Anniversaries

Yesterday marked the anniversaries of two historic flights, those of Sputnik and SpaceShipOne. This year marked the fortieth anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11. And, as Bob Werb points out in an article on The Space Review website, this year marks another fortieth anniversary.

Gerard K. O'Neill was a physics professor at Princeton in 1969, a heady time for space enthusiasts, if not for NASA's future plans in Congress. Dr. O'Neill developed what has become the best known design for a space colony built in free space-- a huge structure that rotated to create artificial gravity, home to perhaps thousands of people. Perhaps more importantly, Dr. O'Neill also provided the rationale for such colonies by putting them in the context of a human economy expanding into space, using space resources to create a wealthy civilization and a clean, ecologically sound Earth. Werb suggests that the NewSpace industry now developing may be the tool by which O'Neill's vision is realized.

If the next few centuries do see humanity's expansion into space, Gerard O'Neill could well be remembered as one of the great thinkers of his time.