Stations in Space

An aircraft carrier is a ship which acts as a floating aerodrome. Space-craft, too, will need something like this in order to re-fuel and travel away on their long flights without coming back to earth. But there would be other uses for a space-station.

It could not stand still because the earth's gravity would pull it down. It would have to revolve around the earth just like the moon or an artificial satellite. 

One suggestion is that it should be shaped like a wheel, about two hundred and fifty feet in diameter. 

Another kind of platform in space was proposed by an Austrian engineer. It was to revolve much farther away from the earth, at over twenty thousand miles, where its speed would just match the speed of the earth's rotation. This would make it appear in a fixed position above one part of the earth like a star which always remains overhead. 

There are very many difficult problems connected with the building of space-platforms of this kind, especially if they are designed to be occupied by human beings for periods of weeks or months. It seems very likely that the fully equipped space-station is some­thing which lies in the distant future. The smaller unmanned satellite will probably serve many of our purposes for a long time to come.