Reddit reviews The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space: Apogee Books Space Series 12
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If you want to really do your homework, start with the primary source. The name of these structures comes from Gerald K. O'Neill, and his work The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.
I believe this book has been referenced at least once on the channel. I haven't read it myself, but you could do worse than starting there.
The High Frontier by Gerard O'Neill is the book you're looking for. Its responsible for the O'Neill Cylinder and most of the ideas about space colonies used by Tomino in making Mobile Suit Gundam.
Best to start with the Ur-book: O'Neill's "The High Frontier" https://www.amazon.com/High-Frontier-Human-Colonies-Apogee/dp/189652267X
I'm probably a bit late here, but I had a spell for six months or so (more than a decade ago), when I was rather distracted by reading (putatively non-fiction) books about space colonization. So here's my late-night ranting summary of this research (links to some key references at the end of this post):
A strong argument can be made that the short- and long-term goals of colonizing space should NOT be to colonize other planets, but in between.
In the "short" term, this could help people on Earth solve certain specific resource scarcity problems (particularly with rare metals and energy production), but colonizing space (or other planets) is NOT a general solution to Earth's overpopulation, pollution, war/conflict, famine, disease, etc. The fuel costs of getting off the Earth are just too outrageous to ever lift a significant fraction of people into space. If anything, the probable isolation of space colonies (planetary or otherwise) could easily create all sorts of issues by themselves. Long-term, this would just be about expansion, spreading life out across the solar system for reasons already in this thread.
If you, erm, dig into the space colonization literature, a lot of the most compelling things have to do with building very large orbital space colonies that spin to simulate gravity, and then recovering natural resources from space, mostly solar power and mining asteroids to sustain and grow colonies and provide attractive merchandise to the Earth.
The classics of the genre (which is much larger than I expected) were written around the time of the space race and focused on bootstrapping self-sustaining orbital colonies, and importantly were built around technology and principles from that time period, not requiring huge leaps in technology (or remotely reasonable computing power). So now these things would (in principle) be more feasible today than, say, the 1970s. The basic notion is that it is far too expensive (and kind of pointless) to focus on colonizing planets. We would basically increase our costs massively, since we would constantly have to climb out of massive
gravity wells. So we should just live in space itself. This isn't saying that we couldn't settle worlds, but that would be a side-show to the main event.
The initial costs are outrageous (though not compared to colonizing Mars), and I personally have a hard time justifying any of it, when we have a hard time dealing with some basic-ass shit just in the US much less the world, but given some disposable income and solidarity, the people of Earth could do it. Should we? In my mind, outside Earth orbit, I'd focus on using robots, until we get our shit together (perhaps helped by robots bring from space the feedstocks for clean fusion plants).
The bootstrapping comes from mining and extremely excellent solar power (which are both much better in orbit than on a planet). The original idea of beaming energy to Earth via microwave radiation is perhaps a bit hare-brained, but maybe not completely. However, asteroid mining could be extremely lucrative, given self-sustaining orbital bases of operation. Mining on Mars or other non-Earth planets is absolutely NOT profitable in most cases, because the cost of lifting material into orbit would kill the margins. Space elevators are a possible futuristic thing for Mars, certainly compared to Earth (though see potential Mars-wide catastrophes a la Kim Stanley Robinson Mars trilogy).
The massive exception to planet-based mining is Helium-3. Helium-3 is extremely scarce on Earth, and mostly obtained as a byproduct of nuclear weapons manufacturing. But large amounts of the stuff could feed clean fusion plants (i.e. not producing radioactive waste). The bootstrap here is a bit destructive, since it involves strip mining the Moon (no elevator needed to save fuel during off-Moon transport, just a big rail gun). But it would be much better to dip robots into the gas giants to filter helium for helium-3 for this potentially outrageously lucrative source of income that could lead to a post energy scarcity world.
Many of the intensely researched books in this area are a bit needlessly provincial in their world view, offering a sort-of space suburbanite 1950's White Americana feel, but they are written by some serious scientists/engineers, and I think they have a lot to offer in the vein OP is seeking. An oddity that might define the genre is that they probably legitimately qualify as non-fiction, but frequently use the future tense, which is, well, unusual, and most of them kind of go off-the-rails at some point. Nevertheless, there are some pretty serious ideas in these classics and their ilk about how this could be done in a way that is really Earth-centered at the outset, where the whole point is to find a new untapped resource to exploit.
Okay, so as not to lose track of OP's main question, I'll stop.
Core reading list:
The original classic is Arthur C. Clarke's The Promise of Space, published in 1968. This sets the stage for the idea that terraforming is not the main event and the man that proposed the geosynchronous orbit covers some serious ground.
The CLASSIC classic is Gerard K. O'neill's The High Frontier, published in 1977. This is essential reading for the space colonization aficionado and forms the foundation of the "non-fiction" genre around the subject.
The mining classic w is Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis, published in 1997. This really lays out the mining thing, especially with respect to the shittiness of big gravity wells and how abundant supplies of helium-3 could be transformative.
I'll quit. There's so many more possible references that explore very proximate things, like how to insure rocket launches and way more far-out stuff, like how to minimize inbreeding on generation ships, but I think if I were to pick three things to read, those are them.
EDITS: for some typos and grammar that I saw.
http://www.amazon.com/The-High-Frontier-Colonies-Apogee/dp/189652267X
The Elysium habitat is about 2 miles big. It is not possible to construct such a Standford torus habitat by exporting materials from Earth surface - the launch of this amount of material would have deleterious effects on the planetary atmosphere - exporting that much material burns off A LOT OF energy, assuming any permutation of current propulsion types.
The only way to construct these kinds of habitats would be by means of mining the moon and NEA asteroids. The time to implement these kinds of industrial infrastructures is (if we invest maximum effort as a planetary society) would be about 20-30 years, and after that we would be able to construct small "Island One" habitats, which are much smaller than these Stanford Torus rings.
Essentially, it would be possible to construct an ever increasing number of these space habitats the moment you have the first. That implies that the number of habitats you can construct would follow an exponential rate. Let's assume it would be possible to erect the first (small) habitat 50 years after humanity goes full force space industrialization. Ten years later we'd have a small habitat. Twenty years we'd have three of these habitats. Thirty years later we would have something like six. Forty years later we could easily have over ten. Then 20, 40, 100, 200, 400. Essentially by 2150 we should have not a single such habitat, but thousands.
Each with a few thousand people living on them.
There is enough asteroid material in the solar system to replicate several thousand earth surfaces from these asteroids. Following the above exponential growth curve it follows that by 2250 most humans would or could be living in space under conditions substantially better than the ones depicted in te movie Elysium.
Even better, the ability to produce energy by SBPS would follow the same trajectory.
http://www.scoop.it/t/space-versus-oil
This is all science fact. Nothing I have said is impossible with todays technologies'. In fact it was well possible with 1970s's technology and these designs were presented to the US senate in the mid 1970s.
But then something happened and some people in charge decided this was not the way they wanted humanity to develop.
You need physics, not math. I would suggest to borrow/buy a general mechanics book (Alonso-Finn, Tipler, etc.) and read some if you are serios writing about Hard SF. Then there are specific books about artificial stations/worlds; like this classic “The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space”. Also, you need to take into account the Coriolis force if your station is too large. This wikipedia article is a good start.
As for the answer you were looking for: the acceleration is [angular velocity]^2 [radius], thus your problem is not exactly the radius but also the angular velocity. As you need a particular period of 34 hours the angular velocity is fixed to 2pi/(34 60 60) = [angular velocity]. Finally, you can find your radius from [your gravity]/[angular velocity]^2.
You don't need soil to grow plants in - and there's plenty of water in space, locked in asteroids, on the Moon, on various other bodies throughout the solar system. As for cleaning it, it will be pretty easy to run it through a solar furnace to sterilize it of any potential pathogens.
Space habitats won't simply be living quarters. They'll be homes, factories, and farms all combined. You should look up Lewis One, Kalpana One, and the books The High Frontier and 2081.
its so much of a GODDAMN shame that these were never made, could have been, but wasnt.
http://www.amazon.com/The-High-Frontier-Colonies-Apogee/dp/189652267X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1346594304&sr=8-3&keywords=high+frontier
There are also books on this:
https://www.amazon.com/High-Frontier-Human-Colonies-Apogee/dp/189652267X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468075898&sr=8-1&keywords=the+high+frontier
and:
https://www.amazon.com/Colonies-Space-T-Heppenheimer/dp/0811703975/ref=sr_1_1?s=outdoor-recreation&ie=UTF8&qid=1468075904&sr=8-1&keywords=space+colonies
Though it isn't a toroid or a bernal sphere like O'Neill's designs, my station, Island One, is the Kerbals first home in space. It is the start of their progress in ensuring thriving continuation of their race, and bringing the benefits of space industry to Kerbal.
Future plans for my rebuild in .21 include a fuel depot, kethane refinery, vehicles for Mun/Island One transfer with kethane, and way less parts. All the batteries on the power module and monopropellant tanks on the housing module are killing me!
For the curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O'Neill
http://www.amazon.com/The-High-Frontier-Colonies-Apogee/dp/189652267X
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IIRC The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, O'Neil (Bezos' professor cited in the article) sustained that pollution wouldn't ever be a problem in space because any undesired substance would be simply vented out of the habitat and solar wind would disperse it through hundreds of millions of miles of vacuum, all the way to insterstellar space. Like what happens in a comet tail. It was indeed one of his points in advocating that space was far better for an industrial civilization than a planetary surface like Earth's, where all shit that we produce innevitably accumulates.
Of course, in the far future, with human population on the trillions and scattered all over the Solar System in those space cities, crunching asteroids, small moons and eventually dwarf planets all the time for more resources, I suspect that there would be too much exhausts and the Sun seen from far away would start to look vaguely like a planetary nebula. In fact, I would love to see some SETI project exploring the possibility that some of the planetary nebulas are indeed artificial byproducts of civilizations that scaped the great filter of staying in their home planets for too long and running out of resources.
> So, citing someone with a PhD doesn't impress me, I have one so clearly they will give them to anyone.
He wrote the book on it:
https://www.amazon.com/High-Frontier-Human-Colonies-Apogee/dp/189652267X
> Asteroids are actually really far apart (at least in our solar system) and our problems are currently mostly about getting to space not really doing anything once we are there.
That's why we'll be starting with near-earth asteroids.
> Though once you are there I agree it is not necessarily all that costly to get around (just slow), but then you have to either use the metal up there or also suffer the cost of bringing it back down to the surface without killing anyone.
Most of the asteroid material will likely remain up there, yes. Far more valuable in space than on land. But for the extremely rare metals that won't be as true. We will not be manufacturing with rare earth metals in space any time soon.
> This would work much better if more of humanity were in space already and so there was an industrial presence outside earths gravity well, but between now and then it will be slow going.
It would take some time, but it's already completely doable. What's missing is the and the vision. Musk has gone a long way there, his vision to drive towards Mars will do a lot for this.
Let's do a bit of numbers.
Let's for the moment assume you smashed several comets of water into the planet to build your atmosphere. You only have 40% gravity so you're only going to get 40% atmospheric pressure. To get pressure that low on Earth you have to go to 22,000 feet or 7,000 Meters. In case you don't know, there aren't any cities at that elevation as almost all people prefer to be able to breathe. The highest cities on Earth hover around 5,000 meters, 2,000 meters below your baseline number.
How long the atmosphere lasts is currently unknown despite your assertion:
>Incorrect: The atmosphere strips away over millions of years, more then slow enough for an atmosphere to form.
You didn't cite your source for that assertion. What we can state confidence is the current loss rate is being measured at the end of a very long loss process. If you look at vacuum pressure curves you'll see that most of a gas is evacuated early on - getting a really hard vacuum at the end takes a lot of time which is when the Mars MAVEN project measured.
Did I forget to mention that Mars doesn't have a magnetic field? The magnetic field steers the solar wind away from Earth so that when the sun hurls a bolus of hydrogen at us every so often, it doesn't strip away our atmosphere. Your 40% gravity is going to need that magnetic field help and it doesn't have it. Yes, there are ideas floating around on how to counter that issue but right now they're best labeled ideas, not fact.
You write:
>Incorrect: the moon has very little in the way of useful materials, which is why people are interested in Mars in the first place.
Absolutely no idea where that comes from. Hell, the Lunar astronauts brought back a large chunk of Anorthosite they found just lying on the surface. We've known for quite some time that there are plenty of minerals on the Moon. The astronauts weren't lucky, there's stuff all over the place. It's just damn expensive to get to so it stays put for now. It shouldn't be a surprise - the moon formed from the earth after all.
>Just silly: Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to move orbiting cities?
Yes, it would take huge amounts of energy. Fortunately, we have lots. You can go nuclear or solar - your choice.
Until it was killed by the 1963 atmosphere nuclear test ban, the United States had been working on Orion. Orion would have launched a skyscraper into orbit. When they were designing Orion, they built this building to keep the designers' sense of scale as to what nuclear power made possible. The building was scaled to be a cross section of the rocket. To reinforce the point, they were going to fly a barbershop with old fashioned barber chairs because mass wasn't a launch constraint as it is today. Cities are made up of skyscrapers and since we're mining the moon, you can have as many as you want. And you don't have to lift them off Earth like Orion was going to.
Don't like nukes? You can use solar power to sail around the inner solar system. Extra-terrestial solar won't generate power like nukes will but it will provide the energy necessary if you're not in a hurry.
I refer you to High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space for lots of details.
My last point.
Your call to remove my post is censorship to enforce a point of view. I may be wrong or you may be wrong or we may both be wrong but censoring each other isn't the path to truth.
If you don't agrees with a point a view, refute it. The truth emerges from that process. Calling for censorship to preserve a point of view you're SURE is right is what the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union had in common. We're seeing a resurgence in the call for censoring speech from people who really don't know or forget their history.