Space Stations
Space stations in science fiction can employ both existing and speculative technologies. One of the earliest images was the rotating wheel space station (such as the Stanford torus), the inertia and centripetal force of which would theoretically simulate the effects of gravity. Stations using artificial gravity are still purely speculative.
Space stations allow characters a relatively constrained setting, serving either as plot site or as safe refuge to which one can retreat. Since they are literary devices, there is no scientific imperative for their evolution to have followed the logical succession of scientific progress as it exists in reality; they may contain any artifact or device demanded by the plot, and can be provided by design or mere happenstance.
Space stations are often used as headquarters for organizations, which are thus linked to, but independent of, their place of formation, as research facilities in which experiments too dangerous for planetary settings can be carried out, and as the relics of lost civilizations, left behind when other things are removed.
Read more about this topic: Space Stations And Habitats In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words space and/or stations:
“No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is everywhere, created minds are somewhere, and body is in the space that it occupies; and whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that space is an effect arising from the first existence of being, because when any being is postulated, space is postulated.”
—Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
“I can’t quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world’s problems.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)