Space Settlements
spreading life throughout the
solar system
"I know that humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond." Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator.
Humanity has the power to fill outer space with life. Today our solar system is filled with plasma, gas, dust, rock, and radiation -- but very little life; just a thin film around the third rock from the Sun. We can change that. In the 1970's Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University showed that we can build giant orbiting spaceships and live in them. These orbital space colonies could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades, and great wealth. In time, we may see hundreds of thousands of orbital space settlements in our solar system alone. Building these settlements will be an evolutionary event in magnitude similar to, if not greater than, ocean-based Life's colonization of land half a billion years ago.
Basics
- Who? Pioneers at first, billions of ordinary people later.
- What? Artificial ecosystems inside gigantic rotating, pressurized spacecraft shielded from radiation.
- Where? In orbit; near Earth at first.
- How? Solar energy, lunar and asteroidal materials, and lots of hard work.
- Why? To grow.
- When? Good question, when do you start working on it?
- How much will it cost? If you have to ask, you can't afford it
... unless
Student Design Contest
NASA Ames sponsors an annual space settlement design contest
for 6-12th grade students.
Online Space Settlement Books
Images
Miscellaneous
- A Futurist Perspective For Space by Dr. Kenneth J. Cox, (kenneth.j.cox1@jsc.nasa.gov), June 2001. (pdf file)
- Isaac Asimov on space settlement.
- SpaceSettlers. A site devoted to space settlement discussion.
- The Space Show. The Space Show focuses on timely and important issues influencing the developmentof outer-space commerce and space tourism, as well as other related subjects of interest to us all.
- Space settlement contest NAS highlights.
These are highlights associated with the design contest that were reported
to NAS management.
- Videos of weightless living.
- Annotated bibliography.
- Ringworld: a Java applet to interactively explore
some aspects of living in a rotating environment, particularly jumping off high platforms and throwing balls.
- Links to solar sail web sites.
- Lewis One space settlement design: intended to improve on the 10,000 inhabitant designs of the mid-70s depicted in the artwork (see above). The new design features large shielded micro-g construction bays, low-g agriculture near the rotation axis to reduce the length of cylindrical settlements, large micro-g visitor and recreation areas, space viewing, and low-g recreation.
- Space Settlement papers
-
Paper:
"AsterAnts: A Concept for Large-Scale Meteoroid
Return and Processing Using the International Space Station," Al Globus, Bryan Biegel, and Steve Traugott.
- Space playgound a zero-g playground designed by four, five, and six year olds at the Santa Cruz Children's School.
- General Public Space Travel and Tourism
- Related web sites.
Other Space Settlement Web Sites
Parting Words
Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that new ideas pass through three periods:
- "It can't be done."
- "It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing."
- "I knew it was a good idea all along!"
Author: Al Globus
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