Don't Feel Too Cozy on These Green Acres

In the 1970s Gerard K. O’Neill and his physics students at Princeton Univeristy dreamed up a wild concept for a space habitat.

Below is a conceptual depiction of the “Bernal Sphere”. Brainchild of John Desmond Bernal. First proposed in 1929 by Bernal for sustained life in space.

In his 1976 book The High Frontier, O’Neill describes three designs for “Islands”

Islands one and two are spherical deisgns of enormous dimensions.

Island three is the O’Neill Cylinder¹. That’s the one at the end of Christopher Nolan’s science fiction epic Interstellar.

Maybe it was Star Wars, Star Trek, or Starship Troopers, but the idea of a lush green liveable habitat in space fell into oblivion for a while. My bet is: it was the scale and feasability. The sheer amount of parts and labor made it unpopular.

So, what became of science fiction was a world of rocket propelled tin cans hurtling across the starscape while the crew settled in for a long nap until their vessle navigated to their point B.

February 25, 1990: Theresa Marie Schiavo² went into cardiac arrest and was successfully revived with massive brain damage. After two months, she enters a persistent vegetative state. The incident and subsequent years (1998-2005) sparked a quagmire of a legal debate which left repercussions still felt today.

Enter Cryonics³. Does it work? Should it?

I don’t know. But I have some ideas.

I’ll keep you posted about when Prometheus launches.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics