NASA's Space Colony Designs From the '70s

New submitter oag2 writes "Discover Magazine has a new slideshow of NASA's pie-in-the-sky (or, rather, toroid-in-the-sky) mock-ups of what space colonies would look like, complete with verdant mountains, flowing rivers, cocktail parties, and a guy on a floating bicycle. Though the designs are retro-futuristic, the artist who made them was prescient in other ways. From the accompanying article: "In the context of the 70s, when we had some sense of momentum from Apollo as far as expanding the human presence in space, it seemed like the kind of thing we could have just picked up and moved with," Davis says. "And it's still possible. It's just a matter of where we decide to spend our money." But Guidice remembers a more telling prophecy from O'Neill. "One of the most memorable things I ever heard him say was, 'If we don't do it right now,' meaning in the next 20 years, and that was 20 years ago, 'then we'll never do it, because we'll be overpopulated and the strain on the natural resources will be the number one priority. We will not have any sort of inclination to see this through."'" The O'Neill referenced above is Gerard K. O'Neill, physicist and founder of the Space Studies Institute. He wrote a book in 1976 called The High Frontier which featured these mock-up paintings, and explained in great detail how the space habitats would function. It's a fascinating book, and well worth reading if the pictures pique your curiosity.

Earth's population appears about to peak

[Attila Dimedici]

All evidence of human population dynamics suggests that human population on earth is about to peak and begin to decline. Not only that it does not appear that this will happen as a result of resource exhaustion, but rather as a result of some natural population dynamic. Just about every (if not every) demographic group on the planet is showing decreased levels of birth per person (actually the statistics are actually number of births per woman).

Re:I'm not gonna do it.

[Bodhammer]

There are no resource shortages, just resource allocation imbalances caused by market and government distortions

There are no water shortages, only water collection and distribution issues.

There are no energy shortages, only energy collection and distribution issues.

There is no doomsday like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth [wikipedia.org] coming. People solve problems. The biggest problem humanity faces today is the increasing fascism of the 1st world governments by their theft of money through taxation and inflation. Governments create problems and they are larges mass murderers the world has ever known: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM [hawaii.edu]

We will get into space when is it "optimum" and the pieces all fall into place. I'm encouraged by SpaceX, Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries. Maybe we will have "The Man Who Sold the Moon" in my lifetime. I hope I live long enough to see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Wx230gYJw [youtube.com]