I’ve seen a lot of sci-fi, and they always have plenty of room on their ships. Yeah, apparently they’ve all overcome the weight problem because they’re all swanning around on ships that have massive corridors- big enough for several people to walk side-by-side- and the bridge area is always this absolutely massive room, like it was designed for people to entertain themselves on long voyages by playing golf or hosting gymnastics tournaments.
I know real ships right now are more cramped, but when we blast off to go and live in our glorious moon kingdom then I’m thinking sci-fi is the ‘gold standard’. We want luxury, in space. Sweeping marble floors, elegant glass balustrading all around the domes…but the problem there is material. It’s been made very clear at the meetings that glass balustrading is important for morale and establishing a tone. “The domes will be glass, so let’s make all the balustrading glass as well!” I’m happy to design such a thing, being something of an architect in my spare time, but I’m looking at the calculations for weight and I’m just wondering…where’s all this glass going to go? I’m wondering more than that, actually. Leaving aside the balustrading, do we seriously have the weight requirements to create several massive domes with glass as thick as a person’s height? And how are we going to fashion the glass once we get there? And…okay, this is a lot of questions, but when we’re on the moon and we have an issue with the dome, we can’t just call a commercial glazier; that’ll be several thousand miles down below.
I’m NOT questioning the great and glorious goal, not at all! Just saying, we need more preparation. There are grand steps that need to be taken before we can even start thinking about the finer details. For starters, we’re going to need bigger boosters to break through the atmosphere. Maybe we can hold off on the new glass balustrading for now.