What will life be like in the space city?

In the 1970s and 1980s, the space station of the former Soviet Union not only set a world record for astronauts to live and work in space for 439 days, but also further proved that human beings can use the special environment of space to set up workshops and factories to produce drugs, crystals and super-light materials that are difficult to manufacture on earth, and can use the space station to inspect and repair satellites and spacecraft, as well as effectively observe astronomy and the earth. More importantly, the space station also shows great military potential as a space weapon testing ground, logistics base, command center and weapon launching pad for long-term military reconnaissance.

With the development of space technology, human beings are not satisfied. Once a large space station can be built for a dozen or even dozens of people to live and work for a long time, the next goal is to build a space city-a "barracks" for future celestial activities.

Imagination of the future space city

Almost at the same time as Apollo landed on the moon, Professor O 'Neill of Princeton University in the United States began to study the problem of immigration into space. 1977, he boldly put forward the idea of a space city in the book "Space Immigration Island", thinking that an immigrant island that can live in the space of the earth and the moon can be built. He designed three schemes, called Island 1, Island 2 and Island 3.

Island one was used by pioneers who exploited the resources of the universe. As a sphere with a diameter of 512m, it is a residential area inside the equator and can accommodate about 10000 residents. The energy of the whole island depends on the sunlight collected by huge mirrors. The food needed by residents is produced in agricultural areas, and the building materials needed mainly come from the extraction of moon rocks and minerals. Around the residential area, there are lawns and gardens, as well as trickles and paths. Flowers are in full bloom, trees are lush, green grass is lush, and the seasons are like spring. It's heaven.

Island 2 is a sphere with a diameter of 3.6 kilometers, which can accommodate 6.5438+0.4 million people. The whole design is similar to the proportional extension of 1 island.

Island 3 is a cylinder with a diameter of 6.4 kilometers and a length of 32 kilometers. The two ends are closed with hemispheres and rotate about every two minutes.

1975, O 'Neill put forward a novel and unique new scheme on the basis of the original design scheme. The main body (residential area) is a cylinder with a diameter of 450 meters and both ends are spherical. In order to simulate the gravity field on the earth, the whole cylinder rotates twice a minute, and the outermost layer around the cylinder is the agricultural farming area. There is a sunflower-shaped concentrator at the upper end of the cylinder to collect sunlight and generate electricity, so the scheme is also called Sunflower City.

O 'Neill's bold idea has aroused condemnation and inspired more space designers to follow suit, and put forward various space city schemes: the participants of the Space Migration Research Association of Stanford University in the United States designed a space city with a huge condenser, and other scientists also envisaged building a more distant new city suitable for human survival in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. ...

According to scientists' ideas, the future space city can completely create a living environment similar to the earth, as well as all the material and spiritual civilizations necessary for human life. Make full use of sunshine conditions and feed the residents and livestock in the city with their own food and vegetables. Photosynthesis of crops can purify the air, stems and leaves can be used as feed for livestock, and wastes such as feces discharged by people and livestock can be turned into salt, carbon dioxide and water after inorganic treatment, thus providing necessary conditions for the growth of crops. Planting crops in space city, you don't have to worry about pests and diseases like on earth. Food crops, all kinds of flowers, trees and lawns can grow carefree in a unique environment. The traffic between the space cities is also convenient and free, and it will be unimpeded in the vast "space passage". In this way, human beings can breathe freely, have children, live for a long time and live a "paradise" life in such a periodic ecological cycle system.

According to the designer of the space city, after the space city is completed, there is no need to worry about no one going. First of all, although the structure of the future space city is diverse, some are like a huge tire, some are like a big ball, and some are like dumbbells, but its living environment is no different from life on earth. Residential areas usually use artificial gravity generated by rotation to create an environment similar to the earth, such as day and night, temperature changes, etc., by adjusting the sunlight reflector, which makes people feel like living on the ground. If you want to emigrate to space, you must make major adjustments to your physiological functions in advance. This kind of worry seems unnecessary.

The envisaged space city will not only have inexhaustible solar energy and become an extremely rich economic prosperity area, but also make full use of the advanced scientific and technological achievements on the earth to build factories with very advanced facilities and suitable living and working conditions.

Scientists in the future excitedly predict that in the face of the three major crises of population, energy and environment faced by human beings on the earth, a superior life and much higher wages will attract countless young people to leave the "crowded" earth and settle in space. Perhaps after 2080, hundreds of millions of people will move to the vast space "Qionglou Yuyu" and live a mysterious "fairyland" life, and space will become the future.