Space Colonies of the Year 2000 (1979)
Tuesday, April 7, 2009 at 9:08PM ;)
In the 1979 book Star Wars Question and Answer Book About Space R2-D2 and C-3PO take young readers through space, explaining different types of telescopes, the search for UFOs, exploding stars, and future space colonies! The image below is described as a space colony that humans could be living in by the year 2000! The book contains other illustrations of space colonies but we've already looked at them here.
NASA pictures a space colony that humans could buildin 22 years. Shaped like a wheel, it has room for 10,000 people inside. It circles Earth 250,000 miles out in space - as far away as the moon! The structure keeps spinning to create artificial gravity inside.
The space colony has its own air sealed in tight against space. It carries its own water supply, which can be cleaned and used over and over again. Sunshine provides light and power. A large turning paddle helps remove heat that is not needed.
Babies will be born, children will go to school, and adults will work in the space colony. It will have homes, schools, hospitals, and stores. Farms will provide plants and animals for food. There will be factories where clothes and other necessities will be made.
If we started this project right away, humans could have a colony in space soon after the year 2000!
;)
Previously on Paleo-Future:
space, space colony, space station, space travel, star wars in 1970s 
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Reader Comments (5)
Ah, I remember this book fondly :-) And others like it too. I always love how way off the time predictions are - society changes at a relatively slow pace most of the time.
I miss the future I was promised as a kid.
why were they all so optimistic with their timescales?
Someone at the terrashaping department of NASA got fired for designing the colony in such a way that a multitrilliondollar suspension-bridge had to be build for connecting different parts! As with every project, errors are cheaper to correct if they are found in the designing phase... "If we started this project rightaway" Ha! We would be looking now at a very expensive pile of designs for colonies that are not feasible for a long time. It did not help the channel-tunnel that designs existed from the Napoleontic era, did it?
i have this book still! it's a trip to see it here.