Get High with a Little Help from Our Friends

I've been obsessed with space since I was a child. The idea of being an astronaut is a boyhood dream that many of us put in our bucket list as 'when I grow up, I wanna be an astronaut'. This is usually received with a condescending little smile from adults, downright scorn from peers, akin to announcing that you believe in UFOs.

One day in the breezy days of the early 90s, I was at the library and came across a book called The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard O'Neill. In this book, O'Neill lays out in detail a straight-forward matter-of-fact down-to-earth proposition that high orbital colonies can be built at specific points around the planet to continue growing humanity beyond Earth. Our planet is notoriously unstable on various fronts, including earthquakes, extreme weather, poverty, environmental degradation, social strife, repressive governments, and so on. We're also at the mercy of the next large space object aimed in our direction. So, Mr. O'Neill reasoned that we could put our eggs in floating baskets throughout the solar system.

What attracted me about his vision was that it was not about gleaming futuristic cities with spires. It was a vision of familiar neighbourhoods, villages, and towns with farms, lakes, and tennis courts orbiting between the planet and its moon. The O'Neill cylinders became a staple of science fiction. His was a positive vision of our future, when we would use our smarts to grow our communities and expand across the solar system.

O'Neill colonies are easier said than done and not everyone is a fan. I think that visiting and living on the moon as well as planets is also going to happen, but there's something attractive about a swanky jazzy self-contained mini-earth that thrills the low-rider independent spirit in me.

I generated an exploded diagram of an O'Neill cylinder that shows the main components. I'm particular intrigued by how gravity is generated. I would love to have the choice of gravity and micro-g spaces. To create an O'Neill cylinder to house millions would require a maniacal commitment to off-planet migration. No company alone can do it. The project needs the concerted effort of millions, some of whom will never leave the home planet. Of course, we now have AI, so a team of 3-4 people can probably do it ;)

Thank you for joining me in the high frontier.