NASA 70s Concept art for living in Space... Look familiar?

[Ubik]

iO9 posted a lovely collection of 70s NASA concept art of space stations, and proposed 'living in space' arrangements. A lot of this looks very similar to the look of B5, and I don't doubt that some of this materail (or the general 70s SF zeitgeist) served as visual inspiration.

http://io9.com/stunning-concept-art-...-hu-1029760310

[Sinclair's Fan]

Hello, Ubik!

Hop on over to Ebay and see if you can find the book "High Frontier", all about O'Neil Cylinders.... It's a great book, and if I recall, that's where B5 came from!

[Triple F]

Really should work this kind of thing back into the interview with Paul Bryant – but yeah, O’Neill and the High Frontier is something the guys over at Foundation were very much aware of. Here’s a bit from the chats with Paul (I’m surprised I still have this archived away)

Mr Mead may have designed the actual Leonov but the principles, designs, math and general concepts belong to another. Gerard K O'Neill, 'The High Frontier'.

O'Neill was a genius engineer futurist who worked for NASA in the early 50's. He wrote this book bringing together and detailing the viable designs and their physics for habitats in space (mass, materials, dimensions, speed, energy, etc). He also provided copious illustrations. When the great Chesley Bonestell did his space habitat series for NASA this was the source he drew upon. The current ISS Freedom is an L1 in the book. The Leonov/Omega is (I think) an L3. Remember the space ring in 2001? That was taken from 'The High Frontier' almost exactly, it was designated as an L4 space station. The book postulated that if you took the L4 design and extended it along it's spin axis it could then be sealed at both ends. It would provide a huge amount of habitat space that could house multiple cities and yes, there were lots of pictures. It's designation was L5 .

[Ubik]

Thank you both for the information. IÆll have to see if I can hunt down that book.

[DaveNarn]

Great pictures, thanks for the link.