Flight or fancy?

摘要

Ahuge circular space station wheeling above Earth as Strauss' Blue Danube waltz reaches an orchestral crescendo... that's one of many bold visions of a spacefaring future, imagined more than half a century ago in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since the film's release in 1968, the concept of a massive space station rotating in low Earth orbit (LEO) still seems utterly fantastical. However, the US space development company Orbital Assembly Corporation is pressing ahead with plans to make the vision a reality.