Perhaps the best, or at least a substantially-better, design for space habitation would be a rhombic dodecahedron, a 12-faced geometric object that tessellates space the way a hexagon tessellates a plane. Honey bees use the geometry of rhombic dodecahedra to form honeycombs from a tessellation of cells each of which is a hexagonal prism capped with half a rhombic dodecahedron. The benefits of a rhombic dodecahedron are: (1) no wasted space between or among nodes; (2) the ability to expand or shrink a structure as the needs of a mission change; and (3) less cost but much greater strength than in other configurations.

Nature has used the rhombic dodecahedron for millions of years (see bees) with great success. If we as a species need to depart Earth to avoid an extinction event, we should probably use a design that is strong, economical, and gives maximum flexibility as the needs of our space missions evolve.