The International Space Station will likely be decommissioned in just a few years, meaning our space agencies are going to need another one soon. Now a former aerospace engineer has put together a proposal to turn an asteroid into a space station.
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00:00The International Space Station will likely be decommissioned in just a few years, meaning
00:07our space agencies are going to need another one soon.
00:10And while you might imagine something like the Tiangong space station to replace it,
00:14or the one which the Chinese space agency is nearing completion on, there's another
00:17concept that's a bit wilder.
00:19Former technical fellow at aerospace firm Rockwell Collins, Dr. David W. Jensen has
00:23put together a proposal to turn one of these, an asteroid, into a space station.
00:29It's all part of a thorough report, one that outlines what type of habitat is suitable
00:32to build on an asteroid, but also which one to build on.
00:35Dr. Jensen points to asteroid Atira as a good candidate, as it's large enough and nearly
00:40three miles wide, and has its own moon.
00:42However, the asteroid is also in the Goldilocks zone, just like Earth, and at its closest
00:46to us.
00:47It's only 80 times the distance of the moon to our planet.
00:49Dr. Jensen also indicates that Atira not only already spins a bit, but it could be spun
00:54faster artificially, creating more Earth-like gravity, something needed to prevent bone
00:58density degradation while living for long periods of time in this potential habitat.
01:03But his final, and perhaps wildest, idea for the habitat has to be its builders, which
01:07he says we should use self-replicating spider robots for its construction.