Misplaced Pages

L5 Society: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 16:18, 12 January 2015 edit67.52.192.26 (talk) →Founding of L5 Society: wiki style; ref clarif← Previous edit Revision as of 18:19, 12 January 2015 edit undoAnomieBOT (talk | contribs)Bots6,557,146 editsm Dating maintenance tags: {{Fact}} {{Deadlink}}Next edit →
Line 19: Line 19:
<!-- Deleted image removed: ] was not yet a reality by the time '''''2001''''' came and went (image: MGM).]] --> <!-- Deleted image removed: ] was not yet a reality by the time '''''2001''''' came and went (image: MGM).]] -->
]'s proposed Moon colony concept from early 2001 (image: NASA).]] ]'s proposed Moon colony concept from early 2001 (image: NASA).]]
The peak of {{L5}}'s influence was the defeat of the ] in the US Senate in 1980 ("... L-5 took on the biggest political fight of its short life, and won").<ref name=oneilchilds /> Specifically, {{L5}} Society activists campaigned for awareness of the provisions against any form of sovereignty or private property in outer space that would make space colonization impossible and the provisions against any alteration of the environment of any celestial body prohibiting ]. ], a Washington lawyer/lobbyist, was instrumental in this effort.{{fact}} Ratiner was later forced out of his law firm due to his successful representation of ].<ref>Fricker, Richard L. (1993-03). 1.01: The INSLAW Octopus. By Richard L. Fricker. WIRED, Issue 1.01, March/April 1993. Originally retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html{{deadlink}}. Retrieved on 2015-01-12 from http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html.</ref> The peak of {{L5}}'s influence was the defeat of the ] in the US Senate in 1980 ("... L-5 took on the biggest political fight of its short life, and won").<ref name=oneilchilds /> Specifically, {{L5}} Society activists campaigned for awareness of the provisions against any form of sovereignty or private property in outer space that would make space colonization impossible and the provisions against any alteration of the environment of any celestial body prohibiting ]. ], a Washington lawyer/lobbyist, was instrumental in this effort.{{fact|date=January 2015}} Ratiner was later forced out of his law firm due to his successful representation of ].<ref>Fricker, Richard L. (1993-03). 1.01: The INSLAW Octopus. By Richard L. Fricker. WIRED, Issue 1.01, March/April 1993. Originally retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html{{deadlink|date=January 2015}}. Retrieved on 2015-01-12 from http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html.</ref>


Although economic analysis<ref>O'Neill, Gerard K. "Space Colonies and Energy Supply to the Earth," Science 190:943-947. December 5, 1975</ref> indicated the SPS/space colony concept had merit, it foundered on short political and economic horizons and the fact that the transport cost to space was about 300 times too high for individuals to fund when compared to the ] and ].<ref>See the chapter "Pilgrims, Saints and Spacemen" in ]'s '']'' for an analysis.</ref> Although economic analysis<ref>O'Neill, Gerard K. "Space Colonies and Energy Supply to the Earth," Science 190:943-947. December 5, 1975</ref> indicated the SPS/space colony concept had merit, it foundered on short political and economic horizons and the fact that the transport cost to space was about 300 times too high for individuals to fund when compared to the ] and ].<ref>See the chapter "Pilgrims, Saints and Spacemen" in ]'s '']'' for an analysis.</ref>

Revision as of 18:19, 12 January 2015

The original L5 Society logo.
A diagram showing the five Lagrangian points in a two-body system with one body far more massive than the other (e.g. the Earth and the Moon). In such a system L3–L5 will appear to share the secondary's orbit, although in fact they are situated slightly outside it.

The L5 Society was founded in 1975 by Carolyn and Keith Henson to promote the space colony ideas of Gerard K. O'Neill.

The name comes from the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points in the Earth–Moon system proposed as locations for the huge rotating space habitats that O'Neill envisioned. L4 and L5 are points of stable gravitational equilibrium located along the path of the moon's orbit, 60 degrees ahead or behind it.

An object placed in orbit around L5 (or L4) will remain there indefinitely without having to expend fuel to keep its position, whereas an object placed at L1, L2 or L3 (all points of unstable equilibrium) may have to expend fuel if it drifts off the point.

Artist's conception of a space habitat called the Stanford torus, by Don Davis

Founding of L5 Society

O'Neill's first published paper on the subject, "The Colonization of Space", appeared in the magazine Physics Today in September 1974. A number of people who later became leaders of the L5 Society got their first exposure to the idea from this article. Among these were a couple from Tucson, Arizona, Carolyn and Keith Henson. The Hensons corresponded with O'Neill and were invited to present a paper on "Closed Ecosystems of High Agricultural Yield" at the 1975 Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing Facilities, which was organized by O'Neill.

At this conference, O'Neill merged the Solar Power Satellite (SPS) ideas of Peter Glaser with his space habitat concepts.

The Hensons incorporated the L5 Society in August 1975, and sent its first 4-page newsletter in September to a sign up list from the conference and O'Neill's mailing list. The first newsletter included a letter of support from Morris Udall (then a contender for US president) and said "our clearly stated long range goal will be to disband the Society in a mass meeting at L5."

Moon Treaty, decline of L5 Society and merger with National Space Institute

NASA's proposed Moon colony concept from early 2001 (image: NASA).

The peak of L5's influence was the defeat of the Moon Treaty in the US Senate in 1980 ("... L-5 took on the biggest political fight of its short life, and won"). Specifically, L5 Society activists campaigned for awareness of the provisions against any form of sovereignty or private property in outer space that would make space colonization impossible and the provisions against any alteration of the environment of any celestial body prohibiting terraforming. Leigh Ratiner, a Washington lawyer/lobbyist, was instrumental in this effort. Ratiner was later forced out of his law firm due to his successful representation of Inslaw.

Although economic analysis indicated the SPS/space colony concept had merit, it foundered on short political and economic horizons and the fact that the transport cost to space was about 300 times too high for individuals to fund when compared to the Plymouth Rock and Mormon colonies.

In 1986, the Society, which had grown to about 10,000 members, merged with the 25,000 member National Space Institute, founded by German rocket engineer and Project Apollo program manager Wernher von Braun of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to form the present-day National Space Society.

While the L5 Society failed to achieve the goal of human settlements in space, it served as a focal point for many of the people who later became known in fields such as nanotechnology, memetics, extropianism, cryonics, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and tether propulsion, such as K. Eric Drexler, Robert Forward, and Hans Moravec.

L5 News

L5 News was the newsletter of the L5 Society reporting on space habitat development and related space issues. The L5 News was published from September 1975 until April 1987, when the merger with the National Space Institute was completed and the newly formed National Space Society began publication of its own magazine, Ad Astra.

See also

References

  1. ^ Chapter 5: O'Neills Children, Reaching for the High Frontier, The American Pro-Space Movement 1972-84, by Michael A. G. Michaud, National Space Society.
  2. Pg 5, Archive for December, 1975, Space Studies InstituteArchived 2009-04-23 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Brandt-Erichsen, David (1994-11). The L5 Society. "Reprinted from Ad Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society, Nov.-Dec., 1994." Ad Astra, November/December 1994. Retrieved from http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5history.htm.
  4. L-5 News, 1975, L-5 News, A Newsletter from the L-5 Society, Number 1, September 1975
  5. Fricker, Richard L. (1993-03). 1.01: The INSLAW Octopus. By Richard L. Fricker. WIRED, Issue 1.01, March/April 1993. Originally retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html. Retrieved on 2015-01-12 from http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw_pr.html.
  6. O'Neill, Gerard K. "Space Colonies and Energy Supply to the Earth," Science 190:943-947. December 5, 1975
  7. See the chapter "Pilgrims, Saints and Spacemen" in Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe for an analysis.
  8. About the National Space Society (NSS)
  9. A journalistic account can be found in Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis (1990 - ISBN 0-201-09258-1).
  10. A more scholarly treatment is the 2012 book The Visioneers by historian W. Patrick McCray.

External links

Categories: