Space Pictures [warning for 56k, images > 600 pixels]

[Sikon]

These are scenes of spacestations, extraterrestrial planets, etc.

Obviously none of these pictures were created by me, just found online. Click on one to see the source, often with more like it.

People could post other space-related images here too.


Rick Guidice / NASA: Space habitat


Adrian Mann: Nuke-Pulse Propulsion


Don Davis / L5 News and National Space Society: Space habitat


Space Studies Institute: Solar Power Satellite


Rick Guidice / NASA: Space Habitat


David Hardy: Extraterrestrial planet


Don Davis: Space Habitat


NASA: Space Agriculture


Syd Mead / Oblagon: Space Agriculture


Adrian Mann: Europa (terraformed?)


Penn State: Antiproton-Catalyzed Micro Fission/Fusion (miniature nuke-pulse)


David Hardy: Extraterrestrial planet (or could be terraformed moon)


Millennial Project: Zero-g area


David Hardy: Blimp in Titan's atmosphere


The Light Works: Extraterrestrial planet and scene


Millennial Project: Domed crater


David Hardy: Martian airship

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Some other images that almost were included above:

• The images represented in thumbnail size within my signature image: A gallery with them is here.
• A too large image here (Artist: Joe Bergeron)
• Dozens, even hundreds of more images: They can be seen by browsing various web sites that can be reached by clicking on pictures above.

[Sarevok]

Wonderful images. Thanks for posting them. I like the Europa image particulrly. Billions of years from now when the sun expands Europa may indeed become warm enough to look like that. It would be a pretty cool place to watch the sunset and reflect upon 5 billions years that have passed.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Wonderful images. Thanks for posting them. I like the Europa image particulrly. Billions of years from now when the sun expands Europa may indeed become warm enough to look like that. It would be a pretty cool place to watch the sunset and reflect upon 5 billions years that have passed.

You could do it in a thousand years with a big enough parabolic mirror, some methane and a lot of CO2. I'd pick a place like Callisto or maybe Ganymede for such hijinks, though. Europa sits pretty much smack-dab in the middle of Jupiter's Van Allen belts.

Now that would be quite a scene, with the small, brilliant pinprick of the Sun on one side, and the disc of fire of the mirror on the other, both surrounded with rainbow-hued haloes and flanked by sun-dogs in a hazy sky.

[Sikon]

Here are the rest of my favorite image links collected over time:

As before, none of these pictures were created by myself; see artist names.


Frank Hettick: Jupiter's moon Callisto (a moon almost as big as the planet Mercury)


David Aguilar: 3 small moons around Neptune, newly discovered in 2003


NASA: Space habitat


Michael Christopher: Space habitat


Book jacket illustration of Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke: Space habitat


Steve Biggs: Space habitat


Rick Guidice: Space habitat zero-g section


Alexander Preuss: Advanced civilization space city



Kim Poor: Extraterrestrial planet with bright nearby stars


Brian Smallwood: Saturn's moon Enceladus


Keeth Veenenbos: Saturn's moon Titan



Al Globus / Bryan Yager: Illustration of dumbbell space habitat rotating for gravity

The rate of rotation in the above image must have been exaggerated for illustrative purposes.

Actually a dumbbell space habitat could rotate less often than once a minute.

Also, the dumbbells could be domes a little like the following, connected by long cables:


Technically, the above is a Star Trek Voyager: Species 8472 training station.

However, it is included here to imply how the ends of a dumbbell space habitat could be domes.

Water radiation shielding would allow transparency.

Such domes could have a great view with almost any terrain imaginable inside.


Inner-Space / jay88: Space landscape


Swaroop R: Space landscape


Kerem: Futuristic city on extraterrestrial world



Frank Hettick: Neptune's moon Triton

The above covers all that I imagine posting.

But sometimes similar images can be found by clicking on the pictures.

[Sarevok]

You keep on amazing us Sikon.. Seeing these images makes me wish I was born a few hundred years later so that I had a chance to see these things with my own eyes.

[Crazedwraith]

Dammit. I read the title as space pirates for some inexplicable reason. Oh well the space pictures are still pretty.

[HSRTG]

They look cool, but those big space habitats sans thick steel walls and bulkheads, well, give me shivers. They look like a small asteroid could poke a hole in it easily. Bad place to be if a war breaks out, or the asteroid defense systems malfunction.

I'd much rather a space habitat's interior to look more like the halls of the Death Star than anything else. Sorry.

[Sikon]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

To add a little to Destructionator XIII's good points about meteoroids, the figures that a NASA study determined are here:

Loss of atmosphere because of puncture by meteoroids is not a serious threat. In habitats of the size considered in this study, at least a day would be required to lose 60 percent of the atmosphere through a hole one meter in diameter - the size of hole that would be blasted by a meteoroid only once in 10,000,000 years. Smaller meteoroids might be responsible for small leaks, but the requirement for safe habitation under these circumstances is simply a regular (e.g., monthly) program for detecting and repairing such leaks. A more detailed analysis of the meteoroid hazard is given in appendix A.

Of course, the particular figure in the quote is only an estimate for one space habitat design, so it would vary depending upon habitat type, location, etc. But the overall aspect is that the frequency of objects large enough to get through the shielding structure is miniscule in the vastness of interplanetary space.

One may note that this is a different situation from a spacestation of today in low-earth orbit, both because there isn't the locally concentrated manmade space junk farther out and because the space habitat is a more robust multi-million-ton structure.

Though objects like the Moon are heavily cratered, almost 100% of the craters are millions or commonly billions of years old.