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Cosmic Breathing Room

By milhayser on August 16, 2011.

On Universe, Claire L. Evans looks back on the starry-eyed futurism of the 1970's, when Gerard O'Neill envisioned "massive colonies of human habitation in space—self-sustaining environments capable of hosting hundreds of thousands of people." These colonies, housed in spinning cylinders, "would float in space at Lagrangian points, points of stable gravitational equilibrium located along the path of the moon's orbit." Today our ambitions are a bit less grand—and perhaps we should focus on taking care of the perennial spaceship Earth. But with unlimited room to grow and plenty of solar energy, the possiblities for cosmic urbanization are interesting (to say the least). Meanwhile, Greg Laden reports that the Herchel Space Observatory has confirmed the presence of molecular oxygen in space—not enough to breathe outright, but perhaps enough to collect for the space settlements of the future. The O2 was discovered in the Orion star-forming complex, 1300 light-years away.

Tags
discovery
oxygen
The Future

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