
The sci-fi cities of Bezos’s Blue Origin derive from his teacher Gerard O’Neill - tshannon
https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/05/space-colony-design-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-oneill-colonies/589294/
======
philwelch
The idea feels out of date because optimism about the future is out of date.
More people are willing to believe that humanity should go extinct than
believe that humanity should colonize space. The author’s foil for Gerard
O’Neill is none other than Rachel Carson, whose advocacy against pesticides
has directly led to countless human deaths from otherwise-preventable diseases
like malaria. Instead of someone like O’Neill who tries to figure out how
humanity can grow and flourish throughout the solar system, our hero is the
savior of the mosquito.

~~~
jerf
The funny/stupid/ironic thing is, the reasons people think humanity should
just "go extinct" are all the reasons we should move to space instead. There's
no story of "ecosystem damage" where there is no ecosystem in the first place.

Though based on my experiences on HN, even some people here need this really
bashed into their heads, that _we can 't hurt ecosystems that don't exist_.
("What if some do?" Then by all means worry about them, but by resources, they
are a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what the universe has.) There is
a major unexamined assumption that people have that life exists everywhere,
and therefore we can't put a toe outside our planet without stomping on
something, simply because that's our Earth-based experience. Once brought to
the conscious level it's obvious that it's false, but it's hard to get it up
to that level for some people.

~~~
ridgeguy
>There's no story of "ecosystem damage" where there is no ecosystem in the
first place.

There's also no story of humanity where there is no ecosystem in the first
place.

I think the hazard isn't in stomping on an exo-Earth ecosystem.

I think it's that if we can't avoid damage to multi-billion year evolved,
robust ecosystems on our home planet, we might not successfully craft off-
planet ecosystems that will sustain us indefinitely.

~~~
philwelch
Even Earth's ecosystem is as much "crafted" by human hands as it is "natural"
in the first place, and that's been the case for millennia. It's not merely a
question of "avoiding damage". It's a question of how we deliberately choose
to craft the Earth's ecosystem in the future.

~~~
devoply
Just because the natural system has tolerated meddling and abuse does not
amount to crafting. In fact the exercises of trying to create an artificial
system failed miserably... and will likely again. And that's a great reason to
try to go to space, to learn about how incompetent we are with our tech
despite being full of ourselves by taking all the things provided freely by
the earth for us to abuse and exploit while giving back virtually nothing. I
mean humans often don't bury their dead naturally they burn them or embalm
them... we give back nothing, we take everything: THIS IS SPARTA!

~~~
philwelch
The “natural system” has tolerated _millennia_ of “meddling and abuse”, and
that “meddling and abuse” has largely served to make the ecosystem more
habitable to humanity. We don’t even know what an un-“meddled” nature would
even be like. Even the Amazon rainforest is in large part a product of human
cultivation starting 11,000 years ago. The transformation of aurochs from a
wild megafauna to a technology to transform inedible grass into edible milk
and beef is also over 10,000 years old. The artificial evolution of our
hunting and working companion, the dog, is millennia older still.

~~~
devoply
It's telling a millennia is 1,000 years. 10,000 years is a blink of an eye.
The dinosaurs were around for over 160 million years, that is sixteen thousand
times longer -- talk about a millennia. More habitable for humanity, deadly
for pretty much every other living thing. Heck we were even doing all that
much until 300 year ago -- that's 160 million divided by 533,333. So let's see
the damage we did in 300 years multiplied by 533,333 times, yeah we're going
the way of the dinosaurs almost half a million times faster than the
dinosaurs.

We need maybe like 100 million or less people total on the planet. And 7 or 70
or heck 700 billion littered through the rest of the solar system. The chances
of the survival of our species and life in general on the planet the would be
infinitely greater than what we have done in the past 300 years. Population
growth outside the planet raises absolutely no questions about the survival of
the planet or species. The rest of the solar system is already completely and
utterly dead as far as we know. No arguments about pollution or stability or
sustainability or survival apply to it.

The rest of the universe as far as we know is our canvas, but please spare the
damn planet from where we came. It's rare and nearly impossible to replace.

~~~
justaaron
"tolerated" nothing like we've thrown at it in exponentially increasing form
every year since 1900... and by all accounts it's not "tolerating" it very
well at the moment. Fisheries? Sea water contamination? Air pollution?
Groundwater contamination (fracking? agricultural runoff?) Rainforest loss
(The Amazon! how many hectares lost per day? Palm oil plantations supplanting
Indonesian rainforest, etc...) all on top of human caused climate change...

------
PaulHoule
Let's see...

Getting resources from the moon seems out-of-date these days because the moon
is far away in terms of energy even if it is close in distance. Getting
resources from asteroids makes more sense.

As for Reagan and Thatcher I don't see either one as oriented toward growth,
but rather oriented towards a "war against inflation" that involved higher
interest rates, austerity, and tolerance for a lower rate of GDP growth so
long as the pain was felt by the middle and below. Reagan might have had
sharper rhetoric against environmentalism, but the movement did not collapse
until the Clinton years.

When I've been envisioning space colonies lately it has been really large
structures; I am fascinated by the idea that you can build a "small ringworld"
where the rotation holds in the air with a scale size of a megameter or so,
particularly if you can keep the upper atmosphere cold.

The rotation speeds of such a thing are close to orbital velocity and the
material requirements are similar to that of a space elevator... Unless you
can construct an orbital-velocity bearing in which case you can build a belt
around it to reinforce it.

Even then it is hard to build room for any vertical relief into the budget, no
high mountains, no deep oceans, probably you get a rather uncomfortable
hydrological cycle.

It would probably look different from one of those O'Neil colonies since you'd
have a very blue sky and most of the things that look different from a planet
would be far away and would look small. A lot depends on if the z-axis of the
colony is long or short.

~~~
philwelch
Ringworlds and orbitals are significantly bigger and harder to build than
O’Neill cylinders. O’Neill cylinders are potentially feasible within a century
or two; ringworlds and orbitals would take much longer.

~~~
wongarsu
>O’Neill cylinders are potentially feasible within a century or two

Is there anything fundamentally holding us back from building one _right now_?
I mean there's the obvious problem that nobody has a good reason to build one,
and only a hand full of entities have the funding to do so. But the
engineering challenges seem to be on the level of building LHC or ITER: not
nessesarily easy, but very doable.

~~~
brianpgordon
SpaceX is claiming in the neighborhood of $1500/kg to put something into LEO.
If you want to put a structure on the order of billions of kilograms into
orbit it would make more sense to get that mass from something already out
there and park it in high orbit instead - and space-based mining technology
doesn't exist yet.

~~~
saundby
Closer to $1100 per kg for Falcon Heavy.

~~~
mhandley
And something like $300 per kg for Starship (on the assumption of roughly $30M
for a fully reusable launch - Musk says it should be cheaper than F9 per
launch - and 100 tonnes to LEO) if they're successful in minimizing
refurbishment between launches, and there's enough business to spread the
development costs over enough launches.

------
jerf
How efficient of us to be already bored of something that can't exist any
sooner than 50 years from now.

------
stcredzero
Issac Arthur has covered more modern near-future rotating habitat designs: (As
well as much larger, further future designs.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JAU3w9mB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JAU3w9mB8)

There are more recent designs which use solar panels and LEDs for lighting,
which allows for the use of entirely stationary radiation shielding.

~~~
DesiLurker
Big shoutout to SFIA for covering such 'out of the world' futuristic matters!

------
gumby
Those NASA pictures from from a 1975 government document entitled "Space
Settlements, a Design Study". I have a copy right here.

It has been scanned (
[https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/s.s.doc.html](https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/s.s.doc.html)
) but a quick click around didn't show any of the cool paintings.

~~~
drchewbacca
There's some cool paintings here

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space)

~~~
T-A
Another good one:

[https://space.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/art.html](https://space.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/art.html)

------
blotter_paper
Looking at these huge open spaces, I can't help but wonder what would happen
after a single crack from oncoming debris. To avoid failing all at once a
space habitat should be divided into a bunch of smaller sub-compartments --
like the Titanic!

~~~
gamegoblin
Something that is sometimes pointed out about holes in spacecraft is that you
don't lose air as fast as movies would imply. After all, the pressure
difference between inside and outside is only 1 atmosphere.

For instance, if a micro-meteor created a bullet-sized hole in the
International Space Station, it would take 5-10 minutes for the air pressure
to drop to 0.5 atmospheres. The kilometers-scale space colonies described here
would take much longer. More than enough time for some drone to patch it, or
for the inhabitants to get to "life boats" or some sort of shelter.

I think the important part, then, would be to design the shell such that
damage in one part can't spread too far.

~~~
m4rtink
Exactly - these thing as designed by ONeil are HUGE - 30 km long on the
"default" island three type.

The solid walls would be meters thick, so the projectile would have to be very
masive and/or very fast. And even then it would take a long time for pressure
to reach dangerously low levels.

~~~
jandrese
I would expect lots of double and triple hulls. Especially on the glassy
parts. Micrometorite smashes through a pane and it only opens up the
compartmentalized space between the walls. It doesn't even depressurize
anything because the secondary hull can be left unpressurized. These can then
be repaired by technicians.

A big emergency plug can be designed for large impacts, and as a last resort
everybody can be trained in the use of emergency depressurization shelters.
It's not without its risks, but at the same time it's not like the Earth is
totally safe either. O'Neill colonies don't have to worry about natural
disasters.

~~~
aeternus
There are already proposals for resin-filled self-healing polymers and
epoxies. This would provide a high amount of resilience to small impacts.

~~~
m4rtink
I've seen a clever concept with special has filled baloons covered with a
sticky resin layer from the inside.

If there is a hull breach the baloons are automatically released, get sucked
into the hole, break apart and seal it with the resin.

------
fallingfrog
Here’s the thing: it is probably possible, given enough investment, to get a
self sustaining civilization in space started. But it wouldn’t necessarily
help the people still on earth very much.

Take any island nation: Iceland for example. They have a small population so
they can’t make everything they need; they import lumber, cars, food, etc. And
they always have, right from day 1 that the island was settled.

In space however the cost of constantly lifting goods from earth is too high
to do that forever. So they have to be totally self sufficient. That means
manufacturing, energy, extraction of minerals from asteroids, everything has
to be in place. I’d say minimum 10 million population before they can assemble
the diversity of industries to do that.

Once they are at that point though, what are they going to trade with earth?
Any minerals they obtain will be better used in space then parachuting them
down to the surface for processing. So they wouldn’t need us at all. So it’s
possible but politically very difficult to justify.

~~~
fallingfrog
Oh, and I forgot the obvious danger: any people in space always have the “high
ground” militarily since they can drop a rock on us whenever they want. So
we’ll be in no position to make demands either.

------
wbraun
My first though is who would populate these cities. Secular society does not
seem capable of reproducing at above replacement rate and global population is
expected to peak and start declining this century. Would people start having
more children again if housing was plentiful?

------
dfawcus
It has been decades since I read the High Frontier, but as I recall on of the
ideas was that the stations were initially there (in simplified form) to allow
for Orbital Power Satellites to be deployed and serviced.

It would be nice if we could deploy such, assuming we manage to avoid them
being used as microwave weapons.

------
rezeroed
Bezos is in PR and sales pitch mode for his sight-seeing trips. Watching a
launch involves listening to an endless marketing and sales pitch from that
woman who speaks like she's going to hock a loogie.

------
nobody271
I thought the whole presentation was pretty cool. Those colonies are just
visions of what might be built by future generations. He has new ideas about
the future of industry and that's exciting. But I have a hard time seeing the
scales he's talking about. Those colonies would not be able to hold billions
of people. I'm not sure if moving industry off of Earth, especially for
environmental reasons, makes a lot of sense. But when people imagine the
future as being exactly like the present it's just tiring and stupid. I don't
think he was acting like he knew all the answers but he's moving forward.

~~~
philwelch
> But I have a hard time seeing the scales he's talking about. Those colonies
> would not be able to hold billions of people.

It entirely depends on how many of them you build. You could also achieve much
higher densities than Earth with no real loss of quality of life, since you
wouldn't necessarily build massive oceans or deserts or mountains. (Though I
would really love to live on an O'Neill cylinder that was laid out as an
archipelago!)

~~~
DennisP
Also, if we get to a point where we can build them from carbon nanotubes, we
could make them the size of continents.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder)

------
audienceofone
The whole presentation is made to emotionally engage an audience of one. One
nostalgic non-reader who cares fuck-all about science but who probably
remembers those 70's vintage color plates and is all about big ego-driven
projects - i.e. Mr. Space Force.

I don't believe for a second that Bezos thinks significant numbers of people
living in floating habitats is happening any time soon if ever, but I do think
he wants a bite at a contract to go to the moon, and everything about this
media push down to the 2024 timeline (call me, mr president) is about pushing
those buttons in one particular man's lizard brain.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop creating accounts for each few comments you post? That's
against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. HN is a
community, and it's important for community that users have an identity that
others can relate to.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

I've written about this many times here:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

Also, this comment is much too much of a flamewar rant to be a good comment
for HN. If you have a substantive point, please make it without stooping to
that.

~~~
rezeroed
HN is not a community when drive-by down-voters are allowed. If they provided
a comment with their down-vote that would be community.

------
sys_64738
Given Amazon want to automate humans out of their logistics process here, why
would they do anything with humans on the moon?

~~~
wongarsu
The same reason oil rigs aren't fully automated: Humans are very versatile and
agile.

------
okintheory
Anyone who spends more on escaping Earth than on saving it is saying f*ck you
to most of our 7.7 bio. people.

~~~
walrus01
Excepting the fact that technology developed for space (1957-present) has made
huge improvements in ground based life.

At its absolute peak the Apollo program consumed 4.4% of the US federal
government budget.

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?i...](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies)

~~~
wongarsu
Even technologies that are not direct spinoffs often benefit greatly. For
example the Apollo onboard computers created demand for smaller computers,
accelerating development of integrated circuits and dropping their price. Some
credit Apollo with singlehandedly dropping IC prices from $1000 to $20 [1]. If
it wasn't for Apollo we likely wouldn't be on this forum.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_integrated_ci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_integrated_circuit#First_semiconductor_ICs)

------
patagonia
Just watch Prometheus. This is the same hubris and greed, even if well
intentioned.

As the other commentator said, they are too fragile to serve as humanity’s
“back-up”. As theme parks or transit vessels, sure. But not as our back-up.

Second, and in my humble opinion more importantly, these will tend to be built
and owned by entities and thus everyone in them will be serfs. I honestly
can’t say that a similar scenario wouldn’t play out for a planet, claimed as
owned by the first flag planted. But, when the structure is wholly built and
owned by a profit driven entity such as Amazon... Perhaps they can be owned by
consortiums or non for profit entities, there is still issue #1.

Finally. Why build one of these (gravity levels or for transit, I guess being
the valid reason I can see, but maybe there is a planet-based solution for the
gravity issue, idk) instead of utilizing the planets that are already right
there for the using??? And instead of using all the resources to build a
habitat, build something else.

Edit: These are hotels, not homes.

~~~
gamegoblin
Bezos addresses your final question in the presentation. The livable planetary
surfaces other than earth (Moon, Mars, maybe Ganymede or something) aren't
that big. In total they sum up to somewhere in the realm of Earth's land
surface. So inhabiting them is "only" going to enable doubling the human
capacity. Whereas space itself will increase human capacity by many orders of
magnitude.

~~~
icegreentea2
These statements are always fantastical. When we talk about humanity exceeding
Earth's resource footprint, the issue isn't land in itself. All of our
immediate issues come from balancing:

a) How do we harvest energy b) How much non-human components do we want to
leave, and in what configuration, given that significant non-human components
are currently required to give us a livable environment c) How do we
distribute resources

Yes ultimately all of those are constrained by land area, but we have so many
other things to solve first before land area is THE problem. And hilariously,
it's more or less the same problems we need to solve before we need to
colonize anything. How do we efficiently (measured in materials, surface area,
maintenance, capital, operating cost) collect energy. How do we create and
maintain true closed systems that are reasonably conducive to non-shitty human
lives. How do we spread the wealth so we don't burn it all down.

~~~
gamegoblin
Bezos brings land area into it because assuming a 3% growth in energy usage
per year, as has been the historical trend, we will need to cover the earth in
solar panels in 200 years.

Something he doesn’t touch on is fission/fusion instead of solar, so I am
curious about how that changes the calculus.

~~~
aidenn0
3% energy growth is unsustainable in the long run; at that rate we are about
1000 years from using more energy per year than the sun emits in totality:

2015 energy usage 110PWh for the entire year[1]

That works out to ~1.8e13 W average power.

Total output for the sun is about 4e26 W[2]

This works out to about 44 doublings, and 3% growth is a doubling every 24
years which means we need to surpass Kardashev II in 1000 years.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption)
2:
[https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MatthewTsang.shtml](https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MatthewTsang.shtml)

~~~
philwelch
1000 years is a long time. Might help to have more people around to help
figure out interstellar travel.

