'L5 News' from late '70's available on-line

'L5 News' from late '70's available on-line



The strange-and-wonderful 'L5' organization,
devoted to space colonies a la Gerard O'Neill,
had a high-octane newsletter, and I've just found
pdf files of some of the years of issue on line.
You may recognize some of the contributors.

Some discussed issues are still contemporary.

This link gets you into the archive,
and you can navigate from the
http://www.l5news.org/L5news1977.htm

On 2005-08-30, Jim Oberg wrote:

The strange-and-wonderful 'L5' organization,
devoted to space colonies a la Gerard O'Neill,
had a high-octane newsletter, and I've just found
pdf files of some of the years of issue on line.
You may recognize some of the contributors.

I recently turned up a copy of Heppenheimer's /Colonies in Space/. I
really must get around to posting the predictions for the Shuttle, it's
a laugh and a half...

--
-Andrew Gray

thats a great book. Took O'Neill's ideas and made them accessable to
the general public. Excellent art for the time, too. My copy was about
$1 at a library sale.
Josh

Jim Oberg wrote:

The strange-and-wonderful 'L5' organization,
devoted to space colonies a la Gerard O'Neill,
had a high-octane newsletter, and I've just found
pdf files of some of the years of issue on line.
You may recognize some of the contributors.



Oh, this I've _got_ to read...anything by Rand Simberg in there? It
would be like running into Tadzilla.
Ah, the good ol' days- when building a five mile long space colony
looked like something that could by done by the year 2000 using our
giant Shuttle fleet and huge heavy lift vehicles driven by a few dozen
F-1 motors.
I just dug out my copy of O'Neill's book- look! It's a shuttle derived
vehicle with a cargo module on the side of the ET!

Pat

Andrew Gray wrote:


I recently turned up a copy of Heppenheimer's /Colonies in Space/. I
really must get around to posting the predictions for the Shuttle, it's
a laugh and a half...



Here's some goodies from "The High Frontier".
Shuttle flight cost (NASA estimate) ten million dollars.
SDV cargo launch- nineteen million dollars.

Pat

I still have my copy of Space Colonies next to my Whole Earth Catalogue
on the shelf. Where is Stewart Brand these days anyway? Very
interesting time frame there,everything was right around the corner.
cyborg city was a comin', mirrored perhaps by the books they were
offering back in '77, Timothy Leary's "Exobiology" for one,yep,
interesting time......
Jim Oberg wrote:
'L5 News' from late '70's available on-line



The strange-and-wonderful 'L5' organization,
devoted to space colonies a la Gerard O'Neill,
had a high-octane newsletter, and I've just found
pdf files of some of the years of issue on line.
You may recognize some of the contributors.

Some discussed issues are still contemporary.

This link gets you into the archive,
and you can navigate from the
http://www.l5news.org/L5news1977.htm

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 01:41:37 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:



Jim Oberg wrote:

The strange-and-wonderful 'L5' organization,
devoted to space colonies a la Gerard O'Neill,
had a high-octane newsletter, and I've just found
pdf files of some of the years of issue on line.
You may recognize some of the contributors.



Oh, this I've _got_ to read...anything by Rand Simberg in there? It
would be like running into Tadzilla.
Ah, the good ol' days- when building a five mile long space colony
looked like something that could by done by the year 2000 using our
giant Shuttle fleet and huge heavy lift vehicles driven by a few dozen
F-1 motors.
I just dug out my copy of O'Neill's book- look! It's a shuttle derived
vehicle with a cargo module on the side of the ET!

Pat


Depressing isn't it?

D. Scott Ferrin wrote:

I just dug out my copy of O'Neill's book- look! It's a shuttle derived
vehicle with a cargo module on the side of the ET!

Pat




Depressing isn't it?



Not really, it was one of those technology bubbles where everybody gets
a great idea and nobody looks into the economics or amount of effort to
do it in detail.
Kind of like the family autogyro that we all own, or the atomic powered
car we all drive to Hawaii over the Great Pacific Highway Bridge.
On the other hand, we do now have people living in an underwater city
down south- though not in quite the form that the 50's futurists predicted.

Pat

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 21:59:07 GMT, "Jim Oberg"
wrote, in part:

The strange-and-wonderful 'L5' organization,
devoted to space colonies a la Gerard O'Neill,
had a high-octane newsletter, and I've just found
pdf files of some of the years of issue on line.
You may recognize some of the contributors.

Some discussed issues are still contemporary.

This link gets you into the archive,
and you can navigate from the
http://www.l5news.org/L5news1977.htm

A wonderful post.

Years ago, the local astronomy society had a lecture by an expert on
space medicine. I remember asking her after the talk what she thought
about O'Neill space colonies, and she said that cosmic rays basically
proved them impossible.

Although there was some delay before I put my idea on the Web, this
inspired the design at

http://www.quadibloc.com/science/spaint.htm

This design isn't terribly innovative - most of the elements in it are
from other designs - but the idea of a stationary mass of shielding
which can be in the shape of a rectangular bottle *with an arbitrarily
long neck* pointed at another slab of shielding, with a 45-degree mirror
_AND_ a Cassegrain optical system to sneak sunlight in the long neck IS
original.

Because the shielding is stationary, it can be arbitrarily thick, and it
can surround the living area of the habitat in ALL DIRECTIONS.

Edmonton, Alberta, where I live, happened to have been the home of a
scientist who once published a paper - cited by Arthur C. Clarke - that
showed that a Moon landing would be possible even if humans couldn't
tolerate forces above 2G - Clarke compared it to calclulating the
performance of a car with the brakes on - so you could say I am
continuing a tradition.

In any case, I think it a useful contribution to *prove* that L5 type
colonies really are possible, even in the worst case scenario. They
might just not look quite as pretty.

John Savard
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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"John Savard" wrote in message
...

Years ago, the local astronomy society had a lecture by an expert on
space medicine. I remember asking her after the talk what she thought
about O'Neill space colonies, and she said that cosmic rays basically
proved them impossible.

snip

In any case, I think it a useful contribution to *prove* that L5 type
colonies really are possible, even in the worst case scenario.

Even worst-case scenarios should be based on informed and factual
determinations. And in the case you describe, it was not. She quite simply
made the assumption that those working in the field of space habitat design
hadn't even thought about cosmic rays and in that she was /completely
wrong/.

Again, anything over 6 feet is overkill. The habitat designs, as shown in
illustrations and diagrams, already have sufficient shielding for acceptable
life-time doses.

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.