Orbital Habitability: Architectural Design for Extra-Terrestrial Habitation

Companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are privatising the space industry. This privatisation will allow more and more people to inhabit space for more extended periods, with less training than prior astronauts. Space habitation brings with it a vast array of issues, which significantly limit the designs that are possible in orbit. This thesis explores how the challenges of inhabiting outer space can be mitigated through architectural design.  The theoretical basis for this exploration is research into habitability. Habitability is how conducive an environment is to living and working. This is crucial to understanding the risks of inhabiting environments in orbit and how these can be challenged through design.  The Framework for this exploration’s site and program is asteroid mining. Asteroid mining is an exciting possibility for the next stage of human presence in space. Utilising asteroid resources could greatly aid in establishing orbital infrastructure around the Earth and allowing us to travel even further. As a framework, this defines a tighter scope than looking at space habitation in general and allows this thesis to dive deeper into the finer details of habitability for a specific group of people.  The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate designed solutions to issues of habitability within the constraints necessary to construct a space station. This thesis considers how a design might be; designed and modelled, deployed in space, constructed, and most fundamentally, how it could mitigate the psychological and physiological issues of long-term space habitation.  This is accomplished through a research-led design process centred on self-evaluation through the habitability principles defined in this thesis.  This thesis fundamentally collates and builds upon our existing knowledge of space habitation and presents one possibility for the future of space habitation. This is merely one small step for the furthering of human habitability in space.