O'Neill Island 1/2/3 colonies - detail sources?

I recently read Gerard O'Neill's "The High Frontier" (the latest version
from Apogee Books with the CD-ROM). The text doesn't really go into much
detail on the design of his Island One/Two/Three cylindrical space
colonies, besides "X miles in diameter by Y miles long". Yet there are
those great drawings and pictures of what a real colony might look like.
Was there some other source of detailed design work on the colony designs,
or are the drawings just the artist's idea of how an X by Y size colony
would appear?

I'd appreciate any information on this. I find O'Neill's work fascinating.

Thanks,

Jeff Clark
e-mail address altered by "no" "spam"

Jeff Clark wrote:

I recently read Gerard O'Neill's "The High Frontier" (the latest
version from Apogee Books with the CD-ROM). The text doesn't
really go into much detail on the design of his Island One/Two/
Three cylindrical space colonies, besides "X miles in diameter by
Y miles long". Yet there are those great drawings and pictures of
what a real colony might look like. Was there some other source
of detailed design work on the colony designs, or are the drawings
just the artist's idea of how an X by Y size colony would appear?

O'Neill hosted a "space colonization" conference at Princeton
University in 1974 and again in 1975. Along with other proponents
of the concept, he founded the Space Studies Institute (SSI), which
has continued to host a biennial series of "space manufacturing"
conferences at Princeton since 1977.

He also directed three NASA Summer Studies on Space Colonization,
in 1975, 1976, and 1977. The most famous of these is the 1975
Summer Study, hosted by Stanford University and NASA Ames Research
Center. It produced a colony design known as the "Stanford Torus".
That study concluded that a torus was the most efficient enclosure
for a population of 10,000 living in 1 g at 1 RPM.

By being a little less conservative on the rotation rate, allowing
up to 2 RPM, the study found that a sphere was more efficient.
(Smaller radius, more compact.) They named the prototype spherical
colony the "Bernal Sphere", in honor of J. D. Bernal.

(Although, Bernal was not a proponent of Earth-like colonies with
artificial gravity. Instead, he advocated a "three-dimensional,
gravitationless way of living". Gradually, during a "larval,
unspecialized existence" lasting sixty to one hundred twenty years,
inadequate body parts would be replaced, and new sensory and motor
mechanisms would be grafted on. Finally, a person "would emerge as
a completely effective, mentally-directed mechanism, and set about
the tasks appropriate to his new capacities." But I digress ...)

The bigger cylinders are extensions of the sphere, spreading the
end caps apart and increasing the radius.

The Summer Studies discuss the design evolution in considerable
detail, and the SSI Proceedings include contributions from lots of
other folks on various aspects of space colonies and space
manufacturing facilities.

The 1975 Summer Study is on the web, as are the SSI Proceedings
Tables of Contents:

O'Neill, Gerard K. (1974). "The Colonization of Space." _Physics
Today_, vol. 27, no. 9, p. 32-40, September 1974. American
Institute of Physics.

Johnson, Richard D.; Holbrow, Charles (eds.) (1977). _Space
Settlements: A Design Study_ (NASA SP 413). NASA Scientific
and Technical Information Office. Authored by the
participants of the 1975 Summer Faculty Fellowship Program in
Engineering Systems Design at Stanford University and NASA
Ames Research Center.

http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSe...y/s.s.doc.html
http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSe...dy/Design.html
http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSe...Contents1.html

O'Neill, Gerard K.; O'Leary, Brian (eds.) (1977). _Space-Based
Manufacturing from Nonterrestrial Materials_ (Volume 57,
Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics). American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Technical papers derived from
the 1976 Summer Study at NASA Ames Research Center.

Billingham, John; Gilbreath, William (eds.) (1979). _Space
Resources and Space Settlements_ (NASA SP 428). NASA Scientific
and Technical Information Branch. Technical papers derived from
the 1977 Summer Study at NASA Ames Research Center.

Space Studies Institute
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/conference_report_contents.html
http://www.ssi.org/catalog.html

--

Ted Hall

Jeff Clark wrote:

I'd appreciate any information on this. I find O'Neill's work fascinating.

There must have been a least a few engineering drawings. I remember for a
while SSI's newsletter went out in an envelope which had a diagram of a Bernal
Sphere on it.

Sorry I don't have better information. You may already be aware of the
existence of these websites, but just in case:

http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/settle.htm
http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the
best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the
Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely.
Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is
"somewhere else entirely."

Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"