Friday, May 4, 2007

Space Colony Possible (The News, 1975)

On August 22, 1975 The News (Frederick, Maryland) ran an article titled, "Space colony possible," which advocated the building of a space city. Below are excerpts from the piece.

A $100 billion city in space that would house 10,000 people and beam solar energy to earth could be a reality within 20 years, according to a select team of scholars.

The scholars said a space colony, once built, could transmit limitless solar energy to earth 24 hours a day.

As envisioned, the space colony would resemble a mile-wide wheel and have 10,000 inhabitants living in the outer rim. The vessel would orbit between the earth and moon, some 280,000 miles out in space.

Food for all residents would grow on 111 acres, with crops bathed in continuous sunlight. To maintain gravity similar to earth's, the craft would make one complete revolution every minute.

Residents would have a half-mile long landscaped vista and pure water would be recycled from sewage. The air would be cleaner than that in any city on earth because of constant filtering.

[Dr. Gerard] O'Neill said construction could begin now, using present technology, and the first colony could be functional by the early 1990s.


See also:
Delicious Waste Liquids of the Future (1982)
Robot Rebellion (1982)
Space Colony Pirates (1981)
Sport in Space Colonies (1977)
Space Colonies by Don Davis
More Space Colony Art (1970s)
Mars and Beyond (1957)
Challenge of Outer Space (circa 1950s)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, the O'Neill colonies... another in-reach dream punctured by the reality of the space shuttle and bureaucrats with no vision.

Anonymous said...

More like punctured by those trivial facts of budgets and cost-benefit analyses. There's no goddamn reason to do it except that it would be Really Cool.