Scale of Space Structures

With the introduction of the Falcon IX, I have been thinking about how large standard structures will be on orbit.   The Falcon IX heavy appears to be aimed at the Bigelow Aerospace BA-330 space station module, which will expand to about 7 meters diameter and 14 meters in length.   (I note that, as drawn, the Falcon IX heavy has a payload fairing that is insufficiently long to accomodate a BA-330 space station module, but I guess SpaceX will design a special fairing for Bigelow.)

SpaceX has stated that its ultimate goal is to build a Saturn V-class rocket.  Along these lines, the National Air and Space Museum here in Washington has the spare copy of Skylab, which was launched in 1973 atop a Saturn V rocket.  In person, the Skylab space station module seems pretty big.  Impressive.   Skylab had a diameter of 6.5 meters and length of 36 meters, or about twice as long as the BA-330, but of roughly equal diameter.  If Bigelow were putting up a station module on a Saturn V, he could expand the module to about 13 meters diameter, or 4 times bigger in volume than Skylab.  I'm sure that it would appear quite large to the eye.  Bigelow should do a mock-up of such a structure to impress everybody.

Indeed you might not be able to fit such a module into the Air and Space museum, which is a real shame.  It's a pity that the museum is not large enough to accomodate an old Saturn V indoors as well, even though the museum opened after the Apollo era.  Why didn't they just build a basement for it under the mall?

Comments

[Norden]

Here's

http://spacebombardment.blogspot.com/2005/09/ship-designs-compared.html

a size comparison chart that includes the larger Amrican designs.

[Daniel Schmelzer]

That's a really cool chart! I especially like the charting of the 2001 structures. See a previous post about the lack of fluffiness in these imagined space structures.

http://carriedaway.blogs.com/carried_away/2005/03/2001_where_are_.html

Another interesting thing about the chart is that few people are imagining modular space structures, even though space is the perfect place in which to take advantage of modularity. I guess we can only ask for so much imagination. ;-)