NASA has awarded Czech spaceship design
Prague, 13th September 2010 – Young Czech architect Tomáš Rousek has created a new spaceship design for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), that would employ artificial gravity using the rotation of the whole ship. The draft of the rotating spaceship was awarded as the most innovative piece of the “Explore NOW” conference hosted by NASA in August 2010.
The draft has been introduced by the prestigious NewScientist magazine, by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the MSNBC TV-station and many more world media. The rotating spaceship with artificial gravity has been designed by T. Rousek in two variants: with inflatable residential module AG-HAD projected especially for the artificial gravity or the second variant that would use the already existing and functional NODE3 module (Tranquility) of the International Space Station (ISS). The residential module with crew would be connected with the main propulsion section of the spaceship using 150 to 200 meters long Kevlar ropes (Kevlar can be up to 5 times stronger than steel on an equal weight) and both sections would be rotating around each other with the speed of 2 rotations per minute. The use of the NODE3 module proposes a solution what to do with the ISS station at the end of its lifetime in 2020.
“In the past few days, cooperation has been negotiated between the architect Tomáš Rousek, and his company A-ETC, and the Czech Space Office. Within this cooperation we will be coordinating educational and popularization activities focused on the new visions of astronautics like the above mentioned designs of new spacecraft with artificial intelligence,” adds Milan Halousek, Czech Space Office.
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The architectural project AG-NEO (Artificial Gravity Mission to Near Earth Object), from which the architectural proposal of the Czech architect has originated, is a part of a broader research of the artificial gravity called “Artificial Gravity System Concepts”. The set of seven new generation designs of spacecraft, which emerged from this research, has been taken into the NASA’s new Space Technology Roadmap (STR).
The architect Tomáš Rousek, focusing on space architecture and design, works as the director of the renowned international architectural company A-ETC. He is the graduate of the Faculty of architecture, Czech Technological University (Fakulta architektury ČVUT Praha), and International Space University in Strasbourg, where he has been given a stipendium form the European Space Agency (ESA). They, along with his colleague Ing. arch. Ondřej Doule, are going to be presenting two new projects, a SinterHab lunar module and an orbital hotel Omicron, at the International Astronautical Congress IAC2010 that is going to be held in Prague in the end of September 2010. Both of them are also the organizers of the public lecture “ALITER II – SpaceArchitect.cz” about space architecture that is going to take place in Veletržní palace on 30th September 2010. This lecture is a continuation of the international cycle of lectures and is focused on space architecture ALITER, which started this summer in Valencia.