Space Settlement Is Why

摘要

U.S. President George W. Bush, as well as much of the space community, is overlooking one of the most compelling reasons why we must send people back to the moon and on to Mars ― because such excursions are stepping stones to eventual space settlement and migration. Oh, I forgot. Space settlement talk is taboo these days, isn't it? But you may recall, there was a brief time in the 1970s when space colonization captured the imagination of the space community and much of the public. In the middle of the 'Me' decade, Gerard K. O'Neill's visions of orbiting space cities was a hot discussion topic, featured in publications from Physics Today to the New York Times Magazine. NASA was so taken by the possibility it sponsored an in-depth study on space settlement technology at Stanford University and NASA Ames Research Center in the summer of 1975.