During his time at Princeton, O’Neill also hosted a series of Space Manufacturing Conferences, yearly gatherings to spread the word about his space habitat concepts, which drew attendees from all over the country. In 1977, O’Neill and his wife Tasha launched the Space Studies Institute, a nonprofit space and science research organization whose offices remained in Princeton until 2009. Gerard O’Neill continued to advocate for space settlement for the rest of his life, joining with colleagues to design a number of large space settlements including the Stanford Torus and the O’Neill Cylinder. The challenges, however, extend beyond engineering, as O’Neill addressed questions of culture, economy, security, government, leisure, health, human psychology, and more. Here, O’Neill first outlined his concept of “Islands in Space” and how humans might be able to make livable settlements in free space by addressing engineering challenges like in-space manufacturing, raw materials, energy production and storage, food supply and agriculture, radiation protection, artificial gravity, day-night cycles, etc. Surprisingly, the conclusion they came to was that the best site was “somewhere else,” in orbit or in “free space,” and this lead to the publication of his book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space in 1976.
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