Space colonies of the future as imagined by NASA in the 1970s
One thing many of these designs don't bring up is long-term growth. Is the plan to build it once and that's it? Boring, and too prone to failure if the project runs into trouble at any point in time.What I'd prefer to see is a space construction that is continuous. Imagine a ring station, but one that is cellular in nature- lots of smaller modules that together form the huge station. This allows one to construct and add further modules over time, growing as needed.The beauty of this design principle is that we could start today. Design the first iteration of these modules, with the intent to fit them into SpaceX's Starship (or whatever heavy rockets come next). Launch 10 or 20 of them, connect them, and spin them up to 1/5th gravity, something not too hard to do. Add modules in the centre of the ring that are zero-G, where zero-G things can be done- but allowing those who live on station to live in mild gravity at least.All the while, you can dream big. You can plan for how this station goes from 10 or 20 small modules to thousands.