A member of the British Interplanetary Society, Jerry Stone, said that in 20 years a project will be implemented to create a megalopolis spaceship in Earth's orbit that can accommodate up to 10 million people.
According to him, the idea of creating a colony in near-earth space appeared in the 1970s in the United States. Then the students of Princeton University, at the request of Professor Gerard O'Neill, developed several projects of a huge spacecraft, but the ideas remained only on paper. Now the initiative has been taken over by the British Interplanetary Society.
Jerry Stone notes that according to the project, the ship will be a cylindrical structure with a diameter of about 6.5 km and a length of 32 km, inside which there will be residential and office buildings. It also provides for the creation of artificial gravity, ecosystems, life support systems, in particular - the cultivation of crops.
“If you tackle the issue now, it will be more effective than in the 1970s. That's why I launched a project in the British Interplanetary Society,”says the scientist.
Note that one of the main tasks of the colonists can be the construction and maintenance of solar panels. The energy collected in this way will be transmitted to the Earth.
If the construction of the station begins in 10 years, then it can be completed in 2037. However, the orbital colony project has not yet been formally considered.