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Space Colony Art from the 1970s
- ambivalence 12y agoThe torus design really makes it so that it's uphill both ways. That would change the "Back in my day" jokes forever.
- dredmorbius 12y agoExcept that it's _not_ "uphill" in a force sense, since the attraction is the result of centripetal force, acting outward perpendicular to the ring at any point, not gravity, which would focus in toward a center. So, visually, yes. In fact, no.
- sirkneeland 12y agoI genuinely love HN for bits like this...both with an amusing quip, and then someone who can explain that technically, the amusing quip is inaccurate. It nicely stimulates both left and right side of my brain.
- dredmorbius 12y agoI'd say "'pedantic' is my middle name" but for the fact that it isn't.
- aluhut 12y agoThose "real" painted pictures give me always a kind of warm feeling compared to the sharp digital paintings. But it may have been caused by all that SciFi covers I've seen as a child.
- camus2 12y agoi personally like painting/drawing over 3d rendering. There is something dull about the latest. I dont mind flawed or imperfect perspective for instance. It gives life to a painting. And I love airbrushed pictures.
- FD3SA 12y agoMany of these pictures are based on designs described in one of my favorite books of all time, The High Frontier, by Gerard K. O'Neil. In it, O'Neil, a Princeton physicist and founder of the Space Studies Institute, goes on to describe in great technical detail the feasibility of building artificial space habitats of varying sizes. I heartily recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in space. The ideas from this book have been implemented in countless fictional universes[1], so you may find that you've seen them before. It all started here in this excellent book. 1. http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Space_colony_(UC) http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Space_colony_(UC)
- abecedarius 12y agoI liked http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/ http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/ better as a book, though of course O'Neill had more authority.
- dredmorbius 12y agoQuite. Just acknowledging you beat me to the punch ;-)
- dredmorbius 12y agoThey're also featured heavily in T.A. Heppinheimer's Colonies in Space, now available in full text online: http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/index.html http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/index.html That featured strongly in my childhood imagination. I'm no longer the technotopian I was at the time, but it's a powerful vision. Much of what it (and O'Neil) promoted should have been done by now were it possible.
- abecedarius 12y agoO'Neill clearly wanted it to happen and let it bias his estimates. But what bothered me the most was that even if you did follow their strategy of build-powersats-in-place-out-of-extraterrestrial-materials, you could do it cheaper with workers in tin cans (and lots of automation and teleoperation) instead of livable colonies. The argument against this wasn't too convincing, but I was a teenager and figured "Hey, a lot can happen in a few decades." A lot more than actually did so far, sigh. I still think large-scale work could have been done in space, and wasn't more for societal than technical reasons.
- zokier 12y agoSlideshow mirror: http://imgur.com/a/eus5K http://imgur.com/a/eus5K
- turrini 12y agoI believe that "Toroidal Colonies" inspired heavily the movie Elysium (2013) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/
- troels 12y agoMy thought too. There are some really nice renderings here: https://www.solidangle.com/news/elysium/ https://www.solidangle.com/news/elysium/
- ilamont 12y agoI remember some of these, which were reprinted in magazines like Odyssey (and maybe even Omni?) in the 70s and 80s. The images, along with colony/exploration books by Larry Niven, Ben Bova, and James P. Hogan, really had the power to set one's imagination on fire.
- teamonkey 12y agoThe cylindrical colony is basically Arthur C Clarke's Rama. One of the images of the spherical colony shows a human-powered vehicle, which IIRC featured in the first Rama book.
- tgb 12y agoYou do remember correctly!
- ekianjo 12y agoThey were also reprinted in Cosmos from Carl Sagan. It brings great memories back !
- QuadDamaged 12y agoI was so thrilled the first time I saw Babylon 5's cylinder designed. 2001's toroid design was indeed iconic, but it kind of anchored the idea of what a space station should like for several decades!
- unicornporn 12y agoOMG, so this is where the Elysium creators got their inspiration from! Elysium art: http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/elysium.jpg http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp-content/uploads/2... http://www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/08/2013-08-09-elysium_interior_concept_art.jpg http://www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/08/2013-08-09-elysiu...
- pyre 12y agoOr any number of other SciFi movies, cartoons, etc. For example the many Gundam[1] series have similar colonies (maybe inspired by the same material). [1] Example: http://www.darkmirage.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/16_gundam00_ep11n.jpg http://www.darkmirage.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/16...
- chaostheory 12y agoMass Effect as well http://amhnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mass-Effect-3-Walkthrough-Act-2-%E2%80%93-Priority-The-Citadel.jpg http://amhnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mass-Effect... I'm sure there are others
- tvon 12y agoOn a much larger scale there is Ringworld, which incorporated a Dyson Ring, which is a variation on a Dyson Sphere[1], which was apparently inspired by a 1937 novel (according to the Wikipedia link). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
- coldpie 12y agoHeh, I was thinking the same thing for Policenauts.
- tc_ 12y agoMore discussion from the early HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428312 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428312
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- snowmantw 12y ago"YOU PROMISED ME MARS COLONIES. INSTEAD, I GOT FACEBOOK"
- bdunbar 12y agoWell, we also didn't have the Cold War go hot. Win some, loose some.
- ekianjo 12y agoMaybe, but we are still stockpiling weapons that can destroy our whole civilization at any time. It's not because we are currently in a relatively peaceful era that it's going to last in the long term.
- bdunbar 12y agoYup. That's a reason why I'm a big fan of the High Frontier, space exploration, and settlement. So when something goes boom, here, there will be some people, elsewhere, to help rebuild. Worst case, the species will carry on.
- jacorreia 12y agoAhhhhh now I want to go back and read Rendezvous with Rama. But I'm scared to reread it, I don't want to tarnish my memory of it.
- mrinterweb 12y agoI'm pretty sure that I have seen most of these images in my Dad's old Popular Science magazines. I'm really glad to see this art again.
- hypertexthero 12y ago[Don Davis](http://www.donaldedavis.com/ http://www.donaldedavis.com/), one of the illustrators whose work appears here, was part of the team of artists gathered to provide the visual effects for [Cosmos](http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2014/03/cosmos/ http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2014/03/cosmos/). [Some of his recollections](http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/SAGAN.html http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/SAGAN.html) of working with Sagan.
- ForHackernews 12y agoI like how in the future everyone will still have 70s hair and fashions. DISCO WILL NEVER DIE!