NASA-Designed Space Colonies - Neatorama

In the 1970s I thought it would be awesome to be a space pioneer and live in a colony in an orbiting spaceship. During that decade space colonies that could house 10,000 people were designed at NASA summer camps. You can see a gallery of these lovely hand drawn renderings here. NASA still runs summer camps for students but their output is probably not as charming as these pre-digital creations.

Link - Via Geeks Are Sexy

Uhh, Aliens?

Anyway, I think the sphere living would be pretty wild, you could have an entier neighborhood over your head.

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Isn't it a torus, and not a sphere? Like Sigil, "The City of Doors". :D

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Oh, that picture brings back memories. I tore that one out of whatever magazine I'd found it in and had it on my bedroom wall. I was pretty sure that we'd all be living in one of those by the time I was an adult. I spent a lot of daydreaming time imagining what life would be like in that city.

Guess we haven't quite made it there. Not that I'm complaining, My 8-year-old self would have flipped out at the sight of my smart phone.

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@Gauldar, check out the Bernal Spheres.

Here's a trippy rendition of what it would be like living in a hollow sphere.

http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/Images/colonie-bernal-famille.jpg

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whenver I think about colonizing space I think about how often our structures fail because of faulty engineering. If projecting spacial body hits a space station and creates a hole, everyone will die from the vacuum of space.

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@Randi

Sure, but at least you'll get a great YouTube video out of it.

@Splint

Cool.

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I remember seeing some of the pictures from the Toroidal Colonies section published in a book called "Star Wars - Question and Answer Book About Space" back in 79'.

Thanks for dusting off the memories.

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Nasa did not do any planning on these designs-
a man named Gerard K. O'Neill, a physicist at
Princeton, did.
Please find and read:
The High Frontier- Human colonies in Space
Morrow Publishing
ISBN: 0-688-03133-1

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I had those books when I was like eight years old and they blew me away! And I was just thinking about that cutaway a couple of days back!!

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