An admittedly rather awful-quality CAD diagram of the “Dual Keel” space station configuration as studied by NASA sometime in the late 1980’s. This drawing is noteworthy for sowing what appears to be a very large parabolic antenna, probably a radio antenna or radar dish (seems far too large to be the reflector for a solar power system).
Scanned from a slide at the NASA HQ historical archive.
A piece of artwork (from an ebay auction some time back) depicting a Douglas concept for a space station attached to a S-IVb stage. Unclear if the launcher was a Saturn Ib or a Saturn V; if it was launched complete, it would have had to have been a Saturn V. Logistics transport is provided by Gemini capsules. This was likely part of a Douglas MORL study.
Fusion power has been about 10 years away for the last 50 years or so. Still, experts in the field have from time to time gone ahead and designed operational reactors based on then-current assumptions. One such design study was done in 1972 by staff at the Oak Ridge National Lab, reported on in early 1973. This was a 1000 megawatt commercial fusion powerplant based on the Tokamak torus-type reactor. The work was sponsored by the US Atomic Energy Commission.
A 30,000 gauss superconducting toroidal electromagnet would serve as the deuterium and tritium containment and compression field, driving up pressure and temperature to fusion levels. Neutrons spit out by the reaction would be absorbed by a thick blanket of liquid lithium; absorption of the neutrons would cause the lithium to fission and create tritium at a rate higher than tritium is consumed in fusion, thus making the system self sustaining as far as tritium. While a reactor like this, if made workable, would not have the sort of safety issues associated with fission reactors (see: Chernobyl, Fukushima), there would still be the potential issue of many tons of molten lithium. At the best of time lithium and the oxygen in air do not get along well; melt the lithium and expose it to oxygen – say, via a split weld or a broken pipe – and you’d have one spectacular magnesium-like fire that would probably reduce the entire plant (including the concrete structure) to smoldering ash.
Needless to say, no commercial powerplant like this has been built. One like it is… at least 10 years away.
