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Tim had his bike on display at the National Space Society - HAL-5 booth at the Las Cruces X-Prize Cup event last October. I didn't see them turn on the motor though!

Gerard O'Neill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O'Neill was on the faculty of Princeton University in 1954 where he remained associated with until his death in 1992.

His ideas on lunar and asteroid mining may prove the solution to cosmic rays and astronauhts. He authored the book "The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space" which inspired a generation of space exploration advocates.

One of his ideas was to spin asteroids and heat them with lasers or solar mirrors. As the asteroid melts, different densities of elements move to differing parts of the oval shaped mass of molten rock. When cooled, he proposed that the minerals could be mined and if extracted properly, leave rooms that could be used as lining spaces for the miners. A one g spin could provide gravity.

Another of his ideas was to place several of these spinning spacehomes into orbits that crossed the trajectories of Mars and Earth. Then all we would have to do is hop on one near earth and jump off near mars. Same for the return trip.

Not sure what thickness would be required to obsorb/slow down the cosmic rays, but there would be enough mass to do so.

The L5 Society was founded in 1975 to promote the space colony ideas of Gerard Kitchen O'Neill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society

Newsletter of L5 Society http://www.l5news.org/

The L5 News was published from September 1975 until April 1987, at which time the L5 Society merged with the National Space Institute to create the National Space Society. http://www.nss.org/

Here's a link to his book High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0962 237906/qid=1123095155/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-056543 1-9633535?v=glance&s=books

In addition to the Earth-Moon Lagrange points (in geometric relation to the Moon's orbit), there are similar Earth-Sun Lagrange points. The Earth-Sun L-4 and L-5 points are pretty far away of course - 60 degrees ahead of and behind Earth's orbit around the sun. So probably not terribly useful. But Earth-Sun L1 and L2 are definitely useful - only a couple of million miles away.

Also, while at any instant there are points that geometrically correspond to the Lagrange criteria, in practice a body near one of these points would follow a stable "halo" orbit near the point (with minor adjustments to maintain that orbit near the unstable L-1 and L-2 points). These stable halos can occupy a lot of space - 20-30% of the otherwise smallest dimensions involved (Moon-L1/L2 or Earth-L1/L2 distances for L1/L2).

Also note the old L5 society turned into the National Space Society some time ago.

Hm... I went through three rounds of rejected submission attempts earlier trying to submit this story, several hours before this version was posted. In any case, here's my version of the submission, which has many more links:

NASA Watch, New Scientist, and Space Ref report that Dr. Michael D. Griffin has been nominated as the next administrator of NASA, to replace Sean O'Keefe. As NASA head, Griffin will be tasked with implementing the Vision for Space Exploration. Griffin is currently head of the Space Department at the Applied Physics Laboratory at JHU, is president-elect of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has a doctorate in aerospace engineering. He's noted for being passionate about space exploration and having strong management experience. His nomination has been praised by a number of groups, including the Planetary Society, the National Space Society, and House Science Committee Democrats and Republicans. In the past, Mike Griffin has testified to Congress on the future of human spaceflight, the vision for space exploration, and the danger of asteroid impacts. He was also rebuked in the early 90s for pointing out problems with the space station's review process.

As for my own thoughts, I think Griffin is an excellent pick. I'm amazed that they were able to find somebody with as much technical expertise as him who also has such a large amount of experience with managing large organizations. According to the space.com article, Griffin can be expected to make maximum use of the emerging commercial spaceflight industry.

In the past he's also said the following, which I approve of highly: "What is needed is to retire the Shuttle Orbiter, and its expensive support infrastructure," Griffin wrote. "It simply does not serve the needs of exploration and it is too expensive, to logistically fragile, and insufficiently safe for continued use as a low Earth orbit transport vehicle."

In the past he's been highly in favor of the government constructing a new heavy-lift launch vehicle, which I somewhat disagree with. Such an endeavor could easily end up being a bottomless money pit. Hopefully SpaceX's low-cost launches in the coming months will help raise awareness of frequently-launched smaller vehicles.

speaking as someone who is part of the political wing of a space advocacy group, we are fighting for this legislation to be pushed through.

It provides legitimacy for this budding industry and give legal avenues for people to develop it. Think of it this way: Without any regulation saying where and how a group can launch into space, the government can just shut them down based on noise pollution, safety hazards, possession of dangerous materials, any number of things. By having prescribed rules, groups shooting for space can do so without worrying about operating within a legal vacuum (and later physical one).

There's also the safety stuff that others have commented on but that's been covered.

The Mars Society, AIAA and I think the NSS are all pulling for this so that should tell you something about how spacers view such regulation.

Perhaps this will kick the US space program back into gear?

If you figure it out, let me know :-)

But you can help actually make it happen by working with existing space advocacy groups - the National Space Society for example will likely be working to drum up support for this or something like it.

We got a chance to chat with Michael Laine of LiftPort at this year's National Space Society annual meeting just a couple of weeks ago. They're looking for small investors already - talk to them if you would like to be involved at all. They will also have a private venture funding round coming up for larger investors, but anybody with a few hundred dollars could get involved at this stage (I think the deadline is June 20).

Silica is the primary component of the Moon's surface (and Earth's too) - this technique could greatly reduce the cost to produce useful things (like oxygen as a fuel component and for life in space, and silicon for solar cells) out of bulk lunar material.

Large-scale space construction is coming, and will provide one of the major markets for lunar materials. Martin Rees has a new book out that is pretty clear on why we need to develop space resources. Here's another enabling technology - now let's go do it!

By the way, anybody in the SF bay area this coming weekend should check out the International Space Development Conference in San Jose, where we'll be discussing a lot of these ideas, and more!

The Space Exploration Act of 2002 seemed a great first step, but received very little backing. NASA's NExT group plans look very promising - but do they have any money, even in this year's budget? The goal should be human exploration, development, and settlement of the solar system. The National Space Society has a clear roadmap for space development, and a vision of people living and working in thriving communities in space - but membership there has been dropping for years. The goals actually are pretty obvious - what's needed is for the public to get behind them. Go join these organizations, write your senators and congressman! If you care about space, do something about it!

• SMART-1 from ESA (the only one this BBC article mentions)
• LUNAR-A from ISAS/NASDA (Japan).
• SELENE also from ISAS.
• TrailBlazer and Electra from TransOrbital Inc.
• Lunar Retriever from AppliedSpace Resources
• IceBreaker from Lunacorp
• Lunar Service from Celestis (you have to be dead...)
• Lunar Architecture is a subject of study for HJ Rombaut, including a recent Lunar Base design workshop
• Bill Mook's lunar tours
• The Artemis Project

The South Pole region of the Moon has emerged recently as an ideal base location; temperatures are always moderate, a selection of areas close by can be found with continuous sunlight and also continuous line-of-sight communications with Earth, and there are craters that apparently never see sunlight and are believed to contain cometary ice (water is hard to find on the Moon), and also would be ideal for telescopes.

Lunar base designs can be found going back to Army and Air Force ideas back in the 1950's, so the idea is nothing particularly new; obviously what we'd really like is to have a plan that includes ways to get the funding to actually build the things! Science, tourism, and possibly space-based energy and materials supply seem to be the main candidates... Now if NASA wasn't spending 100 times as much on Mars as on the Moon we might get somewhere...

The funny part, for me at least, is years ago I worked at NSS and knew a number of folks mentioned in the article and bashed here on ./. Most of the NSS management were screaming liberals. Some of the NSS directors were liberals with a few libertarians thrown in for good measure.

I first heard this viewpoint aired at a NSS conference in 1991, so it's hardly a Bush thing or very new. At first, I thought the idea was nuts.

These years later, I'm convinced it is the only way we will ever settle space. Period. And in the end saves the human race.

When you toss away the idea of private ownership of property off planet Earth, you toss away any long term hope for the human race.

You put your own, bloody, mighty-high, liberal, barely hidden Marxist values in front of the very simple fact that we could be wiped out in six months by a chunk of rock.

You toss away the fact that unless we get off this rock, we will someday die. Might be a few billion years off, but it will happen.

Funny to think that there isn't a sysadmin, network designer or systems geek on slashdot that doesn't work everyday to make their network/systems/farms/whatever more redundant.

But you don't think a second about providing for a backup for our DNA and collected knowledge of the human race.

And if you think that someday, a Trek-like, UN, style world government will do the job, you are dreaming, have watched way too much Trek and don't really grasp human nature.

Europeans who bash this idea as a nationalist American plot fail to understand that the US is where it is today because of the private enterprise and the risks people will take with their money and their sweat to better themselves. If you don't like it, do what your ancestors did and stay home.

Liberal environmentalists who bash this idea really take the cake. The settlement of space is, in the end, the most likely savor of the Earth's resources. Why continue to tear up the Earth when most basic resources can be harvested from lifeless solar system bodies like the moon or NEA's?

Don't form an immediate opinion on this. Think about it real hard, and search yourself real deep before just tossing this to the side.

From what I learned, there is a large body of national and international law about space that rests on this treaty and a few others (space liability, rescue and return, etc.) and throwing this one out is unlikely. But, these treaties do have a fundamental problem in not providing any mechanism for private property rights in space, nor particularly envisioning any sort of settlement process. There are a large number of ideas for how to fix this - Alan Wasser's proposals mentioned in the article are one of them. There's also Declan O'Donnell's United Societies in Space that advocates extending common law rules to outer space, and of course there's the Lunar Embassy that's taking advantage of the current ambiguities to sell property on the Moon and other bodies.

What's needed is a push from the US State Department to get these things resolved - there are apparently individuals there who would know what to do to get a new treaty worked out or current treaties amended, but there's been absolutely no support from higher up for it. Write your congressmen or directly to the State Dept. to express your views if you feel a legal property regime for outer space is important!

The posting implies that NASA is leading these studies. Not at all. It's primarily the academic community and non-profits like the Space Studies Institute and the National Space Society. NASA generally puts its mouth where its money is, and that's the ISS, which does little or nothing to help advance the cause of space development.

Given the very poor ROI of the ISS, who would seriously trust NASA to lead the way on lunar, asteroid and cometary resource exploitation? The best they can do is sponsor science missions so that we can understand what these resources are and where. In fact, they are doing that.

Like any conference, there will be loads of good and not so good ideas presented, but the fundamental logic is the same: it makes no sense to build things in space with materials brought from the ground. There are loads of materials on the moon (and no biosphere to damage) that have the potential to supply a large proportion of a spacefaring civilization. Big question is, do we want to be a spacefaring civilization?

L5 in 95 was the bumper sticker mantra of the L5 Society. The solar power satellite concept was O'Neill's scheme to put humans permanently in space. He said it was the best place where a high tech civilization could thrive. Then he asked how can we justify the expense of building space habitats. His answer was to mine the Moon and build solar power satellites. And use the profits from the power sold to earth. to build more space habitats.

If the power companies had only known! They could be reaping whirlwind profits today from California's energy crisis. They could be taking the satellites offline to repair meteorite damage. Claim the Moon or Earth is blocking the Sun. There's an ion storm. Help! Help! We're being attacked by Ewoks! ...but I digress.

The society formed with the intention of disbanding on the first permanent space habitat. Sadly, this did not happen. By the time 1987 rolled around the L5 Society merged with the National Space Institute and changed it's name to the National Space Society.

Ack! I'm having flashbacks to my mispent youth:

Senator William Proxmire: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the L5 Society?

Witness: I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that you'll cut NASA funding and go and spend it on cheese subsidies.

I wonder how many people really understand the significance of this event, assuming the evidence holds up. The first verifiable evidence of life beyond Earth - most everything else kind of pales in comparison. If nothing else, hopefully this news will renew people's interest in the Mars missions, and particularly (!) the sample return mission scheduled for later this decade.

For those interested in getting more involved, by the way, the National Space Society lobbies Congress for more political and financial backing for NASA. They're always holding letter writing drives and needing new participants.

For what its worth, here are some decent sites containing current NASA and other country's position, and progress on civilian space travel:

http://www.reston.com/nasa/tourism.html
http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/general_public_ space_travel_and_tourism_volume_2.shtml
http://www.nss.org/alerts/releases/release36.html
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/space/civilian_space_ travel/

MODS: Don't mod me because of age/sex/religion/creed/color/name. If you must criticise, please post contstructively rather than zealously. thanks

OK, I pretty much agree with you but my bullshit dector went off on the following points:

1)They were all anti-nuclear zealots.
you are making a blanket generalization about a large population and I know that in at least two instances (friends who tried to persuade me that there was too great a risk) you are wrong. Some of the people who opposed the Cassini launch were not ANZs, as you call them. You are certainly correct that ANZs with a veneeer of scientific credibility persuaded many ignorant people into fear, but that does not make the ignorant dupes ANZs

2)it's orders of magnitude less than the risk of deciding to play golf and getting hit by lightning
Statistical bullshit, as I'm sure your are well aware - the chance of a golfer being hit by lightning on a perfectly clear day (no clouds in the sky no storms in the region) approaches zero - yes, it's even smaller than 10E-6... There has never been a case of a golfer being hit by lightning in perfectly clear conditions.

3) The SNAP 9-A RTG performed as designed: it burned up in the upper atmosphere rather than delivering its contents to the surface
The AEC detected SNAP 9-A radiation in the air and on the ground. The radiation levels were minimal but it is simply false to claim that the contents of SNAP 9-A's RTG did not reach the ground. That's why they did the redesign!

4)...might kill fewer than the number of people annually killed by lightning strikes...
The number of people killed in the US each year by lightning strikes is about 100. The number of fatalities in the NASA environmental impact studies was first 2,300 then 120. The second number is close to, but still higher than, the number of people killed annually by lightning... This minor factual error aside, the important distinction is that the lightning strike tally is the result of many events while the Cassini RTG scenario was for just one. Your comparisson is between categorically different causes. It's like a mass murderer claiming that his having killed 80 people isn't really such a bad crime, compared with the 15,000-20,000 people killed in DWI accidents each year, so he should get a light sentence.

[approaches dead horse, bat in hand]
The magnitude of the perceived threat was great, hence the higher risk assessment, despite the low probability of a negative outcome. I am persuaded that the risk was even lower by the arguments raised by Jeff Cuzzi, but I think it's important to recognize the legitmacy of people's concern and to assuage it through rational dialog rather than ad hominem attacks and hyperbole -- even if they are all a bunch of ANZ wackos... after all, the ANZ-influenced herds of non-cognoscenti help to influence the science budget.

Still, political sensitivities are high enough at this point that it's unlikely NASA will launch more high-profile missions using RTGs. That's a shame, but the bigger shame is that the NASA budget and in particular the planetary science budget may be savaged to the tune of $1 billion this year, killing most interesting new science missions. Dr. Evil is alive and well and living in the U.S. Congress, apparently.