L5 Society

The L5 Society was a grassroots pro-space colony organization, active in the United States from 1975 to 1986. At its height, the L5 Society had about 10,000 members. [Page 399]The L5 Society's main mission was to generate popular support for the space colonies agenda promoted by Princeton University physicist and public intellectual, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill. One of the L5 Society's earliest members, K. Eric Drexler, went on to become infamous as a popularizer of nanotechnology in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Drexler used the L5 Society's pro-space activism networks to develop his particular vision of nanotechnology.

In September 1975, Keith Henson and Carolyn (Mei-nel) Henson founded the L5 Society in Tucson, Arizona. The organization's name is a reference to one of two Lagrangian points in space (L4 and L5) theorized as ideal for orbiting space colonies. The Hensons' primary motivation with the organization was to advance space colonies as envisioned by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill in his book, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. O'Neill, a professor of physics at Princeton University, was, at the time, gaining celebrity for his ideas on space colonies. In the mid- to late 1970s, O'Neill was a regular contributor to popular space and science shows such as Nova and to pro-science and technology print media outlets, including Omni, Whole Earth Catalog, Co-Evolution Quarterly, and Analog. O'Neill had also spoken before the U.S. Congress on several occasions about space technologies, specifically the viability of space colonies.

Along with Keith and Carolyn Henson, K. Eric Drexler was a founding member of the L5 Society. At that same time, Drexler, an undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked with O'Neill on a space industrialization technology known as the mass driver project. Drexler supported O'Neill's vision of space colonies through his regular contributions to the L5 Society, notably his numerous technical articles in The L5 News and presentations at yearly L5 Society Space Development Conferences. Drexler's articles in The L5 News and presentations at the L5 Society's Space Development conferences examined an array of industrialization and migration technologies related to space colonization. By the early 1980s, his articles also contained themes such as exploratory engineering, self-replicating systems, molecular manufacturing, and nanotechnology. Drexler's conference panels and talks became venues to discuss nanotechnology as the means to successfully achieve space colonization.

In 1986, Drexler published Engines of Creation, a popular account of his vision of the future of nanotechnology. In the years prior to its publication, Drexler had circulated drafts of Engines of Creation to fellow members of the L5 Society, many of whom are listed in the acknowldgements of the book. That same year, Drexler and Christine Peterson founded the Foresight Nanotech Institute, a non-profit organization whose main purpose was to advance knowledge about nanotechnology. Though the Foresight Nanotech Institute's membership roster was a fraction of the size of the L5 Society's, there were many overlapping members. By 1987, the L5 Society was subsumed into the large centrally organized pro-space organization, the National Space Society.