Von Braun's Wheel

Explanation: Orbiting 1,075 miles above the Earth, a 250 foot wide, inflated, reinforced nylon “wheel” was conceived in the early 1950s to function as a navigational aid, meteorological station, military platform, and way station for space exploration by rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun . The wheel shaped station could be easily rotated creating artificial gravity so that the astronauts would not suffer the effects of prolonged weightlessness. Von Braun and his team favored building a permanently occupied Earth orbiting space station from which to stage a lunar exploration program . But in the 1960s NASA adopted the Apollo Program , which called for astronauts to transfer to a lunar landing vehicle after achieving lunar orbit, bypassing the construction of von Braun's wheel.

Information: The Scale of the Universe Debate in April 1996