The Dawn of Space Station Dreams

The concept of living in space began with Johannes Kepler in the early 1600s, followed by Edward Everett Hale's "Brick Moon" in the 1860s, which detailed a man-made orbiting structure for habitation.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky envisioned space stations using solar power and self-sustaining vegetation, while Herman Noordung in 1928 provided the first detailed engineering designs for a "living wheel" (wohnrad) that would rotate to create artificial gravity.

In 1952, Willy Ley's writings, along with illustrations by Chesley Bonestell, significantly popularized the concept of life in a wheel-shaped, spinning space station through publications like Collier's Magazine and the Walt Disney television program.

The US government began developing space station concepts in the 1950s, with early ideas like the US Army Project Horizon for housing crews and refueling, leading to NASA's detailed requirements and patenting of the concept in the early 1960s, eventually contributing to Skylab.

The Soviet Union initially planned a large space station with their N-1 super rocket, but after repeated test failures starting in 1969, they pivoted to designing smaller stations that could be launched by their more reliable Proton rocket.