Werner Grandl
Werner Grandl is an Austrian Architect, Civil Engineer, and Space Habitat Researcher based in Tulln an der Donau, Austria, with over three decades of experience in the design of space stations, space colonies, lunar bases, and asteroid resource utilization.
He is a freelancing Architect and Consulting Engineer affiliated with the Technical University of Vienna and a Researcher at Space Renaissance International (SRI), a global nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting peaceful civilian space development for the benefit of all humanity.
Werner is known for developing comprehensive architectural and engineering concepts for modular lunar bases, rotating artificial gravity orbital stations, asteroid mining habitats, and space factories at Lagrange points, contributing practical design solutions to the challenge of establishing permanent human settlements beyond Earth.
Werner’s research focuses on the construction of self-sustaining colonies in space using lunar and asteroid resources. His most recent peer-reviewed publication, Industrializing the Earth–Moon System: A Conceptual Study for a Space Factory at Lagrange Point L5. was published in Frontiers in Space Technologies in 2025. The study proposes the first industrial plant at the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L5, where lunar and asteroid materials could be processed and goods manufactured in zero gravity with 24-hour solar power availability.
Together with his longtime collaborator Clemens Böck, Werner designed the Artificial Gravity Orbital Station (AGOS), a spinning modular station proposed as a successor to the International Space Station. The AGOS concept features hard-shell aluminum cylinders, each 18 meters long and 7 meters in diameter, weighing 20 metric tons, transportable via reusable launchers to low Earth orbit. In its final configuration, the station would expand to 32 living quarter modules supporting approximately 180 inhabitants.
Werner presented the AGOS concept and his broader vision for rotating space habitats at the 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2023, and at the ACES Worldwide Living in Space Workshop in November 2025, where he detailed the engineering principles behind simulating gravity through centripetal force and introduced his concept of the “Comfort Box” for optimal rotating habitat parameters. Read How Could We Build a Liveable Space Habitat?
Werner has developed a series of influential designs for modular lunar bases spanning his career. His proposal for an initial lunar station consists of six cylindrical modules, each 17 meters long and 6 meters in diameter, built of aluminum sheets with double-shell construction for thermal protection. The design accommodates eight astronauts and includes a Teleoperated Rocket Crane (TRC), a versatile spacecraft he invented for landing, transporting, and assembling modules on the lunar surface.
These concepts were published in Acta Astronautica, the journal of the International Academy of Astronautics, in 2007, and as chapters in the Springer-Verlag volumes Moon – Prospective Energy and Material Resources in 2012 and Lunar Settlements in 2010. Read From Living Inside Asteroids to Solar Arks, a Scientist Designs the Space Colonies of the Future.
In 2020, Werner and Böck published An Initial Lunar Camp Combining Rigid Structures with Inflatable Elements, and in 2022, he coauthored Modeling a Lunar Base Mushroom Farm in Life Sciences in Space Research, exploring sustainable food production for lunar habitation.
Werner’s work on asteroid habitation proposes converting mined-out near-Earth asteroids into rotating colonies for up to 2,000 inhabitants. The hollowed asteroid shell provides natural shielding against cosmic rays, solar flares, and micrometeorites, while a rotating torus driven by magnetic levitation bearings generates simulated gravity inside.
This concept, developed with Ákos Bázsó at the University of Vienna, was published in Asteroids – Prospective Energy and Material Resources in 2013 and later expanded in Asteroid Habitats – Living Inside a Hollow Celestial Body in the Handbook of Space Resources. Read Near Earth Asteroids – Prospection, Orbit Modification, Mining and Habitation.
Werner’s earliest published work in the field dates to 1993, when he copresented Astropolis – Space Colonization in the 21st Century with Antonio Germano at the 11th SSI Princeton Conference, organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). In 1995, he copresented Commercial Asteroid Resource Development and Utilization at the International Academy of Astronautics in Oslo, Norway. In 2009, he published Asteroid Impact – the Ultimate Disaster in Disaster Advances Journal, and in 2016, he authored the book Utopia Solis – Leben im Sonnensystem, a comprehensive German-language overview of human life in the solar system.
His 2017 paper Human Life in the Solar System was published in REACH – Reviews in Human Space Exploration, and in 2018, he coauthored a chapter on an outer solar system sample return mission in Outer Solar System – Prospective Energy and Material Resources.
Werner is an active delegate of Space Renaissance International at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). In 2024, he was part of the SRI delegation at the 67th COPUOS General Assembly in Vienna, where SRI was granted provisional observer status. In February 2025, he presented his concept for a Lagrange Space Factory at L5 at the 62nd session of the COPUOS Scientific and Technical SubCommittee in Vienna.
He is also a coauthor of A SRI Position Paper on the Key Critical Factors Towards 2030, which advocates for a proposed 18th UN Sustainable Development Goal focused on civilian space development. Werner co-chairs the Living in Space session at the Space Renaissance 4th World Congress, scheduled for July 2026. He presented the Teleoperated Rocket Crane (TRC) concept at the ESA Symposium “Moon 2020–2030 A New Era of Coordinated Human and Robotic Exploration” at ESTEC, Noordwijk, in 2015.
Werner earned his degree in Architecture in 1984 from the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied from 1975 to 1984. In 1985, he completed his military service in the Austrian Air Force. From 1986 to 1993, he gained professional experience in several engineering offices in Austria.
Since 1994, Werner has worked as a freelancing architect and consulting engineer, and since 1987, he has conducted independent research and published studies on space stations, space colonies, and asteroid resource utilization. Werner was born in Vienna in 1957 and lives in Tulln an der Donau, Lower Austria.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, ResearchGate profile, and Space Renaissance Academy page. Follow him on X and Academia.