Project · Aerospace · Imaginactive

Tsven.

A tethered spacecraft for Imaginactive, from an idea by Charles Bombardier — a central hub carrying a large solar array, with two masses held far out on cables so the whole assembly can be spun.

Programme
Imaginactive
Charles Bombardier
Sector
Aerospace
Orbital · tethered
Role
Design & CGI
Concept modelling · film
Type
Tethered vehicle
Hub · tether · counterweight
About the project

Length instead of structure.

Spin a spacecraft and the crew get weight back. The catch is the radius: spin a short vehicle fast enough to feel like gravity and the difference between head and feet becomes unpleasant, and the rotation rate itself makes people ill. The fix is not a faster spin but a longer arm.

A rigid arm that long would be absurd to launch. A cable is not. Tsven puts the mass at the ends of long tethers and the machinery at the middle — a hub with the docking interfaces and a large deployable solar array, with the cables running out to a habitat at one end and a counterweight at the other.

Structurally it is the opposite of every instinct a designer has: almost nothing in the middle, almost nothing at the ends, and a great deal of empty distance doing the work. The renders lean into that — most frames are mostly nothing, which is the honest way to draw it.

Renders and film

Two ends, one line.

Two studio plates, three orbital frames and a short film.

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