
Space Colony Art from the 1970s - kurren
http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArtHiRes/70sArt/art.html
======
FD3SA
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_\(UC\))

~~~
dredmorbius
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
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
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
>> 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
Interesting Vinge reference. I wasn't familiar with that.

------
aluhut
Those "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
i 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.

------
snowmantw
"YOU PROMISED ME MARS COLONIES. INSTEAD, I GOT FACEBOOK"

~~~
bdunbar
Well, we also didn't have the Cold War go hot. Win some, loose some.

~~~
ekianjo
Maybe, 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
Yup. 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.

------
ambivalence
The torus design really makes it so that it's uphill both ways. That would
change the "Back in my day" jokes forever.

~~~
dredmorbius
Except 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
I 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
I'd say "'pedantic' is my middle name" but for the fact that it isn't.

------
ilamont
I 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
The 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
You do remember correctly!

------
unicornporn
OMG, so this is where the Elysium creators got their inspiration from!

Elysium art:

[http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp-
content/uploads/2...](http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/elysium.jpg)

[http://www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/08/2013-08-09-elysiu...](http://www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/08/2013-08-09-elysium_interior_concept_art.jpg)

~~~
pyre
Or 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...](http://www.darkmirage.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2007/12/16_gundam00_ep11n.jpg)

------
tc_
More discussion from the early HN:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428312](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428312)

------
hypertexthero
[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.

------
turrini
I believe that "Toroidal Colonies" inspired heavily the movie Elysium (2013)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/)

~~~
troels
My thought too. There are some really nice renderings here:
[https://www.solidangle.com/news/elysium/](https://www.solidangle.com/news/elysium/)

------
zokier
Slideshow mirror: [http://imgur.com/a/eus5K](http://imgur.com/a/eus5K)

------
mrinterweb
I'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.

------
jacorreia
Ahhhhh 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.

------
ForHackernews
I like how in the future everyone will still have 70s hair and fashions.

DISCO WILL NEVER DIE!

