Noordung's Space Station

Hermann Potocnik (1892-1929), better known as Herman Noordung, created the first detailed technical drawings of a space station. This 1929 image is a depiction of the space station's habitat wheel. Power was generated by collecting sunlight through the concave mirror in the center. This was one of three components of Noordung's space station. The other two were the observatory and the machine room, each connected to the habitat by an umbilical.

Noordung wrote "Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums," or "The Problem of Space Travel: The Rocket Motor," (1929), an early work on spaceflight.

Image Credit: NASA