Space colonies will be far more than havens for the rich

I’ve long argued that large self-contained in-space colonies, like that popularized by the late Gerard K. O’Neill, offer marvelous settings on which to base science fiction stories. (See my essay in the Solar Sci-Fi section.) New cultures would arise and multiply within such island worlds and offer scenarios for stories just as rich and diverse as any of those based on the intra-galactic motif – yet the action would be within our solar system and obey known physics, e.g. no need for faster-than-light travel. If we get off our collective duff, such stories could even play out in reality in the next few decades.

It’s thus rather disappointing that the first movie to bring a lot of public attention to such a colony portrays it as nothing more than the ultimate gated community for the ultra-rich. Haven’t seen Elysium yet, but from all accounts it takes the sophomoric and narrow-minded “space travel is for the rich today and so always will be” theme and runs it into the ground – from orbit. Innumerable technologies and activities that were once only for the rich  (e.g. air travel, Caribbean cruises, spas and resorts, computers, big flat screen TVs, etc) eventually became broadly available and affordable for the middle class. The same will happen with space travel and space habitats.

I hope more enlightened writers and moviemakers will ignore the misleading negativity of this film and instead be inspired by the in-space colony concept and begin to fulfill its vast story-making potential. Lessons from ‘Elysium’: Go Back to Huge Space Colonies’ Idealistic Roots – Space.co

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The National Space Society is dedicated to the promotion of human settlement of the solar system. Here is a statement from the group about Elysium:

Space Settlements Represent Hope for Humankind

The National Space Society (NSS) offers a comparison of its vision for space settlement to that promoted by many dystopian science fiction movies of today.  NSS has supported the concept of rotating space settlements in orbit or deep space since the epochal publication by Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill of his seminal article on space colonies in Physics Today (1974).

Since those days, concepts of democracy and egalitarian societies have been integral to our vision. A goal of NSS is the creation of a free, spacefaring civilization with people living and working in space. We believe in democracy to build and operate space settlements, whether in space, on the Moon, on Mars, or even on planets around other stars.

A large part of the space movement today is founded on improving life on Earth by creating an ability to operate in space. This includes the ability to divert threatening asteroids, detect solar outbursts that could destroy our electrical grid, and build solar power collection/transmission satellites that could produce huge amounts of carbon free energy in space for use on Earth, enriching all of humankind. In fact, an early justification for building space settlements was to house the labor force needed to build the solar power satellites that would provide a global solar power source to all nations, helping to prevent the ecological and economic collapse and chaos depicted in many dystopian movies of today. NSS believes that we are making the future every day and that we want to build a hopeful future.

NSS is happy that space settlements are beginning to appear in popular culture such as the recent motion picture Elysium.  NSS applauds the cinematic skill that resulted in the depiction of the physical appearance and operation of a rotating orbital space settlement. While NSS accepts that a conflict is fairly fundamental to a good story, we would like movie viewers to keep in mind that the tyrannical government depicted in the movie does not represent the path of humans in space envisioned by the NSS and its thousands of members.

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Find lots of links to web resources about space settlement in the HobbySpace Life in Space section.

Update: Here is another view of the movie and space colonies: Space Settlements – Music of the Spheres.

One thought on “Space colonies will be far more than havens for the rich”

  1. Actually, if you’ll forgive the massive spoilers, the real lesson of Elysium is little more than a thinly-veiled parable about the problems of elitism and the divide between wealth and poverty on a global scale. The central plot device of the film isn’t the actual space colony, but the technology the colony possesses: medical expert machines capable of healing just about any non-fatal injury — no matter how gruesome — almost instantly. Early in the film we see a flotilla of small space shuttles attempting to break into Elysium illegally (speaking of space travel being accessible to the poor…), and the lone survivor from this flotilla bursts from the smoldering remains of her space ship and immediately breaks into a house and tosses her daughter into a medical machine to have her shattered legs regenerated.

    THAT is the point of the movie. None of the unwashed masses of Earth actually want to live on Elysium, it’s really the advanced life-sustaining technology that its citizens guard so jealously for no logical reason whatsoever (except the company that makes those machines must be charging some absurdly high “licensing fees” or something of that nature in order to stay in business; they’d have no revenue stream otherwise, and therefore no reason to have developed and distributed the technology in the first place). The sick thing is, it turns out Elysium has no shortage of technology to cure all of the medical ailments of the entire human race, they’re simply too damn greedy to share it for free.

    Space advocates talk a lot about the “idealistic principals” of Gerard O’Neill and the sci-fi luminaries of the 70s, but like a bunch of Marxists in a study circle nobody ever mentions the elephant in the room: the idealists failed. O’Neil’s colonists were never built, the moon bases and orbital factories never evolved beyond concept art. What little work DID get accomplished in space was largely owed to the cynical calculus of pork-barrel politics and the desires of senators to ingratiate themselves with job-seeking voters. Thus, we have no problem earmarking twenty billion dollars for a Goes Nowhere Does Nothing Super HLV, but a couple million for a commercial space program that might actually manage to explore space… oh my, I don’t know if we can afford THAT.

    The Elysium space colony is depicted as having been constructed by a company that was apparently built from the ground up by a ruthless S.O.B. named Carlyle, who early in the film demonstrates not only his complete antipathy for his “inferiors” in the rest of the human race, but even for his fellow citizens whom he considers to be a massive inconvenience for his running-my-corporate-empire daily existence. These cynical billionaires are the kinds of people who are going to open up space for the future of mankind, not because they’re the only ones who ever have, but they’re the only ones who will ever have both the means AND the will at the same time. It took a self-made millionaire like Elon Musk to make commercial spaceflight even a distant possibility; the the first SPACE COLONIES are going to be built by people like Carlyle, the kind of man who could just as soon buy California if it wasn’t so full of poor people.

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