Today would have been his eighty-fifth birthday. Many of his dreams may have been unrealistic, in retrospect (they were based on the assumption that the Shuttle really would reduce the cost of space access, among other things), but he inspired, and reinspired a generation jaded by the letdown of Apollo.
On a related note, Alexis Madrigal has an interesting bit of space (and California) history, over at the Atlantic.
The article in the Atlantic contains this interestingly pessimistic vision of what space colonies would REALLY end up looking like:
I wonder if there have been any direct rebuttals of these statements.
Well maybe modern food courts and malls could be considered a rebuttal. They are pretty pleasant, and nothing like a greasy Greyhound bus interior. So then would a person’s highest calling be to study Renaissance Italian architecture and interior design, to save O’Neill colonies from the fate described above?
I dont know if O’Neill’s visions were really that unrealistic. If there was funding for so much payloads and activity in space, suitable earth to orbit transportation would surely materialize – as the CATS problem is not technical, its an economical one.
Can I break the faith here? In The High Frontier the expected cost of the Shuttle was quoted as $10M/flight or $1194/kg in 2007 dollars. Falcon Heavy is expected to do $1509/kg next year. So either Gerry also being a little optimistic or the price of launch is soon going to be low enough to start build O’Neill colonies. I know which one I prefer, but which is true?
I first read “The High Frontier” in high school, and have believed in the idea ever since.
A few weeks ago I was looking at the problems of building much larger space colonies, and the only solution is to abandon a rotating structure. Since conventional materials can’t support their own weight against the induced one G of gravity as the colony’s size goes up, the outer shell should remain at zero-G, which allows its size to be unbounded.
The interior shell could be thin and lightweight, unable by itself to support either the load at one G or one atmosphere of pressure. Instead the load is totally supported by maglev tracks, transfering the forces to the outer non-rotating pressure hull. The maglev system would need to be passive, so I’d recommend using permanent magnets in a Hallbach array and a stamped aluminum track, although it could possibly employ high-temperature superconductors in the outer hull, which could by passively radiatively cooled. Of course the interface between the magnets and the track could be open to vacuum to reduce drag.
Aside from allowing colony sizes to be unbounded, the amount of structural material is reduced. But the biggest advantages are in construction and operation.
A zero-G outer hull means it can be assembled, extended, and modified while the rest of the colony’s interior is running at one gee (if the interior used multiple, indpenedent maglev rings). It also means that the entire outer shell is available for docking, construction, and adding discrete modules, antennas, solar arrays, and trusses till the station looks absolutely fuzzy with growth. The maglev tracks could even be supported by beams and girders from the outer hull, creating many floors of interior zero-G, one atmosphere spaces. To transfer people and materials from the zero-G environment to the one-G environment, they can be loaded on a narrow-gage maglev train that mates up with the spinning interior.
And the truly magical part (especially to TTM readers) is that to the colonists, the entire world will be nothing but high-speed rail. 😀
Certainly the major influence on me, and my short-story fiction. Only got to meet him once, but it was unforgettable.