What would it actually feel like to live inside a vast rotating space city—not merely visit one, but grow up, work, sleep, raise a family, and eventually call it home? This documentary looks beyond the spectacular images of O’Neill cylinders and rotating space habitats. Artificial gravity is only the beginning. A permanent settlement would also need to manufacture breathable air, redirect sunlight, grow food, remove waste heat, block radiation, and create enough privacy, distance, and natural variation for ordinary life to feel real. Could one enormous machine provide everything Earth quietly gives us—and operate so reliably that the people inside eventually stop noticing it? A calm, long-form science documentary about O’Neill cylinders, artificial gravity, rotating space habitats, space settlements, and the challenge of building a permanent human world beyond Earth.
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Such a vessel would be vulnerable to destruction from angry/confused humans and an almost infinite number of other potential causes of destruction. We cannot be trusted.
It is so easy to see that Earth is our magnificent spaceship.
The more grand these theoretical designs become… the more Earth, our solar system, and the Oort Cloud seem to be like a generational vessel. 🤷♂️
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There’s a game that replicates this. Ark survival evolved.
We already have a spaceship that beats this. It self generates, absorbs sunlight for energy poweing a complex chain that eventually provides for us. It has a magnetic sheild that deflects and protects us from radiation and a sheild to stop large matter collision. Large space, bio diversity, redundant systems so no single point failures. Its called earth.
I find the argument puzzling. While the speaker highlights the hardships of long-term space travel, the vessel itself is a masterpiece of human ingenuity—a living world seamlessly engineered inside a cylinder. The critique assumes that humanity cannot adapt to life within an artificial habitat drifting through the void, yet we already live on a cosmic rock careening through space alongside a moving sun, solar system, and galaxy. Choosing to leave Earth’s path behind isn't foolish; it is the ultimate expression of human initiative.
That’s never going to be built
1. Every SpaceX rocket launch already emits 300-1000 metric tons of CO2 into the upper atmosphere causing catastrophic climate change. With over 696 launches so far that's well over 420,000 metric tons of CO2 (and black carbon) which stays in the upper atmosphere for some 100 years! Now add NASA CHINA RUSSIA INDIA and all the other rocket launches emissions! And how many to build this mega structure! We'd be destroying our living planet to live in a metal casket doomed to fail. 2. And the replacement parts alone, required to keep the machine functional in space for even a decade, would take up most of the room . Only idiots and scammers push space travel as a solution ... when in fact rocket launches are already causing catastrophic climate change here on our living planet! 🇦🇺
Throw a 🔧 and the whole thing go boom
Humans can’t even get along with each other here on planet earth, but you think that many are going to ride a ship together for 1000 years or more 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Arthur C Clark thought the best spaceship was a hollowed out asteroid. You get raw materials radiation shielding and meteor impact protection. Basically a spinning cave with roket attached to it.
I love the visuals.
Without simulated weather it would feel like an eerie infinite suburb
Can you imagine condemning your future progeny to living on something at most a couple of miles long with no more than 5000 other humans for the rest of their lives? Those born on the ark would not be volunteers and they would only know the limited population locked in with them hurtling toward a destination they would never experience. Imagine how they would feel knowing their parents came from a place with weather, mountains, oceans, jungle, prairies, continents, and cities with literally millions of people producing all kinds of things they would never be able to experience? And knowing as well they would never live long enough to set foot on the destination world either? Those people would have to make all their friends, pick all their lovers, make their families from the limited number of people locked in with them on that cylinder. And they would have to work in the roles assigned them, no doubt by some restrictive and coercive form of government to insure that everyone plays out their essential role for the survival of the ark's population. It would be a miserable existence, knowing what they had been deprived of, what they had been dragooned into. So much so, it seems questionable even if the resources of such a vessel could be managed that the members of that vessel could find the cohesion needed to avoid a catastrophic breakdown of the social order imposed on them. Even if the machinery worked perfectly, the humans would not.
My belief is that the ONLY way for us to leave our planet for space is to mimic our actual planet as much as we can for a number of reasons, the chief reason being time. But my issue with this proposal (and it is a good one) is that it presumes we, as people of the WHOLE planet can work together, pool our resources, have the patience and commitment for a project that will not benefit the majority of Earth's population and will require the kind of multigenerational commitment it took to build the original pyramids. I'm skeptical, to say the least.
It's nice. But, where is that thing going?😮
It's all pipe dream's. The problems not even the human factor are off the scale. Some seem to think we can accomplish anything with enough money & time.
Never gonna happen bro
If we can imagine it, we'll try to make it real. All this dream takes is vast fortunes and lifetimes of hard work. WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE WAITING FOR? GO!!!