Surviving Orbit the DIY Way

Chapter 1. Life as a Satellite

…we’ve got to go out to Asteroid HS-5388 and turn it into Space Station E-M3. She has no atmosphere at all, and only about two per cent Earth-surface gravity. We’ve got to play human fly on her for at least six months, no girls to date, no television, no recreation that you don’t devise yourselves, and hard work every day. You’ll get space sick, and so homesick you can taste it, and agoraphobia. If you aren’t careful you’ll get ray-burnt. Your stomach will act up, and you’ll wish to God you’d never enrolled. But if you behave yourself, and listen to the advice of the old spacemen, you’ll come out of it strong and healthy, with a little credit stored up in the bank, and a lot of knowledge and experience that you wouldn’t get in forty years on Earth.

— Robert Heinlein "Misfit"

What’s it like up there? Every 90 minutes, your satellite orbits the Earth. Each orbit passes high over a different geographic coordinate. The atmosphere you encounter is negligible, a residue of trace oxygen and other atoms with no real pressure to sustain you, just enough pressure to cause drag and (in months or years) reduce your orbit and cause reentry.

The Sun bathes you in heat and ultraviolet (UV) and X-rays and all the other wavelengths of light. When in sunlight, your satellite heats up, perhaps uncontrollably. For half of each orbit, the Earth blocks the Sun and your satellite radiates out into that cold 3-degrees above absolute zero ambient temperature of space.

High energy ...