So good to see something finally happening on making the 2001 space odyssey a reality. Long overdue

The explanation of how the gravity equivalent works is not altogether right. When When anything in space is set in motion it continues in a straight line. If you imagine a person in motion in the rim of the wheel, their natural trajectory is a a straight line at a tangent from the edge of the wheel. Because the wheel is curved inwards there is a force, referred to as the centripetal force, pulling the edge of the wheel, and the person, in, towards the central hub via the spokes of the wheel. What feels like gravity is that force exerted by the floor pulling the person towards the hub, preventing them from travelling in their natural straight line trajectory.
Unless we can learn how to travel faster than light, journeying to other planets outside our own solar system will not be possible, but large space stations with the ability to manoeuvrer, would allow humans to survive the sun engulfing the Earth, when it becomes a red-giant.

Von Braun was not just a minor player in the Nazi atrocities. He was very important in the creation of their weapons. He always claimed that his goal was really just to explore space...but he certainly managed to overlook a lot of dead people that resulted from his direct work.
I would propose that the station should not be named for him. Instead find some other person, who had an interest in rocketry, but who was killed by one of his weapons. That victim may have been someone who could even have advanced space travel beyond what von Braun had envisioned. Let it be a testimony to the things the Nazis destroyed.

“A Nazi rocket scientist and engineer who defected to America in 1945”
Thats a very interesting way of putting it.

After all that thinking, this organization decided it appropriate to name their project after a nazi war criminal?

Look up Isaac Arthur. He explains all of this stuff in great detail but easy to understand. ISS originally had a rotating section but it's budget was cut. Using Space x you could probably add a suitably sized rotating section to ISS for $1B or so. Low gravity could eventually provide valuable therapy for the disabled and be a profit center. I, personally, am a little tall and heavy, and would probably do a lot better at Mars gravity. Maybe some of my ancestors lived at that gravity! An H-bomb propelled space ship like the 1960 Project Orion could reach .2c and get to Alpha Centauri in 40 years and is doable with no new physics, just a much bigger economy. The Gateway project gets us a long way toward this.

von braun ? at the end of the day it's just a name , people need to get over themselves and just focus on the technology.

>joe46, I disagree. The effects of that ideology are still present in contemporary times. We Americans had Nazi's marching in the streets lately. Von Braun was an active believer. I support the idea of this proposal but it should not be named after him.

Naming the station after von Braun is inappropriate considering the dark spots in his background---slave labor from concentration camps was used at his German research facility---and is likely to be a PR disaster (and deservedly so). Why not Tsiolkovsky? It was his idea, after all.

Lottery nonwithstanding, the wheel comes at a staggering cost---and is completely unnecessary. There is no need to make a complete ring of modules. The same gravity emulating effect can be had with just two modules, connected with a tether (and a passage tube) and rotating around their common center of mass. Think about two stones tied by a length of string, like a bolas: they counterbalance each other and you can twirl them over your head with a finger. Two modules, two launches, and you're in business; and if it prospers and more room is needed, the setup can be expanded gradually, adding modules one at a time. The complete ring is an unnecessary assumption, made first by Tsiolkovski and copied inertly by von Braun.