C. Space Station Architecture In a paper by Dr. Giuseppe Colombo et al., the use of multiple tethers and platforms made of connected tanks is suggested as a way to fly a space station (56). The suggestion is to construct massive platforms so as to minimize the cross sectional area into the ’wind*. The tasks performed on the different platforms can be designed to take advantage of the separation of the two units. For example, the top platform can fuel and service OTVs, launch satellites to higher orbits, conduct scientific observations higher above the atmosphere than the lower platform. The lower platform can conduct operations that tend to contaminate the environment around the station such as materials processing, tank stripping, disassembly, cutting, and melting. Because it is lower in altitude and inside more of the upper atmosphere, emissions at this level will not pollute the upper level and will reenter the atmosphere sooner (15). A lower level would also be the location of a orbiter retrieval and payload reentry operation. The space equivalent of an elevator would operate between the two levels. There would be low gravity at both levels, so any applications that require zero gravity would need to be conducted at a separate station or at the center of mass of the station. A typical schematic is detailed below. An additional space station architectural application would be to use a rotating station to induce artificial gravity for the station crew (14, 89). This would be advantageous in the preparing the crew for the gravities on the moon, Mars, or elsewhere. Additionally, the spinning ET based station is easy to construct, structurally sound, and capable of stopping the deterioration of the human body under weightlessness if the gravity level induced is high enough. VI. Miscellaneous There are additional tether related uses that are farther from realization. These include the use of the ET as a landing module deposited on the surface of the moon or Mars from the tip of a rotating tether (14). The concept is to use the momentum transfer to kill most or all of the velocity differential between the ET and the surface and load the ET with whatever is required for the lunar or Martian base. An additional tether use would be the
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