Space enthusiast here. Gerard O'Neill proposed these "O'Neill cylinders" as an alternative way to go about colonizing space. This is in comparison to the monstrously expensive Mars missions being conceived at the time.
There was a fascinating battle of ideas happening in the space community in the 1970's. Von Braun, Gerard O'Neill, and Carl Sagan all founded space advocacy organizations to pursue their various lines of thinking. Von Braun's National Space Institute ended up merging with O'Neill's L5 Society in the 1980's to form today's National Space Society. Carl Sagan's The Planetary Society still exists and is run by Bill Nye. Yes, the Science Guy.
Von Braun came from the government, Apollo-style mission to Mars viewpoint, for obvious reasons. Sagan was more an advocate of using robotic spacecraft instead of humans, to maximize the scientific discoveries per dollar. (Although Sagan eventually came around to being supportive of human exploration and colonization.)
O'Neill had an interesting viewpoint, which sowed the seeds for what is happening today. He believed that by first concentrating on space stations built at Lagrange points, that had some kind of economic benefit to Earth, then further space exploration could finance itself through private industry. Examples of economic benefit would be space-based solar power, or maybe asteroid mining, where you tow the asteroids to the Lagrange points and ship the minerals down to Earth. These drawings are of the ultimate goal -- entire space colonies, but you'd obviously start with something smaller that had a net economic positive and bootstrap up from there.
The different factions of the space community went through a lot of turmoil and debate during the 80's and 90's, when it became clear that United States government was pursuing exactly none of these things. Instead NASA built the space shuttle, a technological dead end, and once the shuttle and space station contractors were entrenched people knew we would be stuck for a couple of decades. It wasn't until the early 2000's that a light appeared at the end of the tunnel: the private space industry, led by the likes of Elon Musk, Richard Branson, John Carmack, and Jeff Bezos. Sadly, the Columbia accident also happened, which lead to the shuttle's badly-needed retirement.
But if you look at where they are today, the viewpoints of all these players have all essentially converged. They all support the private space industry. They support NASA doing robotic space science missions, and they have for the most part given up on NASA doing much that is useful in human spaceflight or colonization.
There will at some point be disagreement over whether to first go to Mars, to the Moon, or to do space mining/space habitats. But right now I'd say most likely all three will be pursued in parallel, each funded by different billionaires. The competition, if there is one, will be won by actually getting such a mission off the ground and flying real hardware, and not by mustering political support. At least, that's the hope.
There was a fascinating battle of ideas happening in the space community in the 1970's. Von Braun, Gerard O'Neill, and Carl Sagan all founded space advocacy organizations to pursue their various lines of thinking. Von Braun's National Space Institute ended up merging with O'Neill's L5 Society in the 1980's to form today's National Space Society. Carl Sagan's The Planetary Society still exists and is run by Bill Nye. Yes, the Science Guy.
Von Braun came from the government, Apollo-style mission to Mars viewpoint, for obvious reasons. Sagan was more an advocate of using robotic spacecraft instead of humans, to maximize the scientific discoveries per dollar. (Although Sagan eventually came around to being supportive of human exploration and colonization.)
O'Neill had an interesting viewpoint, which sowed the seeds for what is happening today. He believed that by first concentrating on space stations built at Lagrange points, that had some kind of economic benefit to Earth, then further space exploration could finance itself through private industry. Examples of economic benefit would be space-based solar power, or maybe asteroid mining, where you tow the asteroids to the Lagrange points and ship the minerals down to Earth. These drawings are of the ultimate goal -- entire space colonies, but you'd obviously start with something smaller that had a net economic positive and bootstrap up from there.
The different factions of the space community went through a lot of turmoil and debate during the 80's and 90's, when it became clear that United States government was pursuing exactly none of these things. Instead NASA built the space shuttle, a technological dead end, and once the shuttle and space station contractors were entrenched people knew we would be stuck for a couple of decades. It wasn't until the early 2000's that a light appeared at the end of the tunnel: the private space industry, led by the likes of Elon Musk, Richard Branson, John Carmack, and Jeff Bezos. Sadly, the Columbia accident also happened, which lead to the shuttle's badly-needed retirement.
But if you look at where they are today, the viewpoints of all these players have all essentially converged. They all support the private space industry. They support NASA doing robotic space science missions, and they have for the most part given up on NASA doing much that is useful in human spaceflight or colonization.
There will at some point be disagreement over whether to first go to Mars, to the Moon, or to do space mining/space habitats. But right now I'd say most likely all three will be pursued in parallel, each funded by different billionaires. The competition, if there is one, will be won by actually getting such a mission off the ground and flying real hardware, and not by mustering political support. At least, that's the hope.