Orbital Systems
Space habitats, satellite perspectives, orbital mechanics, and the architecture of human presence beyond Earth.
The Shell Around the Star: Tan Mu's Dyson Sphere and the Architecture of Limitless Ambition
A Dyson Sphere would require more material than exists in all the planets of the solar system combined. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. The mass of the Earth is approximately six septillion kilograms.
The Shape That Feeds Itself: Tan Mu's Torus and the Geometry of Return
A torus is a shape that contains itself. It is a surface of revolution generated by rotating a circle around an axis that lies in the same plane as the circle but does not intersect it.
The Distance the Atmosphere Holds: Tan Mu's Horizons 02 and the Color of the View from Orbit
At six inches from the surface, the painting is all grain and deposit. The linen weave shows through where the oil has been laid thin, a pale grid visible beneath washes of cerulean and cadmium orange that bleed into each other at their margins without quite mixing.
The Shape That Returns: Tan Mu's Torus and the Topology of Energy
Stand close enough and the surface dissolves.
The World Without Us: Tan Mu's Horizons 03 and the Peace of the Orbital View
The first time a camera looked back at Earth from beyond the atmosphere, the planet was a small blue sphere suspended against a black sky in a grainy monochrome image captured by a V-2 rocket in 1946, and the image was not beautiful by conventional standards.
First Glimpse: Tan Mu's Peek and the Photograph That Invented the Overview
On October 24, 1946, a V-2 rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico reached an altitude of sixty-five miles and took a photograph.
Shell of Suns: Tan Mu's Dyson Sphere and the Architecture of Infinite Want
Nick Koenigsknecht, writing in the catalog for the BEK Forum exhibition, observed that when we look at technology, we are looking at ourselves.
Building the House That Has Not Been: Tan Mu's 3D-Printing House and the Architecture of Extraterrestrial Settlement
In 2015, a Chinese company demonstrated a construction method that would eventually allow buildings to be printed on site using robotic arms and cement-based composite materials, the layers of material deposited by the printer building up the walls and foundations of a structure without any human hand touching the material during the construction process.
The Interior of the Ring: Tan Mu's Stanford Torus and the Architecture of Interplanetary Hope
The NASA Summer Study of 1975 was held at Stanford University and produced a design for a space habitat that would house ten thousand people in a rotating ring one mile in diameter, a torus of steel and glass and cultivated soil that would generate its own gravity through centripetal acceleration.
The Endurance of the Machine: Tan Mu's To Mars to Explore and the Self-Portrait of a Rover
Endurance is not a quality typically associated with machines. Machines break. They wear out. They are replaced. Their planned obsolescence is not a failure but a feature of the economic systems that produce them, designed to be superseded rather than to persist.
The Panoramic Gaze: Tan Mu's Horizons 01 and the Collective Sight of Planet Earth
When the Apollo astronauts first photographed Earth from lunar orbit in 1968, they produced an image that changed the way humanity understood its own habitat.
The Red Horizon: Tan Mu's Mars 01 and the Machine Eyes That Saw Another World
The rover named Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, and immediately began transmitting images to Earth through a relay chain that included NASA's MAVEN orbiter and the Deep Space Network, a global array of radio telescopes that can listen to signals from across the solar system.
Earth Against the Void: Tan Mu's Peek and the First Photograph from Space
On October 24, 1946, a V-2 rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico carried a camera to an altitude of sixty-five miles and photographed the earth from space.
The Loop of Energy: Tan Mu's Torus and the Topology of Connection
In the center of Tan Mu's Torus (2020), a ring of light floats in a black void. It is not a solid object but a constellation of points, thousands of tiny dots accumulated to form a shape that seems to rotate and pulse.
The Ring in the Void: Tan Mu's Stanford Torus and the Architecture of Escape
In 1975, a group of physicists and engineers at Stanford University designed a large wheel. It was one mile in diameter, rotating once per minute to simulate Earth gravity on its inner surface. It could hold ten thousand people.
The Ring That Simulates Gravity: Tan Mu's STANFORD TORUS and the Architecture of Projected Survival
In the summer of 1975, a ten-week study session convened at Stanford University under NASA sponsorship to address a question that had no precedent in engineering history: how would you design a permanent human habitat in space.
The Wanderer on Another Planet: Tan Mu's To Mars to Explore and the Machine That Turned Its Camera Back
On February 19, 2022, the Curiosity rover, a car sized robotic vehicle that had been exploring the Gale crater on Mars since August 2012, performed an action that, if performed by a human being, would be unremarkable. It turned its camera around and photographed itself.
65 Miles Up: Tan Mu's Peek and the First Time the Earth Looked Back
On October 24, 1946, a V 2 rocket was launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The rocket was not carrying a warhead.
Painting From 140 Million Miles: Tan Mu's Mars and the Landscape the Machine Sees
On February 18, 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on Mars after a seven month transit from Earth. The landing was autonomous.
Above the Horizon: Tan Mu's Horizons and the Ethical Weight of the Panoramic Gaze
In 1946, a captured V-2 rocket was launched from White Sands, New Mexico. Attached to its frame was a 35-millimeter motion picture camera, set to expose one frame every one and a half seconds.
Harnessing the Star: Tan Mu's Dyson Sphere and the Architecture of Unlimited Power
In 1960, the physicist Freeman Dyson proposed a structure so vast it would have to be built by a civilization that had outgrown its home planet.