[SRI] Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?
*photo di repertorio
Adriano V. Autino, SRI, President
"The sort of analogy that I like to use nowadays is to say that, here we are at the bottom of a hole which is 4,000 miles deep. We're a little bit like an animal who lives down at the bottom of a hole. And one day he climbs up to the top of the hole, and he gets out, and here's all the green grass and the flowers and the sunshine coming down. And he goes around and it's all very lovely, and then he finds another hole, and he crawls down to the bottom of that hole. And if we go off and try to get serious about colonizing other planetary surfaces, we're really doing just that. It's kind of atavistic but there really isn't any other excuse for it."
The above concept was told by Gerard O'Neill in an interview he released to Stewart Brand in July 1975.
While recovering the materials of the old Technologies of the Frontier website (destroyed by hackers few years ago), I came across this document.
In the interview, O'Neill tells the Model One of his space colony could be made at a Earth-Moon Lagrange point in 15 years from time zero.
"Model One. Roughly 10,000 people. If you look at the growth rates that you could get from that first one, then you'd probably be talking about a quarter of a million people by the year 2,000. Because you'll be going up very fast after you get the first beachhead."
"There are other possibilities. Civilization could tear itself apart with energy shortages, population pressures, and running out of materials. Everything could become much more militaristic, and the whole world might get to be more of an armed camp. Things of this kind might just not be done because no nation would dare to divert that much money away from military efforts. or without war, it could be that the world will become poor, to the point where it can't afford to try things like this. Of course, if neither of those possibilities occurs, then I do think there is some sort of inevitability about it. With that, of course, you can't associate a time-scale. It could be a long time."
The interview goes ahead with quite interesting speculations about the possible industrial and cultural production of a Lagrange Colony. Each single concept is worth for reflection and further thoughts for possible implementation.
An inspiring reading, during the age of Covid19.
Read the whole interview here: https://spacerenaissance.space/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Is-the-surface-of-a-planet-really-the-right-place-for-expanding-technological-civilization.pdf
Ad Astra!
Adriano V. Autino
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/space-renaissance-initiative/12af4394-3ac7-46c9-a52d-7f5b36405282%40googlegroups.com.