/sci/ - Science & Math

something like this could make it easy to start building a bunch of ghetto stanford toruses in orbit. Each module is the same, gets launched the same way, and is cheap enough that it plus an RP-1 fuel bladder inside wouldn't cost more than a small house in Bumfuck, Flyoverville.

Now you've got the minimal for long-term deep space mission. Use the large ring for habitation, and the smaller ring to provide artificial gravity for asteroidal smelting / continuous metal casting. (this would be complemented by missions to the moon, and/or carbonaceous chrondite asteroids to pick up water and carbon needed for making steel)

Once you can produce steel, you can use simple tools to construct more of these containers. (designed to be constructed out of multiple layers of thick sheet metal and bar stock.) Use an existing container as a template to align the components of a new one against. Now you can just keep building these, and sell them to people on earth for less than what it would cost them to launch a brand new container.