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Many 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 Princet

by FD3SA 12y ago

Many 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Quite. Just acknowledging you beat me to the punch ;-)
dredmorbius 12y ago
They'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 ago
  O'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.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    I suspect the powersat evolved as a mission justification: so, we can conceive of human-habitable structures in space, but why would we do that. From Heppenheimer's book, it seems that the colony concept emerged first, then the powersat concept. Once you've arrived at "orbiting solar power stations built from lunar regolith", questioning your premises and realizing that the colonies really don't make all that much sense. But then again, pragmatism and overt missions never really ruled space anyway -- see Apollo and the Shuttle. As for the technical reasons, to paraphrase Douglas Adams: Space is expensive. Really expensive. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly expensive it is. The ISS is the most expensive single structure ever constructed, and among the most expensive single projects ever undertaken -- and that for a habitation for six people. Total cost is somewhere north of $100 billion (how far north isn't clear, the budget's spread among multiple agencies and nations). Given that, and absent tremendous gains in efficiency and automation, the cost of solar power satellites let alone O'Neil space colonies would be in the tens of trillions of dollars, minimum. That's on the scale of the entire US GDP, if not more. As for your observation "a lot more than actually did [happen]": Colonies in Space is one of my benchmarks for rates of technological change that didn't happen. I'd anticipated that that could well be my future, but a decade and a half past when it was supposed to be a reality, it remains science fiction. It's given me a good sense of the sorts of change which are possible and likely, and those which aren't. And no, not all progress is subject to Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.
    - marktangotango 12y ago
      >> It's given me a good sense of the sorts of change which are possible and likely, and those which aren't. And no, not all progress is subject to Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns. Indeed, we may be in Vinge's "Age of failed dreams".
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        Interesting Vinge reference. I wasn't familiar with that.
- DennisP 12y ago
  It hasn't been done already because launch is still crazy expensive. Now we've got SpaceX making solid progress towards a fully reusable launch vehicle, which should drop costs by an order of magnitude, and Planetary Resources working on near-earth asteroid mining.
SlipperySlope 12y ago
I was a member of the L5 society and continue to believe that low earth orbit habitats will be a better option than colonizing Mars.
- FD3SA 12y ago
  They are both extremely difficult to accomplish with current technology. The issue with Mars is that it has no magnetosphere [1], and as such, all habitats will have to be underground and/or shielded with very thick layers of lead, dirt and water. Man made colonies will have the same problem, in addition to requiring space manufacturing and assembly at a level that is currently impossible. If SpaceX brings the cost of space flight down to its basic energy costs, we will have solved one problem. The other problem is the power generation required to conduct space manufacturing at a large scale. Solar, although consistent, is low in power density and thus requires large amounts of surface area that is very difficult to maintain in space. Until we crack compact, high yield fusion, I doubt we will make much progress in realizing our space-faring dreams. This was also the opinion of the late Robert Bussard, inventor of the Bussard ramjet and the polywell fusor. 1. http://www.space.com/24731-mars-radiation-curiosity-rover.html http://www.space.com/24731-mars-radiation-curiosity-rover.ht...
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    Mars colonies, at least, can rely on Nitrogen and CO2 from the Martian atmosphere. Orbital habitats have to import everything but sunlight. Having the colonies underground may have an extra advantage, both on Mars and on the Moon, as they may be closer to sources of ice. I remember hearing something about the Moon being much less dry than previously thought. No running water nor blocks of ice, but maybe crunching rocks yields something useful.
    - afhdshufdufdo 12y ago
      Right on. To add to this, early stage terraforming is in the immediate rather than long-term plan for Mars. As soon as we start producing CO2 on Mars, we're on our way. I'm not against colonizing space itself, but early seagoing explorers didn't attempt to colonize the ocean. We need to establish ourselves in environments that allow easy production of oxygen, water, and food. In the end, it is about money. It takes a lot of money to get setup on Mars, but after it is setup, it is a HUGE resource, which means much, much more money. The moon could also be a huge resource, but it is expensive to colonize because it can't hold atmosphere easily. Colonizing space itself without mining a resource in a way that eventually will pay off the initial investment is useless and a drain on our society.

by FD3SA 12y ago

abecedarius 12y ago

I 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 ago
Quite. Just acknowledging you beat me to the punch ;-)

dredmorbius 12y ago

They'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 ago
O'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.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  I suspect the powersat evolved as a mission justification: so, we can conceive of human-habitable structures in space, but why would we do that. From Heppenheimer's book, it seems that the colony concept emerged first, then the powersat concept. Once you've arrived at "orbiting solar power stations built from lunar regolith", questioning your premises and realizing that the colonies really don't make all that much sense. But then again, pragmatism and overt missions never really ruled space anyway -- see Apollo and the Shuttle. As for the technical reasons, to paraphrase Douglas Adams: Space is expensive. Really expensive. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly expensive it is. The ISS is the most expensive single structure ever constructed, and among the most expensive single projects ever undertaken -- and that for a habitation for six people. Total cost is somewhere north of $100 billion (how far north isn't clear, the budget's spread among multiple agencies and nations). Given that, and absent tremendous gains in efficiency and automation, the cost of solar power satellites let alone O'Neil space colonies would be in the tens of trillions of dollars, minimum. That's on the scale of the entire US GDP, if not more. As for your observation "a lot more than actually did [happen]": Colonies in Space is one of my benchmarks for rates of technological change that didn't happen. I'd anticipated that that could well be my future, but a decade and a half past when it was supposed to be a reality, it remains science fiction. It's given me a good sense of the sorts of change which are possible and likely, and those which aren't. And no, not all progress is subject to Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.
  - marktangotango 12y ago
    >> It's given me a good sense of the sorts of change which are possible and likely, and those which aren't. And no, not all progress is subject to Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns. Indeed, we may be in Vinge's "Age of failed dreams".
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      Interesting Vinge reference. I wasn't familiar with that.
DennisP 12y ago
It hasn't been done already because launch is still crazy expensive. Now we've got SpaceX making solid progress towards a fully reusable launch vehicle, which should drop costs by an order of magnitude, and Planetary Resources working on near-earth asteroid mining.

SlipperySlope 12y ago

I was a member of the L5 society and continue to believe that low earth orbit habitats will be a better option than colonizing Mars.

FD3SA 12y ago
They are both extremely difficult to accomplish with current technology. The issue with Mars is that it has no magnetosphere [1], and as such, all habitats will have to be underground and/or shielded with very thick layers of lead, dirt and water. Man made colonies will have the same problem, in addition to requiring space manufacturing and assembly at a level that is currently impossible. If SpaceX brings the cost of space flight down to its basic energy costs, we will have solved one problem. The other problem is the power generation required to conduct space manufacturing at a large scale. Solar, although consistent, is low in power density and thus requires large amounts of surface area that is very difficult to maintain in space. Until we crack compact, high yield fusion, I doubt we will make much progress in realizing our space-faring dreams. This was also the opinion of the late Robert Bussard, inventor of the Bussard ramjet and the polywell fusor. 1. http://www.space.com/24731-mars-radiation-curiosity-rover.html http://www.space.com/24731-mars-radiation-curiosity-rover.ht...
- rbanffy 12y ago
  Mars colonies, at least, can rely on Nitrogen and CO2 from the Martian atmosphere. Orbital habitats have to import everything but sunlight. Having the colonies underground may have an extra advantage, both on Mars and on the Moon, as they may be closer to sources of ice. I remember hearing something about the Moon being much less dry than previously thought. No running water nor blocks of ice, but maybe crunching rocks yields something useful.
  - afhdshufdufdo 12y ago
    Right on. To add to this, early stage terraforming is in the immediate rather than long-term plan for Mars. As soon as we start producing CO2 on Mars, we're on our way. I'm not against colonizing space itself, but early seagoing explorers didn't attempt to colonize the ocean. We need to establish ourselves in environments that allow easy production of oxygen, water, and food. In the end, it is about money. It takes a lot of money to get setup on Mars, but after it is setup, it is a HUGE resource, which means much, much more money. The moon could also be a huge resource, but it is expensive to colonize because it can't hold atmosphere easily. Colonizing space itself without mining a resource in a way that eventually will pay off the initial investment is useless and a drain on our society.