From the Bookshelf: The High Frontier
Sep. 24th, 2016 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAlways looking for my next book to read, I dug into a somewhat older pile and pulled out a library discard I'd managed to buy at a book sale a while ago. Thinking back, I don't suppose I'd have hesitated much at the chance to get an old copy of Gerard K. O'Neill's The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, but I'm pretty sure that once I had the book I only skimmed through it and then left it to sit. You may not have to fear the ominous future "if these immense space colonies aren't built for the good of everyone" sketched out early in the book is now inescapable, or even springboard off to heap blame on familiar agencies for not having your ticket up to "L5" already (as I recall the foreword by someone else to a more modern reprint did), to still dwell on the whole "I resent this gee-whiz technology from popular works in decades past not being available yet" attitude. At the same time, though, I was quite aware there are people other than embittered space buffs who would recognize O'Neill's designs; they were pulled into the setting of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime, adding a distinguishing factor other than "just" "giant piloted robots of a particular design."
In any case, as much as I noticed how O'Neill talked up his largest "Island Three" colony designs and the pleasant life to be found within them before getting around to the bootstrapping process of starting with lunar surface material, a justification for space colonies beyond "living space" was eventually established in the book as "harvesting solar power." We do seem to be getting better at that even with an atmosphere (or the Earth itself) in the way. Whether this somehow links in with "if electronics weren't so good, it would be that much easier to justify sending people along with their film cameras to other worlds" is a question.
I did notice and take particular note of one little comment by O'Neill that houses inside space colonies wouldn't have unsightly TV antennas, although his explanation was that you'd always be close enough to the central transmitter that a small and carefully aimed antenna would suffice. Along with that particular "selective advancement," I did keep noticing how Gundam's "action-packed story" kept rubbing up against O'Neill's efforts to make things seem appealing. In a brief "fictional introduction" early on, he mentioned a controlling body that "keeps us on a fairly loose rein so long as productivity and profits remain high--I don't think they want another Boston Tea Party." He then insisted the fragility of space colonies would deter war through a "mutually assured destruction" scenario, and finally said any dissenting group could just get their colony moving to somewhere else in the solar system. All of this would seem to work against Gundam's "war of space independence," although nothing was said about another little feature of the series, "living in space" managing to turn some people into psychics.
In any case, as much as I noticed how O'Neill talked up his largest "Island Three" colony designs and the pleasant life to be found within them before getting around to the bootstrapping process of starting with lunar surface material, a justification for space colonies beyond "living space" was eventually established in the book as "harvesting solar power." We do seem to be getting better at that even with an atmosphere (or the Earth itself) in the way. Whether this somehow links in with "if electronics weren't so good, it would be that much easier to justify sending people along with their film cameras to other worlds" is a question.
I did notice and take particular note of one little comment by O'Neill that houses inside space colonies wouldn't have unsightly TV antennas, although his explanation was that you'd always be close enough to the central transmitter that a small and carefully aimed antenna would suffice. Along with that particular "selective advancement," I did keep noticing how Gundam's "action-packed story" kept rubbing up against O'Neill's efforts to make things seem appealing. In a brief "fictional introduction" early on, he mentioned a controlling body that "keeps us on a fairly loose rein so long as productivity and profits remain high--I don't think they want another Boston Tea Party." He then insisted the fragility of space colonies would deter war through a "mutually assured destruction" scenario, and finally said any dissenting group could just get their colony moving to somewhere else in the solar system. All of this would seem to work against Gundam's "war of space independence," although nothing was said about another little feature of the series, "living in space" managing to turn some people into psychics.