O'Neill colonies
O'Neill colonies are hypothetical space colonies proposed by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill . Three concepts were designed; the designs Island One and Island Two , which are based on a hollow sphere, the Bernal Sphere , and Island Three in the form of two cylinders, which were named as O'Neill cylinders .
history
For a long time the development of the solar system seemed possible only through the steps of space station , lunar base and planetary settlement . That changed when the physicist Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University asked whether the colonization of other celestial bodies is really the best way for the development of the solar system, with no answer. This approach formed the basis for plans for artificial worlds in space that would later become known as the O'Neill colonies .
O'Neill and his followers designed colonies of different shapes and sizes at various conferences , all of which had one thing in common: their detachment from a natural celestial body. Unlike normal space stations, however, they should not simply represent a starting point for research and space travel, but rather form a real living space - similar to a city.
In 1975, engineers Keith Henson and Carolyn Meinel founded the L5 Society to promote O'Neill's designs. In 1976 O'Neill published the book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space , in which he presented his projects in popular science. O'Neill's ideas were not new, however: Hermann Oberth , "The Father of Space Travel ", had already described interstellar travel through space with huge living rollers in his book People in Space - New Projects for Rocket and Space Travel in 1954 . The physicist John Desmond Bernal even thought of a hollow sphere as a living space as early as 1929.
construction
The ideas about the size of these stations were gigantic in the studies, from a design with a Bernal sphere for 10,000 residents, the Island One , to a cylinder 30 km long and 6.5 km in diameter for millions of people, on which Island Three was built. The colonies should offer their inhabitants a permanent home. It is therefore not surprising that parks, lakes and houses were included in the generous construction in addition to agricultural areas.
Above all, the colonies should have huge window areas through which the sunlight would then be directed into the interior of the sphere or cylinder with the help of equally large mirrors. Artificial gravity must be created so that a permanent life in space is even possible. This should be achieved by rotating each colony. A coat made of lunar rock should also ensure the necessary protection against the dangerous solar radiation in space.
implementation
Because of its gigantic size, it was clear that the colony could only be constructed from a base in space. In this way, the extremely costly transportation of the materials from Earth to space would be largely avoided. The raw materials needed for the construction should come from the moon, as this transport would be considerably cheaper due to the much lower gravitational pull of the moon.
In the design studio, the raw materials were then to be further processed and joined together with other delivered components to form the first small habitats. These habitats should form the starting point for the further expansion of the colony. A colony then completed should in turn serve as the basis for the production of another, so that a large number of these artificial islands would be in space in the foreseeable future.
Location
O'Neill has chosen a special location for his colonies: the equilibrium, libration or Lagrange points L4 and L5, which are located 60 ° in front of and behind the earth on the earth's orbit. The colonies then kept a constant distance of 150 million kilometers from the earth and the sun, even without regular corrections.
An important element in the planning of the O'Neill colonies was the supply of raw materials from the moon, on the one hand as a starting product for the manufacture of components, but on the other hand also for the aforementioned mantle made of lunar rock , which was supposed to protect against solar radiation . For this, the idea was that a so-called mass accelerator could be built on the moon . He would hurl the required raw materials to the construction site of the colonies.
Life in the O'Neill Colony
Life in the O'Neill colonies is self-sufficient. The residents should be able to take care of themselves with all essential things.
Corn , soybean and alfalfa fields are being planted on the middle level to provide food . The water supply comes from artificially created ponds on the top level. So it can also be used optimally to irrigate the fields. The rest of the water could then be supplied to the livestock whose stalls are on the lowest terrace. Assuming a population of 10,000 colonists, around 60,000 chickens, 30,000 rabbits and a considerable number of cattle could be kept there.
The water would then be cleaned in a treatment plant and fed back into the cycle. This would make a healthy mixed diet possible that would provide the residents with around 2400 kilocalories every day . The fields and parks also have the task of absorbing a large part of the carbon dioxide from the air and releasing oxygen and water vapor. The remaining demand would then have to be met by high technology.
The moisture generated in the agricultural areas could be condensed using air dryer systems and thus supplement the drinking water supply. A complex process called wet oxidation would purify agricultural and household wastewater through pressure and heating. During this process, carbon dioxide would be released, which in turn could be used to promote plant growth. The solid residues of the waste could be further processed into cattle feed and artificial fertilizers. The inhabitants of the colony could earn their living as miners on the moon or as scientists and technicians on space stations. The main field of activity would probably be the construction of energy satellites, which surround the earth as a dense ring.
feasibility
The opinion was spread by the creators that a move of mankind into space could take place in the not too distant future. Some saw the first colony populating space as early as the turn of the millennium.
This euphoria was aided by the fact that the techniques needed were either already in place or in development. The optimism even went so far that O'Neill and his staff already presented initial cost estimates and timetables for a "resettler program". In the 1970s, they assumed a cost of 100 billion dollars, spread over 20 years, a sum that would correspond to around 500 billion dollars in 2020. For comparison: The construction of the International Space Station (ISS) cost around 100 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation.
After careful examination and critical analysis, however, it is now of the opinion that the order of magnitude that O'Neill imagined cannot be achieved with today's possibilities. In order to even begin building a first station, thousands of tons of material would have to be brought into space (to build a construction base) and to the moon (to build the mass accelerator). Millions of tons of raw materials would have to be extracted from the moon and brought to the design studio. According to the plans at the time, 10 million tons of lunar rock would be required for shielding against solar radiation alone . Nowadays it is assumed that the actual costs would be at least a hundred times, if not a thousand times higher than what O'Neill thought. O'Neill made the first cost calculations when the space shuttle was still in the planning stage and with the prospect of low transport costs - but the actual cost of launching the space shuttle rose to nearly a hundred times what was originally assumed.
A simple rough calculation makes the chances of feasibility clear: Given the colony size mentioned above, the air inside alone would have a mass of around 1.2 billion tons (assuming normal atmospheric pressure).
In the media
In his science fiction film Interstellar (2014), Christopher Nolan shows O'Neill colonies that are in orbit around Saturn . They serve as a refuge for a decimated humanity and as a starting point for the re-colonization of habitable planets after the earth has become uninhabitable due to a global drought. The weight problem was solved in the film by completing the stations underground on earth and - after the discovery of quantum gravity - by manipulating the gravitational pull, including the people and payload on board, were lifted into space. Nolan worked together with the physicist Kip Thorne and in his work placed great emphasis on ensuring that what is shown does not directly contradict the findings of theoretical physics.
In the Japanese science fiction franchise Gundam , space was colonized with the help of O'Neill colonies at the Lagrangian points around the earth. These independent colonies sometimes wage war on Earth, using the colonies themselves as weapons.
literature
- Gerard K. O'Neill: The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space , William Morrow & Company, 1977, ISBN 0-688-03133-1 .
- Hermann Oberth: People in Space - New Projects for Rocket and Space Travel. Düsseldorf 1954.
See also
Web links
- Space Colony Art from the 1970s
- O'Neill-type colony daviddarling.info
Individual evidence
- ^ Albert A. Harrison: Spacefaring: the human dimension. Univ. of Calif. Press, Berkeley 2001, ISBN 0-520-23677-7 , p. 228 ( Google Books ).