
Space colony art from the 1970s - motters
http://publicdomainreview.org/2011/08/23/space-colony-art-from-the-1970s/
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jacques_chester
These are from Gerard O'Neill's book, _The High Frontier_ , which described
how such colonies could be built and outlined their engineering parameters. I
first read it as a boy and it's always stuck with me.

Essentially, with the technology of the 70s he argued that it was plausible to
build the "Island Three" design, a tube 8kms in diameter and about 32kms long.
Each would be paired with a second such tube and both would rotate in opposite
directions to create gravity. Such habitats could hold millions of people.

McKendree[2] later speculated on what might be achievable with mature carbon-
based nanotechnology, expanding the possible size to 460kms diameter and
4600kms long -- almost as much surface area than Russia -- and in any basic
climate configuration desired.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Coloni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder>

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maeon3
The amount of energy needed to create this would be enormous. At the rate
technology is shaping up, it would probably be money better spent to make it
so that humans don't need those monsterous devices just so we can remain alive
without an atmosphere and gravity. Instead, we work to evolve an plastic
exoskeleton and imbedded "always on" technology inside us so humans can
survive in outer space as easily as they survive on the surface of Earth. So
you have to fuel up with oxygen and food, but then you are good to go and then
you don't need to waste all that energy to move trillions of tons soil into
space.

The future is often very different than we expect, we may find out that we
explore the universe in 2 foot by 2 foot by 6 foot pods inside of monsterous
spaceships with arms, legs, sensors and technology. And we fly around the
universe doing what humans always do. The human in the center of the ship,
unconscious and living through and commanding the machine. Why carry along the
body, just use the brain. Better yet, get 1000 brains per ship. Machines
inside controlling the ship directed by the minds.

~~~
angersock
Which is easier to sell folks on?

"You'll be able to lie about in the terraformed Martian soil/space station
garden/ship farm and gaze at the stars!"

or

"We'll flay the skin from you and replace it with a polymer and wiring. In
fact, we may just decide to crack open your skull and yank your brain, and
shove it into a box, where electrodes will provide stimulus and try to present
a mapping of sensory inputs you aren't evolved to process."

Honestly, I think the former is an easier sell. Also, the technology for the
former is here--it just isn't distributed yet.

This singularity transhuman nonsense lacks both wonder and reason. It lacks
reason because it depends on a lot of technology that hasn't been invented yet
and presupposes that people will want to mutilate themselves on a whim.

Worse, it lacks wonder, because instead of attempting to change the world to
suit us--perhaps the most fundamental of human drives--it instead seeks to
alter what we are in attempts to make things "easier" and "more efficient".

~~~
reso
I understand your sentiment, but I think you're choosing your examples too
carefully. Other singularity-era technology could let us breathe underwater,
or increase our muscle and bone-density ten-fold, giving us superhero like
strength. I think that's pretty wondrous.

~~~
angersock
My reading suggests that we assume this technology is developed and ready to
go. I too could see, once we pull out the singularity dust, a future where
extensive body modification is possible, where my vision is trivially fixed to
have larger spectral response and my skin is a flashing display of whimsy.
But, that still supposes quite a bit.

Moreover, I'll take your breathing underwater example to point something else
out, as well as the muscle/bone-density one.

We have that technology--some sort of Self-Contained Underwater Breathing
Apparatus; a SCUBA, if you will. Similarly, we have ways of increasing muscle
mass using steroids and other additives.

And you know what? This is largely the domain of the rich, or of those who
have money and time to spend on frivolities. So much of the singularity tech
that I see bandied about seems to fall very much in that camp (see also:
<http://archive.picturesforsadchildren.com/93/> ).

I'd much rather see better distribution and use of existing technology than
wait for The Future--especially when it's presented as Everything's Possible
With Science!

(Speculative fiction has done a decent job of picking apart some of threads of
these sorts of futures...I'd suggest reading some of the Dangerous Visions
anthology or more recently Paolo Bacigalupi if you'd like a properly
melancholy commentary on the future with Science! There's this annoying
problem of the many billions in poverty that somehow always gets waved away.)

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paulsutter
It's interesting that we dont have visions of the future anymore. Peter Thiel
is right, we now have a pessimistic, probabilistic opinion of the future, as
opposed to the optimistic deterministic opinion we once had.

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CodeCube
How could they rip off ideas from Halo so blatantly!!

Kidding of course. I don't think I had consciously acknowledged this, but
@paulsutter is totally right. I think the only vision of the future from
recent times that I can think of is the "Minority Report UI" ... and we've
pretty much already achieved that (NUI, iDevices, Kinect, etc.).

Can anyone give any contemporary examples of what we imagine the future to be
like (aside from a blade runner-esque dystopia)?

~~~
lutze
Depends what you mean by contemporary?

The Culture is very optimistic, and features engineering on a scale that makes
these concepts look like iron age coracles.

A personal favourite of mine is Schismatrix though. It's set almost entirely
in space habitats similar to the ones featured here.

As Neuromancer's lesser known cyberpunk contemporary, in places it's very...
80s in tone politically. But it's still a great setting, I'd highly recommend
it.

~~~
Retric
Consider Phlebas (1987) is 25 years old so I don't know if it still qualify's
as recent.

~~~
lutze
Schismatrix is 27 years... Honestly, that's still pretty new in sci-fi terms.
The genre is older than most people think!

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything more recent that describes
such structures as evocatively as those novels. They seem to have fallen out
of fashion a little, which is a shame.

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mseepgood
In today's science fiction all I see is battleships with dark / teal colored
corridors and everyone wears a military suit and a gun.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Not always. There are shows like Lost, Heroes or Dark Angel as well. But
you're right that these are exceptions.

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dave_sullivan
Going from sputnik in 1957 to the moon landing in 1969, I can see how someone
in the 70s might think we'd have space colonies by 2012. Then again, a lot of
people thought we'd have blown ourselves up by now.

Of those two visions, we've come much closer to blowing ourselves up then we
ever have to space colonies. I'm ok with the lack of progress on the space
colonization frontier--I just wish there was more progress on the "how to not
blow ourselves up" problem.

~~~
iwejfweoifjweif
Really? I don't think nuclear war is more likely these days than it was during
the 60s and 70s. If anything I think that possibility has greatly decreased
given the interdependence almost every nation has on other nations.

~~~
angersock
I think you may have misread:

    
    
      we've come much closer to blowing ourselves up then we ever 
      have to space colonies
    

This isn't to say that (currently) we are at the edge of nuclear war, but
rather that we've at some time between then and now been much better prepared
for war than colonization.

Considering the vast number of ICBMs and nuclear devices prepared by the US
and USSR during that time period, compared to the number of colony ships and
slowboats that made it into production, I think that's a fair point.

~~~
iwejfweoifjweif
Good point, I did miss that.

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sprash
Looks similar to the art of Klaus Bürgle from the 1960s: <http://www.retro-
futurismus.de/buergle_weltraum1.htm>

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uvdiv
I like the views, and I think the drawings understate them. You're on the
inside of a curved surface: you can see hundreds of km in any direction,
always from a high angle (no obstructions). And up to the full 4pi steradians
of solid angle. Far more than a mountain view. Maybe more like an ISS view,
but bigger still, and vastly sharper (with minimal assumptions about the
atmosphere quality). The level of detail isn't really represented right.

It would be an interesting vacation concept, if only it were about 15 orders
of magnitude cheaper.

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adastra
Space enthusiast here. Gerard O'Neill proposed these "O'Neill cylinders" as an
alternative way to go about colonizing space. This is in comparison to the
monstrously expensive Mars missions being conceived at the time.

There was a fascinating battle of ideas happening in the space community in
the 1970's. Von Braun, Gerard O'Neill, and Carl Sagan all founded space
advocacy organizations to pursue their various lines of thinking. Von Braun's
National Space Institute ended up merging with O'Neill's L5 Society in the
1980's to form today's National Space Society. Carl Sagan's The Planetary
Society still exists and is run by Bill Nye. Yes, the Science Guy.

Von Braun came from the government, Apollo-style mission to Mars viewpoint,
for obvious reasons. Sagan was more an advocate of using robotic spacecraft
instead of humans, to maximize the scientific discoveries per dollar.
(Although Sagan eventually came around to being supportive of human
exploration and colonization.)

O'Neill had an interesting viewpoint, which sowed the seeds for what is
happening today. He believed that by first concentrating on space stations
built at Lagrange points, that had some kind of _economic_ benefit to Earth,
then further space exploration could finance itself through private industry.
Examples of economic benefit would be space-based solar power, or maybe
asteroid mining, where you tow the asteroids to the Lagrange points and ship
the minerals down to Earth. These drawings are of the ultimate goal -- entire
space colonies, but you'd obviously start with something smaller that had a
net economic positive and bootstrap up from there.

The different factions of the space community went through a lot of turmoil
and debate during the 80's and 90's, when it became clear that United States
government was pursuing exactly none of these things. Instead NASA built the
space shuttle, a technological dead end, and once the shuttle and space
station contractors were entrenched people knew we would be stuck for a couple
of decades. It wasn't until the early 2000's that a light appeared at the end
of the tunnel: the private space industry, led by the likes of Elon Musk,
Richard Branson, John Carmack, and Jeff Bezos. Sadly, the Columbia accident
also happened, which lead to the shuttle's badly-needed retirement.

But if you look at where they are today, the viewpoints of all these players
have all essentially converged. They all support the private space industry.
They support NASA doing robotic space science missions, and they have for the
most part given up on NASA doing much that is useful in human spaceflight or
colonization.

There will at some point be disagreement over whether to first go to Mars, to
the Moon, or to do space mining/space habitats. But right now I'd say most
likely all three will be pursued in parallel, each funded by different
billionaires. The competition, if there is one, will be won by actually
getting such a mission off the ground and flying real hardware, and not by
mustering political support. At least, that's the hope.

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jvdh
This reminds me a lot of some of the Culture things that Iain M Banks has
described, also in his latest novel Surface Detail which also describes the
open spaces with weightlessness. The ringed worlds were already described
earlier in the series.

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stcredzero
This particular set seems to be taken from the prints included in T.A.
Heppenheimer's _Colonies in Space_, which my dad brought home to me as a kid.
I'm going to grab it from my shelf now. (Also from the 70's)

EDIT: I was wrong. Some of those pictures are there, but not all. Still, it
was a great way for a kid to become interested in science.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's where I recall them from.

The book itself is online:
<http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/index.html>

Including a list of color plates (with thumbnails):
[http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colorplates.ht...](http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colorplates.html)

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aswanson
I have a book from 1979 or thereabouts with the ringworld illustration in it
from this site. Does anyone know about that series of books, "world of
tommorow" or something like that that talked about terraforming Mars, future
transportation and health, etc? I really loved that series as a kid but can't
remember the name.

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invalidOrTaken
Childcraft, by chance?

If so, I loved them too.

~~~
aswanson
Not the one...but thank you. I plan on sharing childcraft with my kiddies.

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toksaitov
And most of these concepts can be viewed in many series of the Mobile Suit
Gundam franchise.

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whichdan
The space colonies in Gundam are immensely cool. I was actually surprised how
similar they are to the 1970's art.

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bhauer
A few links out from that, I arrived here: <http://www.spacehabs.com/>

Some more fascinating images, though modern and computer rendered, so not
quite of the same ilk.

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peachananr
Reminded me of the Citadel from Mass Effect. It's beautiful!

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e03179
Today it's more about growing cyberspace than outer space.

