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Space Colony Form Factors, Part 3: The Stanford Torus and Beyond

From Space Bagels to Halo

By Rain Noe - August 7, 2015

in Architecture | Urbanism

So far we've seen two space colony form factors that arose from a 1975 NASA-backed study. The Bernal Sphere was round, the O'Neill Cylinders cylindrical. This third concept, proposed as part of the same study, is a sort of combination of the two that takes the cylinder and bends it into a circle.

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Known as a Stanford Torus, it's named after the university where the study took place. The torus shape—I'm guessing "torus" is either Greek or Latin for donut or bagel—provides its gravity by rotating around its hub, and at a suggested 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) in diameter could theoretically support some 10,000 people inside. Sunlight would be bounced from mirrors in the hub into the living space, providing the effect of "overhead" sunlight.

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I find the visual effect of being within a large torus more interesting than that of the Bernal Sphere or O'Neill Cylinders; it kind of looks like you're in a valley that slopes up and out-of-view on either side. An additional benefit versus the O'Neill Cylinders is that with the latter, there is a feeling of finite space; jogging along it, you would eventually reach the end and have to turn around. The torus on the other hand provides infinite scroll, which would make chase scenes more entertaining.

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Here's a fly-through of what a Stanford Torus might look like:

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Design god Syd Mead famously produced renderings of a Stanford Torus in his concept work for the space habitat in the 2013 sci-fi film "Elysium."

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However, space geeks are quick to point out that that's not technically a Stanford Torus, because as depicted in the movie, the habitat features no "roof;" the inside of the torus is absent and open-air, allowing ships to fly in and out of it.

That would make it what's known as a Bishop's Ring:

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A Bishop's Ring is essentially a gi-normous Stanford Torus, with the theory being that if it were made from carbon nanotubes rather than steel, a much larger structure could be built: Some 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles, roughly the driving distance from New York City to Miami) in diameter and 500 kilometers (310 miles) wide, providing a livable surface area roughly the size of India. Towering sidewalls stretching 200 kilometers (120 miles) in height would actually obviate the need for a "roof" and the design could be left open-air; science eggheads say the gravity generated would be enough to hold the atmosphere in place, and the open-air design would allow TIE Fighters and such to fly in and out.

Sci-fi author Iain M. Banks has taken the concept of the Bishop's Ring and run with it. In his Culture series of novels, Banks envisions something called Orbitals: huge Bishop's Rings that stretch to 3,000,000 kilometers (1.9 million miles) in diameter, up to 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) wide, containing landmasses the size of proper continents.

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In Banks' fictional world, these Orbitals are tilted towards a nearby star, and thus their rotation not only provides gravity, but a proper day/night cycle. The theoretical surface area would be up to 120 times more than what we've got on Earth.

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While nothing like an Orbital will ever be constructed in our lifetime, Banks' fictional creations did inspire a real-life object that many of you may own: A little video game called Halo. That game and its sequels have netted $3.4 billion in sales since 2001. It's strange to think that a sci-fi author's imagination unwittingly helped propel the Xbox console to success.

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Ted Miller

5 years ago

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Great article, but never guess when the facts are just a google away. Searching 'torus etymology' yielded:
torus (n.)
1560s, in architecture, "large, rounded molding at the base of a column," from Latin torus "a swelling, bulge, knot; cushion, couch." https://www.etymonline.com/word/torus

For the record, I thought it was something like bagel as well.

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Tse-Sung Wu

9 years ago

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You left at Ringworld (tho' you mention Halo). From the Larry Niven wikia:

The "Ringworld" is an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit (which makes it about 600 million miles in circumference), encircling a Sol-type star. It rotates, providing an artificial gravity equivalent to 99.2% of Earth's gravity by way of Centrifugal force (fictitious). Ringworld has a habitable flat inner surface equivalent in area to approximately three million Earth-sized planets. The majority of the surface is land interspersed with shallow, freshwater seas. On opposite sides of the ring are two large deep saltwater oceans, placed in counterbalance to one another.

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John Flores

9 years ago

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Great series Mr. Noe and from one writer to another I gotta say that I love your writing style. I want to write like you when I grow up, but that would require a time machine or wormhole or something. In any case, keep the posts coming...

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Andrew Kerr

9 years ago

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The concepts of space colonies has always been intriguing. Not that I'd get to see in my life time ( still tinkering with cryogenics in the basement), being a part of one of these colonies makes me wonder where we'd collect the shear amount of resources to build such structures. I can almost envision a massive 3d printer going to work, a large print-o-ring being fed asteroids only to kick out a manufactured living space!

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Andrew Klein

9 years ago

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I've always wondered about the theoretical purpose of these things, even with massive technological advances in energy and propulsion (like cold fusion) even the smaller-scale versions of these things approaching the size of a city would be so astronomically expensive to build. Is this the end-game for when our population exceeds what the planet can support and we run out of arable land? Is it for an elite class of people that can afford to live in a space city? Maybe I should read more Asmiov, also I've been meaning to watch Elysium.

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Andrew Scott

9 years ago

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The Late Iain M Banks’ Culture novels are terrific but his orbitals are scaled down versions of the massive habitat featured in Larry Niven’s 1970 ‘Ringworld’. Niven's ringworld is a ribbon that circles a star with a land surface equivalent to millions of Earths. Colin Kapp’s 1982 ‘Cageworld’ quadrilogy scales this up even more with concentric Dyson spheres the diametre of the orbit of each planet in our solar system. Mind blowing.

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Peter Hendry

9 years ago

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This is ridiculous.
All these "Named" ideas were proposed and fully discussed in the 1960s by science fiction writers of repute who's theories are only now being proven to be true. Suddenly people who have probably read some of these short or full stories are claiming these concepts for themselves.
Shame on them.
I knew back then that I would never see these ideas come to life but I know that they will just because they can.
The most boring thing in this life is reading cutting edge ideas and then growing old watching the usual, "It will never work" (Until we get the monopoly.), then the little press releases and suddenly, 25yrs later; Baboom! Brilliant NEW discovery (Patented by XXXXXX) will save us all. Buy Now!!!

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Supa Fluous

9 years ago

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Don't forget the Dyson Sphere (don't get excited, it's not the vacuum). They even had one in Star Trek TNG at one point.

Dyson Sphere (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and hence captures most or all of its power output. It was first described by Freeman Dyson. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life. Different types of Dyson spheres correlate with information on the Kardashev scale.Since then, other variant designs involving building an artificial structure or series of structures to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction under the name "Dyson sphere". These later proposals have not been limited to solar-power stations. Many involve habitation or industrial elements. Most fictional depictions describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a star, which is considered the least plausible variant of the idea (see below). In May 2013, at the Starship Century Symposium in San Diego, Dyson repeated his comments that he wished the concept had not been named after him.[1]

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