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For a story I'm working on, my characters have just docked with a space station in Low Earth orbit. It's set in the 2080s, so we're assuming no game-changing leaps of technology, merely what's currently projected. To keep things simple (Ha!) I've envisioned a rotating habitat ring with roughly Lunar or Mars gravity, while the docking area itself at its center does not rotate. I'm confident there's an engineering solution out there to mate the two sections together, plus that's not important to the story. What is important, however, is how I get my characters from the nonrotating dock to the rotating habitat ring. Something similar to the Hermes in the movie version of "The Martian", where you let gravity do most of the work? Or something else entirely? What's my best option?

Hewholooksskyward
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    https://space.stackexchange.com/q/20234/40489 / https://space.stackexchange.com/q/2339/40489 / Otherwise, make the rotating ring center attach to a non-rotating center hub that has the docking part. Ring keeps rotating, docking ring does not, and the people transfer from the rotating hub to the non-rotating hub at the center, all in zero-g. – blobbymcblobby Oct 14 '23 at 11:31
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    so wait...the only thing you're asking about the choice of ladder / stairs / elevator / escalator / slide / archimedes screw / cog railway / whatever to transit the "vertical" spokes of the ring? – Erin Anne Oct 14 '23 at 21:26
  • "What's my best option?" for a future space station that isn't designed is not a good fit fo this site. I think that this question will be closed as "off topic" or "requiring answers that are primarily opinion-based" and then possibly migrated to World Building. However, you could edit your question to ask for fact-based answers - for example by simply asking links to existing proposed solutions as a [tag:reference-request]. – uhoh Oct 14 '23 at 23:00
  • Separately, you could also ask a question in SciFi SE about how this problem has been solved by other writers, citing Hermes as an example. I wonder if this ever happened in the movie 2001? (see for exampe Did Kubrick take care to get the strength of artificial gravity correct in "2001: A Space Odyssey"?) – uhoh Oct 14 '23 at 23:03
  • https://space.stackexchange.com/users/11262/erin-anne - Basically, yes. :) – Hewholooksskyward Oct 15 '23 at 09:31
  • @ErinAnne that might be the most realistic proposal ever for a space elevator – user721108 Oct 15 '23 at 14:01
  • @jkztd you joke, but I used to coach at the International Space Settlement Design Competition. You have no idea how many high schoolers through the years thought "no space elevators" (i.e. no megastructures from surface to GEO) meant their spinning space stations couldn't have a people box lifted or lowered by a drum-cable-and-pulley system. – Erin Anne Oct 15 '23 at 23:50
  • I think this is a World Building question then. – Erin Anne Oct 15 '23 at 23:53
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    I get why this question was posted here - because you're limiting yourself to reasonably current spacefaring technology. However, there are many considerations here, ranging from structural engineering and materials study down to the concept of user experience and comfort, and then also keeping in mind that it needs to be interesting and relevant enough to explain in a story. That's a lot of balls to juggle, and that requires many skills that Space.SE does not dabble in, but Worldbuilding.SE does. At best, you could vet a concrete idea here by comparing it to current spacefaring standards. – Flater Oct 16 '23 at 21:58
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    Frame challenge, with regard to while the docking area itself at its center does not rotate. This is akin to the patient who goes to see his doctor and says "Doc, it hurts when I do this" where the patient demonstrates that "this" is clonking himself in the head with his fist. The doctor's advice is "Then don't do that." You are doing the equivalent of clonking yourself in the head by having a non-rotating docking port. Don't do that, then. Instead, make the docking spacecraft match the rotation of the space station, as was done in the sci-fi movie 2001. – David Hammen Oct 17 '23 at 08:55
  • To follow up on DavidHammen's comment, many of your audience will be familliar with matching spins before docking (done with thrusters) as a sort of standard thing from Kubrick's 2001 https://youtu.be/ENCJ4GTZ_uA or more recently this Interstellar clip https://youtu.be/a3lcGnMhvsA?t=110 So if you want a non-rotating docking section you'll probably have to develop a good reason to make everything much harder. Maybe the occupants or cargo is so fragile that it can't survive even a tiny bit of rotation? Without some justification it just lowers the credibility of the plot. – uhoh Oct 17 '23 at 23:33
  • There have certainly been plenty of ships with rotating and non-rotating sections in Science fiction, maybe you can leverage that - perhaps the space station is also an interplanetary ship, repurposed? – uhoh Oct 17 '23 at 23:35
  • Once I got a Docking Computer, it was a lot easier, said Commander Jameson... – blobbymcblobby Oct 18 '23 at 02:10
  • Hewholooksskyward - to reply to someone in a comment you don't need to include their entire link, just use for example @erinanne. Do not include any spaces. More info can be found by clicking Help next to the "Add comment" button, or on this page. – Steve Pemberton Oct 19 '23 at 13:54

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