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Where Does Jeff Bezos Foresee Putting Space Colonists? Inside O'Neill Cylinders (geekwire.com)
Elon Musk of SpaceX wants to settle humans on Mars. Some talk about taking the Moon Village route. But Jeff Bezos has a different kind of off-Earth home in mind when he talks about having millions of people living and working in space. His long-range vision focuses on a decades-old concept for huge artificial habitats that are best known today as O'Neill cylinders. From a report on GeekWire (edited and condensed): The concept was laid out in 1976 in a classic book by physicist Gerard O'Neill, titled "The High Frontier." The idea is to create cylinder-shaped structures in outer space, and give them enough of a spin that residents on the inner surface of the cylinder could live their lives in Earth-style gravity. The habitat's interior would be illuminated either by reflected sunlight or sunlike artificial light. Bezos referred to his long-term goal of having millions of people living and working in space, as well as his enabling goal of creating the 'heavy lifting infrastructure' to make that happen. In Bezos' view, dramatically reducing the cost of access to space is a key step toward those goals. "Then we get to see Gerard O'Neill's ideas start to come to life, and many of the other ideas from science fiction," Bezos said. "The dreamers come first. It's always the science-fiction guys: They think of everything first, and then the builders come along and they make it happen. But it takes time." For Musk, the prime driver behind settling people on Mars is to provide a backup plan for humanity in the event of a planetwide catastrophe -- an asteroid strike, for example, or environmental ruin, or a species-killing pandemic. Bezos sees a different imperative at work: humanity's growing need for energy. "We need to go into space if we want to continue growing civilization," he explained. "If you take baseline energy usage on Earth and compound it at just 3 percent per year for less than 500 years, you have to cover the entire surface of the Earth in solar cells. That's just not going to happen. [...] I predict that in the next few hundred years, all heavy industry will move off planet. It will be just way more convenient to do it in space, where you have better access to resources, better access to 24/7 solar power," he said last weekend. "Solar power on Earth is not that great, because the planet shades us half the time. In space, you get solar power all the time. So there'll be a lot of advantages to doing heavy manufacturing there, and Earth will end up zoned residential and light industry. [...] We want to go to space to save the Earth. I don't like the 'Plan B' idea that we want to go to space so we have a backup planet. ... We have sent probes to every planet in this solar system, and believe me, this is the best planet. There is no doubt. This is the one that you want to protect."
We have lost a hero to our glorious and noble cause, but does this foreshadow our defeat? No. It is a new beginning. Compared to Earth Federation the military resources of Zeon is less than one thirtieth of theirs. Despite this major difference, how is it that we have been able to fight the fight for so long? It is because our goal in this war is a righteous one. It’s been over fifty years since the elite of the Federation, consumed by greed began a war against our blessed empire! Never forget the times when the Federation has trampled us! We, the blessed children of God almighty, have had a long and arduous struggle to achieve glory for our great nation. Our fight is sacred, our cause divine. The war is at a stalemate. Perhaps many of you have become complacent.
The Federation has polluted our most cherished systems for merely the sake of their own greed! We must send them a message, but not composed of words. We have wasted too much time with words. We need action now. The Earth elite must be taught a strong lesson for their evil corruption. This is only the beginning of our war. We have been putting more and more money into our efforts towards making our military stronger than ever. The Federation has done the same.
Many of your fathers and brothers have perished valiantly in the face of a contemptible enemy. We must never forget what the Federation has done to our people! These Brave men have shown us these virtues through their own valiant sacrifice. By focusing our anger and sorrow, we are finally in a position where victory is within our grasp, and once again, our most cherished nation will flourish. Victory is the greatest tribute we can pay those who sacrifice their lives for us! Rise, our people, Rise! Take your sorrow, and turn it into anger! Zeon thirsts for the strength of its people! SIEG ZEON!
In the future you will be able to order an O'Neill cylinder from Amazon. Just don't get the cheap Chinese knock-off version.
Babylon Five! </voice>
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Actually, the idea of a so-called "O'Niell Cylinder" was put forward in 1973 by Arthur C. Clarke in a book titled Rendezvous with Rama.
As Kim Stanley Robinson proposed in his recent novel Aurora , the longterm survival of human biology might be inextricably dependent on Earth's ecosystem. Not just the sort of Earth-like features one can reproduce in an artificial habit for a few years, but the planet-wide scale that Earth offers. (In the novel, people on a generation starship discover that salt and other toxins start building up quickly in the smaller scale of their ship.) If humanity is going to survive, that looks like it can happen only if we transcend biology, and if the human race does start moving into machine bodies, then it might not be necessary to leave Earth after all — Vernor Vinge once mused that the reason we don't see other civilizations is because they moved themselves deep under planets' surface where even asteroid strikes wouldn't matter, and they now pass their time in virtual realities where life is easy and limitless instead of the hard work of interplanetary exploration.
So that's why Amazon's stock went down. Investors heard Bezos talk...
In the future, there will be huge Prime Day deals on O'Neill cylinders! Greatest thing ever!
(total of 3 available)
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp.
So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.
So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.
But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The only resources within an O'Neill Cylinders are the ones that man puts there. They need to have a 100% recycling ability within the cylinder or they will need a place to dump waste and take in new resources.
Not saying that this is a deal-breaker, but it means everything needs to be more finely balanced. It's like keeping a fishtank. A small aquarium can quickly go belly-up if the chemistry isn't maintained. Large Aquariums are more stable. A pond or a lake, infinitely moreso.
Mars is an ocean. An O'Neill Cylinder is a fishbowl.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The only I could see for reasonable air circulation was to put a core in the cylinder that then can be used to force rain/cooling actions.
That would probably help solve a bunch of other problems too, actually. If it was necessary to have more than one section in-rotation, so that counter-rotating forces allow the structure to otherwise maintain stationkeeping assuming that the center core sticks out the ends of the structure, that not-rotating core would be the place for the critical infrastructure to be housed. It would also allow for a transit-point between counter-rotating sections where the amount of risk for things like simple gasket failure would be small, and would let stores that don't need gravity or an approximation thereof to be stored such that less forces are imparted on the outer cylinders of the rotating sections. It would also serve as a good microgravity laboratory that's easily accessed from compartments that are better for the occupants, and if there's risk of radiation storms, the inhabitants could retreat to the core for the duration so that both outer and inner layers are protecting them.
Transiting from the rotating section to the core could be accomplished by use of basically a moving sidewalk and a ladder/clamp system. The moving sidewalk speeds the occupant to match the ladder on the stationary core, then one simply grabs on and now in microgravity, pulls one's self along, tying on to safety points as one goes. Alternately they could operate some kind of motorized car or lift, but that probably would only be necessary for moving larger goods.
That central core could also act as the point where "daylight" emits from, and as you point out, could be used to stir the air in the environment.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
He is correct. We will need more energy, and clearly there are only two ways to get it: colonize space, or cover the entire Earth with solar cells. There are no other alternatives. Clearly.
And that is -the- reason to build an O'Neill colony.
In order to build it and make it work, it is necessary to understand an ecology, deeply and comprehensively. Mistakes will be made and what better place to make a mistake than a totally artificial habitat? The first of the experiments (actual experiments, not "I read the journals" studies) was BioSphere, and that didn't work out so well.
So what was the motivation to fix BioSphere? Not much, really. Easier to walk away muttering "That was bad, dude."
With a colony, the colonials are most mighty motivated to fix the darn thing. If technology needs to be developed, it will be developed. If new principles need to be learned, they will be learned.
And for all of you "This is a nutty idea" I have a few short words. New World. Panama Canal. Washing Hands.
Nutty ideas have a way to become decidedly un-nutty.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
Why not call it Freeside and have it run by an AI. While at it, Amazon could join forces with Tesla, and call the joint venture T-A...
We will definitely need a lot of space based infrastructure, but I don't think we need Moon or Mars colonies to make that happen. I imagine we'd be more likely to generate infrastructure built with automation that does not require human presence or workforce using asteroid mining and automated fabrication. Ultimately, there's really no good reason to make our workforce out of humans in space.
Humans are great if you don't want to have to go to the trouble of making general purpose machines that will iteratively build all of that infrastructure, but the cost of lots of humans in space is prohibitive, which tips the balance considerably.
Firstly he can pay them less because they can hardly walk out, can they?
And why bother routing your profits through Ireland, St. Bongo & Lower Melilla when you can stuff them on Ganymede?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
O'Neill Cylinders are unstable as I recall. They tend to eventually start rotating around their short axis instead, dumping everything on the curved walls out to the end caps.
Stanford Toruses are better.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"Humans aren't meant to travel on the sea, if we were we would have evolved fins" - Except we invented ships in all shapes and sizes and now literally tens of thousands of ships and tens of millions of people travel the oceans of the world.
"Humans were never meant to fly, otherwise we'd have wings" - Over a hundred years of airtravel including some transits which lasted weeks or months, along with the close to 900 Million people who travel per year pretty much blows this out of the water.
There are droves of examples where humans can't naturally exist, but do so normally today (Mountain climbing, deep sea exploration, Arctic Exploration, etc). How different history would be if instead of exploring, pushing the limits and discovering new things our ancestors simply stayed in Africa and busied themselves with new ways to stack mud for their huts and thatch their roofs.
For Mobile Suit Gundam reference.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You space nutters need to stop "dreaming" and start joining us here on Earth. The fact is YOU AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE. We evolved to live on Earth. We cannot live anywhere else for long periods of time. This is simple biology.
While I understand where you are coming from, absolute statements that open with "The fact is" always remind me of the following quote.
'If I am the wisest man, it is because I alone know that I know nothing. The implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal." -- Socrates
The fact is the facts keep changing. What is true about our compatibility with space exploration and colonization as a species today may not be true tomorrow. You may consider "space nutters" a little silly, but one of the greatest motivators for me (as a happily dreaming nutter), is the knowledge that, considering the vastness of space, we just don't know what we don't know.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I understand the allure of separating heavy industry from people and parks and nice things, to centralize the pollution. But if you put heavy industry in space and most people still live on the ground, it takes an incredible amount of energy to get the raw resources into orbit and bring the finish products back down. If you mine the moon or asteroids, that still takes a lot of energy to get to space-based factories. If you put the factories on the moon or near the asteroids, that's still a lot of energy to ship finished products back to earth or orbital habitats. If you put the factories on Earth near the resources, it's a lot of energy to get the finished products up to orbit.
Besides, factories pollute a lot less now than they used, they are getting cleaner all the time, and we rely on heavy industry, percentage-wise, a lot less than we used to, and all these trends are going to continue.
And if energy becomes so cheap (fusion, cold fusion, who knows) that all this shuffling is practical, then it would also be practical to simply pour all that energy into making heavy industry even cleaner. The problem with cutting pollution isn't the idea, it's doing so efficiently, and with cheap energy, efficiency becomes more relative.
So what am I missing? What is the actual benefit to separating heavy industry and people?
Infuriate left and right
We evolved to live on Earth. We cannot live anywhere else for long periods of time. This is simple biology. The only place we can live is on Earth, or another Earth like planet. And we know, based on physics, that we cannot reach another Earth like planet.
Isn't the whole point of something like this to build something that basically mimics completely the conditions of Earth? You are right of course, we are evolved to live on Earth. So, if we want to go somewhere where there isn't Earth, we will have to bring it with us.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Just as air not in contact with the earth's surface does not rotate?
Newton's laws, know them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No, there's a nonzero chance that when the sun expands past the orbit of Earth, the planet will still be there and will be consumed, and that this will occur before a sufficiently large asteroid hits Earth. And technically, even if the planet has moved to higher orbit and doesn't get consumed, there won't be any species to make extinct at that point, so the asteroid won't be species-ending.
There's also a nonzero chance that we'll manage to blow up the planet somehow, destroying all life before an asteroid hits.
In fact, I doubt the chances are anywhere near 100%. The gas giants, Earth, and Luna have done a fairly decent job of clearing our orbit of most of the larger objects that could hit us.
All of those problems would also exist on Mars. It doesn't have a thick enough atmosphere to protect them from ionizing radiation, and a leak would result in an instant loss of pressure. And the temperature on Mars can swing from -100 F to 70 F over the course of a day. If anything, living in space would be easier, because you'd have constant sun exposure on one side and none on the other. Mind you, if we manage to terraform Mars, that's another story, but as-is, it isn't a great match for human life.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I guess good advice if flamebait these days. GP needs to study, or there are lots and lots of french fries in his future.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It will be a species ending event, whether or not there is still a species to end.
Musk does want to terraform Mars and also has short term solutions to radiation, etc. But in broad strokes, Mars, as it is, is a much more forgiving environment for anything that goes wrong.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Has he solved the cosmic ray & solar flare problem?
The center also has angular momentum (assuming light from the ends) or there is no center (assuming light through windows in the floor).
How much layering do you really expect if the mean free path of a molecule of air is on the order of the height of the space?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
and that this will occur before a sufficiently large asteroid hits Earth
So, these countries are wasting their money planning to destroy or deflect it then?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/n...
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/b...
Just another day in Paradise
No, for the same reason that buying car insurance isn't a waste of money even if there's a chance that you'll never be in a car accident.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Reminds me of this
And you get free, one way shipping.
Jeff Bezos read something someone else did and he wants to leverage it as his own? shocking.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you are Zion then you get a Zaku.
Gundam Mobile Suits were Federation
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.