In the summer of 1975, NASA brought together a team of physicists, engineers, and space scientists--along with architects, urban planners, and artists--to design large-scale space habitats for millions of people. Space Settlements examines these plans for life in space as serious architectural and spatial proposals.proposals.
Designing & Building Space Colonies-A Blueprint for the Future One of the greatest adventures in the future of humanity will be to construct, work, and live in space based structures. In this book we look at the history of ideas for living in space, proposed space colony designs, and technology. The details of current life support technology on the International Space Station is reviewed, and what technologies will be required for development of large scale space colonies. What other things in terms of financing and materials availability will be needed also. Finally, we conclude with some recommendations to get us ready to build these colonies.
Is there life in space? Within the solar system, which we can reach and are now beginning to explore, the answer may be: Nothing but spores and bacteria. Perhaps the answer is: Nothing. Beyond our region of space the answer may yet be: Civilizations and cultures of greatness and magnificence untold. But we have not yet learned to detect them or to communicate with them. As this has become apparent there has been a reaction against many of the more utopian hopes associated with space flight. Less than fifteen years ago John Kennedy could commit the nation to explore "this new ocean," with widespread hope that we were entering a new Age of Discovery. Today it is fashionable to believe that our problems can find solution only on earth and there is nothing in space which can aid us in any way. This is not so. If we cannot find planets fit for us to live on, or if Mars is not up to our fondest hopes - very well. We can take our own life into space. We can build colonies in space, as pleasant as we want and productive enough to markedly improve humanity's future prospects. And, we can begin to do this anytime we please.
This report grew out of a 10-week program in engineering systems design held at Stanford University and the Ames Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the summer of 1975. The project brought together nineteen professors of engineering, physical science, social science, and architecture, and two co-directors. This group worked for ten weeks to construct a convincing picture of how people might permanently sustain life in space on a large scale. The goal of the summer study was to design a system for the colonization of space. This report, like the design itself, is intended to be as technologically complete and sound as it could be made in ten weeks, but it is also meant for a readership beyond that of the aerospace community. Because the idea of colonizing space has awakened strong public interest, the report is written to be understood by the educated public and specialists in other fields. It also includes considerable background material. The technical director, Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University, made essential contributions by providing information based on his notes and calculations from six years of prior work on space colonization and by carefully reviewing the technical aspects of the study.
Vast interior spaces have become ubiquitous in the contemporary city. The soaring atriums and concourses of mega-hotels, shopping malls and transport interchanges define an increasingly normal experience of being 'inside' in a city. Yet such spaces are also subject to intense criticism and claims that they can destroy the quality of a city's authentic life 'on the outside'. Interior Urbanism explores the roots of this contemporary tension between inside and outside, identifying and analysing the concept of interior urbanism and tracing its history back to the works of John Portman and Associates in 1960s and 70s America. Portman – increasingly recognised as an influential yet understudied figure – was responsible for projects such as Peachtree Center in Atlanta and the Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel, developments that employed vast internal atriums to define a world of possibilities not just for hotels and commercial spaces, but for the future of the American downtown amid the upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. The book analyses Portman's architecture in order to reconsider major contexts of debate in architecture and urbanism in this period, including the massive expansion of a commercial imperative in architecture, shifts in the governance and development of cities amid social and economic instability, the rise of postmodernism and critical urban studies, and the defence of the street and public space amid the continual upheavals of urban development. In this way the book reconsiders the American city at a crucial time in its development, identifying lessons for how we consider the forces at work, and the spaces produced, in cities in the present.
This collaborative book compiles 30 chapters on the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space. It is rich in graphics including diagrams, design drawings, digital renderings, and photographs of models and operational designs.
This book captures the most exciting advances in the harnessing of space as a global resource. The authors track the growing number of space businesses and opportunities for investors, and the many possible benefits of spaceplanes, space stations and even space colonies. The authors also discuss the need for more regulatory reform. Companies like Planetary Resources are now forming to find mineral-rich asteroids and bring back new riches to Earth. Solar power satellites in the next few years will start to beam clean energy back to Earth, to meet the growing demands of a still-developing world. Innovative space industries are vital to the survival of modern human life, and the authors demonstrate what can be done to encourage the growing of the "New Space" frontier. From lassoing and then mining asteroids to developing new methods of defending the planet from space hazards and setting up new hotels and adventures for tourists in space, this new industry will have profound effects on Earth, especially on its economy. This book is based on a study of international experts commissioned ahead of the UNISPACE+50 meeting, having distilled the results of this comprehensive fact-finding process into a compact and very readable form. It can serve as an excellent starting point for understanding all the activities underway or planned to make space truly our next frontier.
Housing matters, no matter when or where. This volume of collected essays on housing in colonial and postcolonial Africa seeks to elaborate the how and the why. Housing is much more than a living everyday practice. It unfolds in its disparate dimensions of time, space and agency. Context dependent, it acquires diverse, often ambivalent, meanings. Housing can be a promise, an unfulfilled dream, a tool of self- and class-assertion, a negotiation process, or a means to achieve other ends. Our focus lies in analyzing housing in its multifacetedness, be it a lens to offer insights into complex processes that shape societies; be it a tool of empire to exercise control over private relations of inhabitants; or be it a means to create good, obedient and productive citizens. Contributions to this volume range from the field of history, to architecture and urban planning, African Studies, linguistics, and literature. The individual case studies home in on specific aspects and dimensions of housing and seek to bring them into dialogue with each other. By doing so, the volume aims to add to the vibrant academic debate on studying urban practices and their significance for current social change.
Incorporating more than 3,000 illustrations, Kornwolf's work conveys the full range of the colonial encounter with the continent's geography, from the high forms of architecture through formal landscape design and town planning. From these pages emerge the fine arts of environmental design, an understanding of the political and economic events that helped to determine settlement in North America, an appreciation of the various architectural and landscape forms that the settlers created, and an awareness of the diversity of the continent's geography and its peoples. Considering the humblest buildings along with the mansions of the wealthy and powerful, public buildings, forts, and churches, Kornwolf captures the true dynamism and diversity of colonial communities - their rivalries and frictions, their outlooks and attitudes - as they extended their hold on the land.