O'Neill cylinder
O'Neill colonies are hypothetical space colonies that were proposed by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill. We have designed three concepts; on a hollow sphere, the Bernal Sphere, building designs Iceland Iceland One and Two, and Three Iceland in the form of two cylinders, which were thus named as O'Neill Cylinder.
History
For a long time seemed to be the development of the solar system only on the steps space station, lunar base and planet colonization possible. That changed when the physicist Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University, the question of whether the colonization of other celestial body is really the best method for the development of the solar system, answered in the negative. This reasoning approach formed the basis for plans on artificial worlds in space that should be known later under the name of O'Neill colonies.
O'Neill and his followers drew up at various conferences colonies of different shape and size, they all had one thing in common: their separation from a natural celestial body. However, unlike normal space stations they should not simply represent only a starting point for research and space, but a real living space - similar to a city - form.
1975 founded the engineers Keith Henson and Carolyn Meinel the L5 Society to make the designs O'Neill known. 1976 O'Neill published the book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, in which he introduced his popular science projects. New O'Neill's ideas, however, were not: Hermann Oberth, the "father of space travel ", has already in 1954 in his book People in Space - New projects for rockets and space travel, interstellar travel through space described with huge living rollers. On a hollow sphere as a habitat of the physicist Dr. John Desmond Bernal even thought already in 1929.
Construction
The ideas regarding the size of these stations were gigantic in the studies, ranging from a design with a Bernal Sphere for 10,000 residents of Iceland One, to a cylinder of 30 km in length and 6.5 km in diameter for millions of people, on which Iceland Three built. The colonies should provide their residents with a permanent home. It is therefore not surprising that in the spacious construction next to farmland and parks, lakes and houses were planned.
The colonies should have huge windows, the sunlight would by then with the help of equally large mirror are directed into the interior of the sphere or cylinder. In order for a permanent life in the universe is at all possible, artificial gravity must be created. This should be achieved by rotation of each colony. A jacket made of moon rock should also ensure the necessary protection from dangerous solar radiation in space.
Implementation
Due to their gigantic expansion, it was clear that the construction of the colony would be possible only from a base in space from. In this way, the extremely costly transport of materials from the earth would be bypassed from the space mostly. The raw materials required for the construction should come from the moon, since this transport due to the much lower pull of the moon would be considerably cheaper.
In the construction workshop raw materials should then be further processed and combined with other components provided on the first small habitats. These habitats should be the starting point for the further expansion of the colony. One then completed colony should in turn serve as the basis for the preparation of another, so that in the foreseeable future befänden a variety of these artificial islands in space.
Location
An important element in the planning of O'Neill colonies was the supply of raw materials taken from the moon on the one hand as a starting material for the manufacture of components for others but also for the above-mentioned sheath of lunar rocks, which should protect against solar radiation. For this purpose, as was the idea of a so-called mass accelerator could be built on the moon. He would hurl the required raw materials to the construction site of the colonies.
It is of course important that the thrown objects, even the construct itself remain in place. Therefore, O'Neill has chosen a particular location for its colonies: the equilibrium, libration or Lagrange points L4 and L5. At these points hold in a system between two bodies - so in this case between the Sun and Earth - the centrifugal force of the rotating system and the attraction of the two bodies in balance. This circumstance, it is thanks to them that a positioned object in these places remains in place even without regular position correction.
Life in the O'Neill colony
Life in the O'Neill colonies is characterized by self-sufficiency. The residents should be able to provide you with all necessaries of life itself.
As a dietary supply of corn, soybean and alfalfa fields at the middle level are created. The water is supplied from artificial ponds at the top level. It can also be used optimally for irrigation. With the rest of the water then the cattle may be supplied, their stables appearing to be on the lowest terrace. Starting from a number of residents of 10,000 colonists about 60,000 chickens, 30,000 rabbits, and a considerable number of cattle could be held there.
Then the water would be treated in a treatment plant and the circuit are fed again. So a healthy mixed diet would be possible that would provide the residents every day with about 2400 kilocalories. The fields and parks have also the task of absorbing a large part of the carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen and water vapor. The rest of the demand would then afford the high technology.
The heat generated in the agricultural areas could be condensed moisture on air drying plants and so supplement the drinking water supply. A complex process called wet oxidation would clean the waste water from agriculture and households by pressure and heating. In this process, carbon dioxide would be released, which in turn could be used for promoting plant growth. The solid residues of the waste could be processed into animal feed and fertilizers. The inhabitants of the colony could earn their livelihood as a mining people on the moon, or as scientists and technicians on space stations. Main field of activity would be probably the construction of power satellites umgäben as a dense ring the earth.
Feasibility
It was spread by the creators of the opinion that a parade of humanity could go into space in the not too distant future vonstatten. Some saw the first colony as early as the turn of the millennium inhabit the space.
This euphoria was supported by the fact that the techniques needed were already available or in development. The optimism even went so far that O'Neill and his staff already initial cost estimates and schedules for an " ethnic program " vorlegten. They went from a cost of $ 100 billion spread over 20 years from, a sum that has swallowed up today as the International Space Station ( ISS).
After careful examination and critical analysis, it is nowadays considers, however, that the thought of O'Neill magnitude was not yet long to realize with today's possibilities. In order to even begin the construction of a first station, thousands of tons of material would have to be launched into space ( establishing a design basis) and the moon ( to establish the mass accelerator ). From the moon, millions of tons of raw materials would have to be dismantled and taken to the design studio. Alone for the shielding against solar radiation 10 million tons of lunar rock would be required, according to former plans. So you go nowadays believe that the actual cost at least a hundred times, if not a thousand times would be higher, as suggested by O'Neill. The first cost calculations carried out when the Space Shuttle was still in the planning stage and convenient transportation costs held out the prospect O'Neill - the actual cost for a launch of the Space Shuttle, however, rose to nearly a hundred times what was originally thought.
The chances of a feasibility making a simple rough calculation clearly: In the above- mentioned size of the colony alone would weigh the air inside about 1.2 billion tons ( normal atmospheric pressure required).