McKendree cylinder
Encyclopedia
A McKendree cylinder is a type of hypothetical rotating space habitat
originally proposed at NASA's Turning Goals into Reality conference in 2000 by NASA engineer Tom McKendree. As with other space habitat designs, the cylinder would spin to produce artificial gravity
by way of centrifugal force. The design differs from the classical designs produced in the 1970s by Gerard K. O'Neill and NASA in that it would use carbon nanotubes instead of steel, allowing the habitat to be built much larger. In the original proposal, the habitat would consist of two cylinders approximately 460 km (290 mi) in radius and 4600 km (2900 mi) in length, containing 13 million square kilometers (5.1 million square miles) of living space, nearly as much area as the nation of Russia
.
As originally proposed, the McKendree cylinder is simply a scaled-up version of the O'Neill cylinder
. Like the O'Neill cylinder, McKendree proposed dedicating half of the surface of the colony to windows, allowing direct illumination of the interior. The habitat would be composed of a pair of counter-rotating cylinders which would function like momentum wheels to control the habitat's orientation.
Space habitat
A space habitat is a space station intended as a permanent settlement rather than as a simple waystation or other specialized facility...
originally proposed at NASA's Turning Goals into Reality conference in 2000 by NASA engineer Tom McKendree. As with other space habitat designs, the cylinder would spin to produce artificial gravity
Artificial gravity
Artificial gravity is the varying of apparent gravity via artificial means, particularly in space, but also on the Earth...
by way of centrifugal force. The design differs from the classical designs produced in the 1970s by Gerard K. O'Neill and NASA in that it would use carbon nanotubes instead of steel, allowing the habitat to be built much larger. In the original proposal, the habitat would consist of two cylinders approximately 460 km (290 mi) in radius and 4600 km (2900 mi) in length, containing 13 million square kilometers (5.1 million square miles) of living space, nearly as much area as the nation of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
.
As originally proposed, the McKendree cylinder is simply a scaled-up version of the O'Neill cylinder
Island Three
The O'Neill cylinder is a space settlement design proposed by American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space....
. Like the O'Neill cylinder, McKendree proposed dedicating half of the surface of the colony to windows, allowing direct illumination of the interior. The habitat would be composed of a pair of counter-rotating cylinders which would function like momentum wheels to control the habitat's orientation.
McKendree cylinders in fiction
- McKendree Cylinders are a type of habitat in the fictional universe of the Orion's Arm world-building project, but scaled up to the theoretical limits of carbon nanotubes: 1000 km in radius and 10,000 km long, containing 63 million square kilometers (24 million square miles) of living space — greater than the continent of EurasiaEurasiaEurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
.