O'Neill Cylinders

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Recommended: Space Exploration

Science fiction authors for many years have written book after book exploring, as Star Trek described space, "the final frontier". While many people focus on the exploration side of space, there are some who believe that space is our next refuge. Stephen Hawking has said " I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space". While some speak of moonbases, or planet-side bases, one of the most intriguing ideas is the O'Neill Cylinder.

Gerard K. O'Neill created the O'Neill Cylinder in his book "The High Frontier". An O'Neill Cylinder consists of two cylinders which counter-rotate around each other, each one has a two mile (3 kilometer) radius, and a 20 mile (30 kilometer) length. The two cylinders counter-rotate to create simulated gravity by centripetal force: everything is pushed to the outer wall due to that force. However, some design choices stem from this, some to combat the negative effects, and others to take advantage the centripetal force. Due to the nature of artificial gravity, many people might experience nausea and dizziness. To combat this, the speed of rotation would need to be decreased to about two revolutions per minute. To take advantage of artificial gravity, different parts of the O'Neill Cylinder can rotate at different speeds. In the middle of the cylinder, the artificial gravity will be smaller than everywhere else in the cylinder, and manufacturing facilities would be placed here to take advantage of that fact.

The cylinders themselves would have six sections on them, half of them are windows, the other half is the ground. Behind each window would be a mirror so they could direct the sunlight into the cylinder, while night could be simulated by simply moving ...

... middle of paper ...

... an object is at a Lagrange Point, it acts much the same as a satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit with a planet. Things at a Lagrange point are at a "fixed" place in space, which is quite an advantage for O'Neill Cylinders.

Bibliography

Books:

O'Neill, Gerard K. The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

1997.

Webpages:

Cornish, Neil J. Lagrange Point

http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/lagrange.html

Hall, Theodore Wayne:The Architecture of Artificial-Gravity Environments for Long-Duration Space Habitation

http://www.artificial-gravity.com/Dissertation/FrontMatter.htm/

Dyson, Freeman J. Life of Gerard K. O'Neill

http://ssi.org/?page_id=11

Baez, John. Lagrange Points

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/lagrange.html

Heppenheimer, T.A. Colonies in Spae: Chapter 2.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colonies_chap02.html

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