going to create the breathing atmosphere for astronauts inside that huge module?
I like the one idea i saw about taking a bunch of starships specially made for turning into a space station, and connecting them into a station with multiple spin gravity zones.
I love the design of the production line and the centrifugal gravity effect. Although i would suggest you delve into asteroid mining as a source of resources
I'm pretty sure asteroid mining would be the eventual goal as far as resources are concerned. The trick is that harvesting those resources from asteroids, not to mention processing them into a usable form, will require at least a minimal amount of infrastructure already established in orbit.
That said, the appeal I see with a design like this, is that it can be the basis for that infrastructure. It's a simple, functional design that can be tailored to whatever you need at the time of construction.
So, yeah, for the first few stations, all of the parts and pieces will need to be built planetside and then shipped upward...but once we get a foothold up there in orbit, then things can start to become much easier.
How many tons has "sargon" to be brought in what orbit by how many rockets in what time by what costs!
Where are the solar panels (or will there be a nuclear reactor, or two - for redundancy) and heat radiators located?
Wouldn't it be more efficient to load the assembly ring from the top and not the rear as shown at 1.00 minute in? This way the assembly ring could be reloaded before a "magazine" was empty? The battery could be relocated to where the magazine is currently reloaded in the rear?
The music used is kind of a bop. Can we get the name or source?
I feel very passionate towards the development of your projects, have been keeping an eye on what you put out since I believe 2017 or so. I'm curious to see where the rebranding and rebooting of the channel goes. I know there are many obstacles yet to be overcome and many problems and questions that will need solved and answered before any of this becomes a reality, many individuals with those said questions may doubt your company's promise to deliver; I do believe however that it's ideas and propositions like these that we need in order progress forward into space and overall as a civilization. I look forward to the day that you complete your first space station, and I personally would somehow love to get involved in helping make these aspirations a reality someday (if you need a guy, I'd love to get one board with the project in whatever capacity needed). I'd actually love to invest in some stock in your company if possible some time soon so I can provide support (and when y'all get big and your projects are successful, maybe be able to profit myself a little bit :P ).
I know it'll take some time, but you guys got this! You have my support.
*Music:* Mr. Newman by Mikael Manvelyan
@@The_Isaiahnator Thank you!
How would it align and weld the final panel in the torus?
There'll be enough play in a structure that large that you'll have to have some mechanism to spread/pull the 99% complete torus for that final weld.
Zero gravity means the only torque would come from the slightly different orbital velocity of parts that are scores of meters apart.
Yea, you have to account for all your tolerances stacking up at the last joint, plus the thermal expansion and true shape of the incomplete torus.
can I be in the constructor vehicle with the arms and just haul materials back and forth? reminds me of a forklift in space!
Why would you use those pods that have to use RCS to fly around when you can dock the "tree" to the builder and use a robotic arm to load the tiles in?
Spacex can get the payload exactly where needed. I don't think you need a slow transport but a hopper style drop point. Simple is the way.
Can they be linked together, creating a larger structure, lengthwise
I like where your mind is on that one, actually two of these tethered together on the central hub counter rotating in opposite directions would have have less "lateral" wabble but it isn't necessary, there is a non zero chance one of these by itself does a wired flip every couple of years or so that might make people inside fall down and stuff fall of of shelves, etc.
when fabricating in space, couldn't you just shave off the oxidized layer and stick together the metal plates and let them cold weld together without needing a welding torch?
So inspired by all your doing. Wish you were starting construction today.
Where is the power source? How are you going to control the gravity fluctuations during the build, and after completion?
Is there a working prototype for the automatic drone?? And has it already been tested directly in Space environment?? Assuming it's unmanned and can be remotely controlled from Earth ground stations
What altitude is this? What's the drag coefficient of the station, how does it handle maintenance of orbit/boosts? On the subject of stationkeeping, how does it compensate for rotation caused by construction (in order to still be able to dock)
Could you use cold welding? Just by touching the panels together?
i think they do not want to rely on cold welding, but support it with electron beam welding which has very deep penetration. Also EB welding can be taylored very well for specific application. Better than laser welding for example. Plus it seems to have better energy efficiency compared to laser and ARC welding
this looks great but i think replacing the free flying drones with robot arms like the ones on the iss reduces complexity a bunch! Starship launches, a transfer vehicle docks, the arms empties it and it goes back to starship for landing, rince and repeat.
How do you weld the last few rows as the machine would be in the way? Manual?
Obviously materials are going to be needed so would it be cheaper to source them out of Earth's gravity well or use the asteroid belt? I suggest looking at it from something small going out to the asteroid belt and building initial there. The main issue I sense there is having enough sensor tech to determine which asteroids are needed to build things. Production at the source and slow move back to optimal useful orbits around the Earth.
A much better solution imo would be inflatable torus modules (one segment pr. Starship) with outer and inner straps for a rigid metal skeleton. Build a modular tyre, stabilize with metalbars and cables, finally welt plates in a 3 layered hull.
That would be quite possible for sealing and insulating the interior.
how do you finish the last panel row?
technological readiness must be demonstrated. how do you deal with wayward droplets of liquid metal, when welding in space?
if i had a billion dollars, what could you deliver in 30 days or less?
Electric arc welding need a bunch of current. Any details on where to get the power from to recharge batteries an what welding machines will look like??
How about printing the torus?
The additive welder would work around the torus cross-section.
Seems to me you avoided explaining how the "end condition" is overcome, when the last section must be assembled, but the machine no longer fits between the two closing sides? I'm thinking that you would have to build this in at least two pieces and then weld the two pieces together.
This is the way.
Anyone getting space Odyssey vibes
Nice but how will it do the last few rings
Instead of having like 25 of the welding robots, would it be possible to have just one and make it move on a circular rail? Maybe it would have to reconfigure the welding width because the panels don't have the same width.
In their other video they explain its intended to make many of these stations. Additionally each of those boxes accept a differently shaped panel to fully form the torus shape. And finally making moving parts in space is best to be avoided given if you move the assembler head one way, the rest of the station rotates the other. Enough of that and you end up with bent panels, rails, and a slowing spinning station.
@@mrsuper7484 Yeah it's true but what I was thinking is that they install the panels one at a time, so there's no need for those 25 robots. Regarding the shape, yes indeed they would be slightly different so maybe it wouldn't be feasable. if it's feasable perhaps it would be worth it, it depends on the cost of the welding robots. If they're relatively inexpensive perhaps it's better to keep it simple and use the 25 robots design.
What happened to all the sweet old videos dudes?
How to you close it and remove the machine? maybe a helix design?
So after you build the technology, it will take VERA a year to build the station in space.
How long before you build the technology and the prototype, can you give a date for the prototype completion on earth?
Damn but I want to see this happen in my lifetime.
Hmmm. What happens to the carousel when the last segment is installed?
How does the structure get filled with breathable air?
you have to build the Sargon construction ring first, how long will that take? and how much money would you need to construct such a facility? then we have to worry about the internal structures, to ensure that Vera doesn't fall in on itself.
It’s shape should give itself strength
The tunnel boring and building industry has been around for years. Thus the machinery and technology needed to build tunnels on earth had to slowly evolve to meet safety and efficiency requirements to keep up with the demand we see now days. I cant see how this concept of construction in SPACE will replace the R and D time frames needed for all the Game Changing Endeavors mankind has faced to make what we call history the reality we all know today as the modern world. I get the feeling from the Video that SPACE is going to fix all of mankind's criminal pastimes as well. And enhance all our virtues at the same time as well. A lot easier to get rid of a body in Space as they say. haha Oh by the way I do like the IDEA though.
I wish you had enough budget to implement at least a part of the design and see how it would work in space, starting with a very small, scaled version of it. then, that would be your showcase to get more investors. I mean, I think you need to show ppl stg that works. does it make sense? when there is an awesome design solution like this, I always remember the Nikola case vs Tesla.
How would the ircle be completed without trapping the machine that builds it in a circle like chain link?
The internal floors construction was hand waived away
Which level of VERA will be at moon gravity? The outer ring or the inner? These things vary with the distance from the axis of rotation.
Show us your talks/agreements/contracts with SpaceX. A decade and all you have is a UPS Store box in California.
im curious about how they will acquire the funding?
yep, but the real issue is to mantain the rotation speed, and psition with people walking aroeund and changing de mass of the structure as the irregular weight en different points of the taurus ring
Disney star port!!!
With weightlessness in space can each of the panels be built larger making the day one to completion time less. There would be less weld start and stop points. Reducing the over all weld time. Larger panels would reduce the over all work load of the shuttle material feeder. by reducing the amount of trips needed to restock. Having longer non stop welding runs would reduce the chances of a possible faulty weld spot.
This could how ever impact the structural strength with having larger panels I would assume. Because it's being built in space it seams that the over structure integrity would apply primarily for the protection of space projectiles
And space junk
I'm in full support in having a rotating station, but somehow, welding in the vacuum of space doesn't seem very reasonable, especially those thousands of tiny droplets being ejected into space at 27.000 Kph. Why don't we start here on the surface first and start by trying to understand what gravity "is" in first place? I would suggest we begin by rotating the Michelson-Morley Interferometer VERTICALLY first.
Welding in Space has been a proven tech since the 1960s the trick is the welds cool in a different pattern in zero gravity.