Colonizing Other Worlds

History

U.S. and European space exploration advocates of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s promoted the idea of conquering, exploiting, and colonizing outer space. Among the best known of these advocates are the Russian-Soviet space flight theorist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the U.S. rocket builder Robert Goddard, and Germany's Werhner von Braun. Tsiolkovsky was influenced by the late 19th century Russian mystic philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, who believed that humanity was intended to leave Earth and spread out into space.

Other early advocates of space colonization included science fiction author Olaf Stapledon, who asserted that humankind should colonize other planets to exploit their resources for Earth's benefit, and rocket designer Krafft Ehricke, who claimed that it was humankind's destiny to expand throughout the universe. In the 1950s, books such as journalist Willy Ley's 1959 The Conquest of Space, with illustrations by space artist Chesley Bonestell, and a series of articles in Collier's magazine (also illustrated by Bonestell) titled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” helped to popularize the idea of colonizing other worlds. The Walt Disney Company played a role in this popularization as well.

In the 1960s, U.S. and Soviet human space flight programs and the race to land on the moon kept public attention focused on the idea of human expansion into space. In the 1970s, the idea of colonizing space got a major boost from physicist Gerard K. O'Neill (1927–1992), then at Princeton University. O'Neill presented his ideas for building [Page 160]human colonies in outer space to futurists, aerospace professionals, public audiences, and even the U.S. Congress. O'Neill conceived of massive human colonies suspended in space at so-called libration points between the Earth and the moon, lunar mining outposts designed to produce construction materials for human communities in space, and space-based generation of solar power to fuel these communities. At a time when concerns about rapid population growth, limited Earth resources, waning fossil energy supplies, and environmental degradation were prominent in public discourse, O'Neill's conception of human colonies in space seemed appealing in some quarters.

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