Imaginary Worlds - Living in Space

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

People have fantasized for ages about what it would be like to live in space -- whether it's living on the moon or Mars or on a space station. And if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos achieve their goals with Space X and Blue Origin, life in space might not be science fiction anymore. I look at two different dreams of living outside the Earth and how close they are to becoming reality, from the impossibly curved space habitats of Gerard K. O'Neill to a city on the moon that might split apart. Featuring Robert Smith of the Space Studies Institute, artist Don Davis, and performers Jose Gonzales and Camille Hartmetz at Emerge, an annual event from Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. There's a scene that I keep thinking about from the end of Interstellar. And if you haven't seen Interstellar, then spoilers ahead, because I'm going to talk about the ending. Now, the premise of the movie is that in the future, we can't grow food on the Earth anymore,

but no one's sure why. So a group of astronauts led by Matthew McConaughey blast off, looking for other planets that humans could live on. Eventually, they find some planets. They're okay, not great, and a lot of other dramatic stuff happens. But in the end, Matthew McConaughey returns to our solar system, and he discovers that humanity had actually survived all this time by living on a giant space station. And the physics of the space station were mind-boggling. I mean, it looked like somebody had taken a flat plane of Earth and rolled it up into a tube, so the houses are hanging sideways and upside down. so the houses are hanging sideways and upside down. In fact, we see these kids playing baseball and a pop fly shoots straight up into the skylight of a house

hanging upside down. Where am I? Cooper Station. Currently orbiting Saturn. And I've always found it fascinating how much some people really want to live on the moon or Mars or in a space station, where just about every natural resource that we take for granted on the earth has to be recreated from scratch, and it's incredibly fragile. But people are investing

a lot of time and money and their imaginations into life in space, and they say we are closer than ever to making that a reality. So I was really wondering, well, what do they imagine? And how much does it reflect science fiction? All right, so going back to that giant curved space cylinder that we saw in Interstellar. That idea originally came from a physics professor at Princeton named Gerard K. O'Neill. Fifty years ago, he was working with his students on designing solar-powered satellites.

And I know I said that just about every natural resource in Earth is really hard to find in space. That's definitely not true with solar power, because, you know, of course, on the Earth... Night shuts it off instantly, where a cloud runs over and shuts it off instantly. Robert Smith works for the Space Studies Institute, which was founded by the late Gerard K. O'Neill. Robert says back in the 60s, when O'Neill was figuring out the math for these solar-powered satellites,

O'Neill realized these structures didn't have to be limited by space. I mean, they could be as big as cruise ships or cities, which means people could live and work up there. But, and I said to Robert Smith, the thing that I don't understand is why O'Neill's cylinders have to curve into themselves like an M.C. Escher painting. And how does it even work? I mean, I barely understand how gravity works on the earth. Like, I don't quite understand why people standing in Antarctica don't feel like they're standing upside down on the earth. So I really don't understand how that would work on a man-made

structure that's smaller than a planet. Okay. When you're a kid, you take a bucket, right? And you fill it with water and you're at the beach, right? You take a bucket, you fill it with water and you spin your arm around above your head and the water doesn't come out, right? I never did that, but I believe you. You never did that? that no what kind of a kid are you i was collecting seashells and sea glass well you get the idea okay you'll do it now take a coffee cup outside put water in it take your arm and just spin it in a circle even though it's upside down at a certain point the water doesn't come out It's being pushed against the inside of the cup. If you're at the amusement park and they have one of those things that you stand in, it starts to spin, and then they drop the floor away and you don't fall.

That's centrifugal force. It's an effect of the spin. If you make the thing big enough, if you're on one of those rides and you try and turn your head too fast, you know you'll throw up. It's disgusting. That's because that thing's 15 feet across. If you have something that is considerably larger and spins at, say, three times to four times per minute, the effect that you feel from being pressed against the inside of the sphere or the cylinder, your body has no way of knowing the difference. But yes, if you look up,

you see another guy way up there looking down at you. I was curious what Robert thought about the movie Interstellar, since that is supposed to be an O'Neill space cylinder. And he says he was happy to see one on screen, but they made it too narrow. I mean, he understands they did that so they could have the gag where the kids are playing baseball and the ball shoots up into the house hanging upside down. But. Something with a curve that small would cause major problems with the majority of people.

I mean, there's a reason they're four miles by 20 miles, the big boys. It's because of the effects on the physiology of human beings that too small isn't going to work. It's going to hurt. And most people can't handle it. But there was one thing you really liked about the ending. The people who lived in those places didn't want to leave those places after they lived there. Only the main character left. They were all there.

They weren't saying, hey, let's all go now to this planet. We like where we live. So they stayed in their colonies. And so I thought that point was very well done. He wishes there was more sci-fi like that. It's funny. When we say space, people go, oh, Mars. You say space, people say, oh, the moon. But a planetary body is not space. And yet we are such planetary chauvinists that when we hear the word space, we think of other planets. We don't think of the

space in between. Did you catch that phrase, planetary chauvinists? It's a term that the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov made up in conversation with Gerard O'Neill back in 1974. In fact, here is that conversation. Isaac Asimov speaks first. Have you considered the possibility of a good smashing blow from a meteoroid? Yes, it's been calculated. You'd have to wait a good many million years for a big one. Alas, in science fiction, that happens every other day. Which reminds me of all the proposals that I've ever heard made by a legitimate scientist. This sounds by far the most science fiction-ish. Are you by any chance interested in science fiction yourself?

I haven't read much science fiction myself for a good many years. One of the things that's puzzled me, in fact, is that if you look through the science fiction literature, there's astonishingly little suggestion that anybody has been thinking in those directions before. Yes. In science fiction, we have what we might call our planetary chauvinisms. We think of colonies primarily on the surface of worlds. The most famous planetary chauvinist today is Elon Musk. He is using private money to build ships that will fly to Mars and hopefully back. There's also another very famous, rich, high-tech guru, Jeff Bezos, who's investing an incredible amount of money into space technology.

Jeff Bezos wants to build an O'Neill cylinder, which he calls Blue Origin, and he says it's going to be a manufacturing hub in space. And he gave his valedictorian speech in high school about O'Neill colonies, and he went to Princeton, and he was happy to be there, very among the O'Neill group.

Like a lot of O'Neill followers, Jeff Bezos was inspired by O'Neill's book, The High Frontier, and that book is full of illustrations. Don Davis was one of the main artists that O'Neill worked with back in the 70s. And so when I got in touch with him and picked his brain and such,

he immediately was enthusiastic about the paintings that I did. But drawing and painting those curved space stations was not a typical illustration gig. It's quite a challenge when you're doing a wide-angle view and working out the perspective. It almost gets to the problem of portraying a globe on a flat map if you're trying to do a map. It's a lot of fun. And besides the sheer physical layout of the thing portraying that, what I filled it with was as much

as possible greenery, plant life. In fact when I asked Jerry what he thought it should be like, he suggested the view from the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge looking down into the bay with the boats and the little houses and villages kind of nestled among the greenery. And with the bridge going off, a great structure sort of enclosing everything, but a familiar environment tailor-made to our needs, having been crafted and fit inside this vessel into space. And so that was the vision that the San Francisco Bay Area,

my homeland at the time, that I constantly kept in mind as I did these paintings. Now, for the record, Gerard O'Neill was not the only person thinking about space cylinders in the 70s. Two science fiction authors imagine these giant curved space structures,

Arthur C. Clarke in his novel Rendezvous with Rama, and Larry Niven in his novel Ringworld. But, as Robert points out, I love the Ringworld story, but remember, it's not us. It's aliens out there. It's like Rendezvous with Rama, you know, it's not us. But O'Neill colonies can be built by us. And Interstellar is not the only work of science fiction that has an O'Neill cylinder. You can see similar structures in The Expanse, Babylon 5, Star Trek Beyond, Ender's Game,

and video games like Halo and Mass Effect. And in some of those movies and TV shows, when I look at the special effects, it looks like they were taken directly from Don Davis's paintings in the 70s. I wondered if he noticed that. Oh, yes, I have. And I'm honored to have had my work as part of the collective consciousness that further works can draw upon. But science fiction isn't always good PR. Like the movie Elysium.

The director, Neil Blomkamp, created a space station that was modeled after O'Neill's Stanford Taurus. But in the movie, the Stanford Taurus is where all the rich people live. The poor suffer on Earth until Matt Damon saves the day. And then you walk away from that, because most people don't put space as a major part of their life. But it does impact them. They walk out of the theater and they laugh and they joke and they go on with their lives. But every time they see a Taurus, they're reminded that's where the evil rich people are who are keeping us down. And so that bothers me. Now, it is no accident that the space colony in Elysium is portrayed as a fancy suburb.

Even back in the 70s and 80s, people were criticizing Gerard K. O'Neill and Don Davis because it looked like they had taken white flight and made it literal. I mean, it's hard enough to afford real estate near the Golden Gate Bridge, but who can afford to live near the Golden Gate Bridge in space? And that criticism really bothers Robert Smith because he says, first of all, a space station like Elysium would not survive if the Earth were dying. The Earth and these free-floating space settlements would be economically interdependent. In fact, that's kind of the whole point of the space settlements is that they could help the Earth survive. That's a place where people who are doing important things to help everyone can live.

It's not. That's a place where we want to live. Now, Robert says we could build an O'Neill cylinder right now if we really wanted to. The problem is that all those materials just need to get a lot lighter and cheaper. He thinks the bigger problem is developing space shuttles so you can go back and forth and basically telecommute. So I asked Robert, given how much he advocates for these things, I mean, does he lie awake at night imagining what it would be like to live up there? You know, that's a really good question, Eric. I don't often do that. I mean, sometimes. And honestly, when I'm trying to drift off to sleep, you know, you've got a busy, busy brain and you try and do something to calm

yourself. And so there have been times when I have tried to imagine it, you know, imagine what it feels like. What is the, what is the feeling of on the skin? What is the feeling of the gravity? What is it? Not just what it looks like. So I have tried to do really deep imagination and it puts me to sleep. So it's helpful. Well, that's good, though. It means that it's a very real goal. It's not like this is a fantasy. It's so doable that it's now, in my mind,

at a point of, you know, the plumbing. How do you wire the electronics across the structure? It's civil engineering. I guess it's just been accepted into my mind as, yes, it's doable. Now we have to build it. In a moment, we will hear from some planetary chauvinists. Although they wouldn't call themselves that.

They're just people like you and me who happen to live on the moon. Now you might have noticed over the years, I've often talked to experts at Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination. It's a whole department dedicated to science fiction. And every year they host an event called Emerge about how science fiction can help us imagine the future. This year's theme was about colonies on the moon. And they brought me out to their campus

in Tempe, Arizona to participate. The event was really impressive. They built a set in a theater of this moon base called Luna City in the year 2175. The decor of Luna City was actually surprisingly earthy with these bamboo designs everywhere. And there are windows with a digital landscape of the moon in the background. Audience members were brought in to meet the residents of Luna City, who were mostly played by students.

And then afterwards, I moderated a debate between two residents of Luna City in front of a live audience about whether Luna City should remain united or whether it should branch out into colonies around the moon. And that argument is actually a real debate that is happening among futurists right now. The two residents of the moon that I talked to were played by professional actors, and we were following a script, but we were encouraged to improvise as much as possible. We never exactly explained why I still exist in the year 2175. I think we decided I'm a clone of Eric Malinsky, who lives on Earth, but took one of those speedy shuttles up to the moon. And by the way, this is a live recording, so you're going to hear some popping and crackling the microphones. But imagine you're kicking back in Luna City, or you're on the Earth, or in a giant cylinder orbiting the Earth, listening to this podcast in the year 2175.

Well, today we'll be speaking with Gennaro Santana, who is a proud longtime resident of Luna City, spends most of his days in the city's mines. His neighbors tell me he's a real pillar of the community, which is interesting because a lot of people here don't have titles, and it's just a lot of, you know, your reputation kind of counts for everything. I'm also joined by Anastasia Pavon, who's a top engineer with Deep Roots in the separatist movement. And she'll offer insights and the potential benefits of citizens leaving Luna City and starting their own communities. So first, welcome, Gennaro. Thank you for having me, Eric. I'm really excited to be here. Welcome to Luna City. Thank you. And welcome, Anastasia. Annie, please. Annie. Okay. Great. Thank you. And thank you, everyone, for joining

me. So to start, so what are the major concerns from Luna City regarding segregation? Where to begin? There are just so many different problematic issues to consider. I'm sure Annie will disagree with that. Well, look, I don't mean any disrespect to Ms. Pavon, but what she and other people are doing are basically putting all of Luna City at risk. Well, how are they putting Luna City at risk? These communities of distinction, it's just another word for segregation, and segregation just doesn't work. If I can jump in here, I'm not anti-Luna City. My friends, those like me who have left, we're not anti-Luna City. Tell me this, Eric, why did we even go to the moon? Well, I mean, it's not like there's one answer. There's

so many. I'm looking for what you believe to be the top answer of why we settled the moon. I mean, there are a lot. So, but the moon was always supposed to be a stationing area, right? I mean, it started out for science and industry, of course, but I mean, it became kind of like a launching pad. Like, isn't the idea that the moon is supposed to be a stationing area, right? I mean, it started out for science and industry, of course, but I mean, it became kind of like a launching pad. Like, isn't the idea that the moon is supposed to be sort of a bus stop? I mean, we can spend 10 day phases talking about this, but what's the point?

The point is using the moon as a launching pad reveals a great deal about the human spirit, that need, that intrinsic need we have to expand and go further. I've recently been working with the science team who's gearing up for the next hop to Titan. And with a bit more equipment, the ice there will be ready to process and we'll have settled close to the edge of the solar system.

Wow. I mean, it's not about us segregating ourselves. It's about pushing ourselves to realize our full potential on the moon and anywhere we go. My family was part of Generation Zero who landed on the moon and helped program and repair the bots that built this city. When Luna City was founded originally, it was under severe control from corporations, corporations that took huge risks to allow us the opportunity to live on the moon, of course. OK, I grant them that. But it was essentially

a rogue state under private corporate control. Does that make sense? Yeah. So some of those constraints still remain today. And that's what we don't like. Gennaro, I mean, I'm sure you can empathize with her point about exploration, the quest for knowledge. I mean, what is concerning you about these communities of distinction? Or as you said earlier, like, how do these communities put you at risk? Well, I do empathize with Annie's point, but I mean, the past matters. Several decades ago, when my father was a child, and this was during the pre-Generation Zero days, the Generation Zero was there to repair the robots that had already been built in Luna City. My father was part of the generation that actually helped build those

robots in the first place. And he lived in Luna City. He was young when the UN granted Luna City its decree of independence. And the feeling was that we could finally have a sense of our life here on Luna City without outside influence, without interlopers. And then people like Annie decided that they wanted to push further and beyond the bounds of Luna City. And I totally get that thirst for exploration or adventure or whatever you want to call it, but they left people behind and they took their resources with them. You know, their abandonment of Luna City plus some tainted food units, ended up converging to cause the crisis that we all know about, the Great Famine of Luna City. Gennaro, the food would have been contaminated either way. There was no stopping that famine. Well, if we had been together, we could have had the actual

amount of food reserves that we needed at the time. One of the major points of making a comeback from the Great Famine is that we were working together as one community, as one city. And that's what separates us from some of the fractured civilizations that are still on earth and still having a huge amount of suffering that doesn't have to happen. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So Annie, I know we've put you now on the hot seat a little bit. So I'm going to turn this towards you now. I mean, it does seem like there's definitely risk involved in these communities, right? Oh, there is, of course. So then why put people in harm's way? Like, why do something intentionally risky?

Well, there are risks every day. We live on the moon. I mean, life is fragile everywhere. Even for Luna City, it's not a perfect system. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, I mean, it's but but to a higher degree outside the city, don't you think? Yes, but Luna City isn't some sort of perfect utopia. I mean, it's had disease, infection, electrical malfunctions, complications with engineering, massive rampant crime. I mean, it has a whole host of problems, all of which can and have resulted in loss of life. Just because we stay put doesn't mean we're somehow magically safe. Right.

No, I mean, to me, to imply that Luna City is like some kind of utopia. I mean, but the thing is, it does have resources. It has solid structures that were built through trial and error. Everyone who leaves the city

understands the risks involved. It's their choice. It's the consequence of not having the resources of the city are real. People have died. People may continue to die, but that is their choice. Well, I find that mindset amazingly morbid and pretty careless. I mean, by diverging and just haphazardly going far beyond the bounds of Luna City,

like you would just allow that suffering and death to continue? Gennaro, nobody escapes death. When our ancestors traveled to new places on Earth, there was suffering and there was loss. Look at the founding fathers of our country. Look at Plymouth Rock. You know, it's the same thing. My brother, for example, is one of the head engineers working on sealing the latest dome on Mars. It is dangerous work, dangerous, dangerous work, a dangerous environment. Does that mean we should cop out? He should just leave and stop being human? People are finding success.

That's what you're missing. People are finding success outside of Luna City that can help Luna City. We have communities on the moon doing incredible things. We're pushing the limits of what we thought was possible. We're entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, farmers, brewmasters, gardeners. Did you say brewmasters, gardeners. Wait, did you say brewmasters? I know, right?

One of our communities has been able to grow hops recently. And hops and beer, that's worth dying for. Or even better, is it worth putting other people's lives on the line? You know this as well as I do. Brewing could never happen in Luna City. We don't have the freedom. We're not even allowed to own the materials. Yeah.

Okay, well, let's stop this part of the debate for now because there's a couple other things I want to cover. So I was very fortunate to speak with some members of Luna City earlier today, various folks from different communities of distinction. And in my interviews, I actually hadn't come across brewing. That's very cool. But first, I want to discuss the impact that these communities are having on families because, I mean, some children, some young adults, I should say, are so inspired

by the spirit of these communities that they're leaving their parents to go off on their own. And I spoke with this one mother whose son is living in a community that's focused on water purification. Water purification is so important. Right. So how does that work? Well, we're fortunate to be living in a time where we can do this, where we have the technology to be making this happen. I mean, it's terribly dangerous to be doing this. Yeah. Again, it's not without risk, but people know what they're doing and they choose it. Well, those people who are choosing to do it, most of them are promising young people who maybe have their entire lives ahead of them, but don't necessarily,

I don't know, understand the weight of the choices that they're making they're defend they're descending into lava tubes to find frozen water and i could take you on a walk through any neighborhood and you're going to meet really wonderful amazing people who've lost like the significant loves of their lives just for this unnecessary exploration it's not unnecessary and i get your point it's true that some young people are going away, but the work that the children are doing is revolutionary. Well, I mean, not all of those young peoples, not all of those communities are helping others

or helpful at all. You know, we all know about the lunar few. Actually, that was actually the next thing I was going to bring up. So there have been several communities that have developed these sort of, I mean, I have to use the word cult. they're cult-like characteristics. And I spoke with one man, Akar Vex, who he's actually- Vex is the worst. He's like absolutely the worst.

And he's practically, I mean, he's practically a dictator of these people who've chosen to go off into his community. So, I mean, Gennaro, I mean, just full disclosure, we, you and I have been, we're talking before this debate and you were telling me that this, this issue is actually personal to you. Yeah. Yeah. It is personal to me. I mean, do you mind if, do you, are you okay talking about that right now? You know, my daughter left three years ago and she went off to join the Lunar Few. And so that's part of why it's such a sensitive subject for me. And Annie, maybe you can explain to me and maybe other parents and maybe some of the other parents that are in the audience right now, what kind of community of distinction specifically preys on 18-year-old girls to a religious cult? Well, she's 18 and as other 18-year-olds are,

they're citizens, and they're free to make their own choices. It's a personal freedom. It's a right to each and every citizen to do what they would want to do. You have the freedom to do what you want, and others have that same right, and it's important to remember that, even though you may not like it.

Your daughter, although you may not agree with her choice, has the freedom to make that choice, Gennaro. Has she contacted you recently? Has she reached out to you? I mean, she occasionally has and, you know, she does so when she feels like it. Have you considered ever visiting her? No. Because, I mean, when I talked to Vex, he did say that he does welcome family members there. I mean, it's not something he's opposed to. It's something he encourages. Well, I mean, Vex says a lot of things. And, you know, my daughter, Vicky,

she's been trying to get me and my wife to visit her there with the Lunar Few. But I feel like visiting is just a form of lending legitimacy to what they're doing. And don't know maybe i can visit someday on other like under other circumstances um we can take you there my brother is actually a member and it's not a hard trip the next time i visit i can ask about vicky um why don't we just talk after words if that's okay okay all right well i'm actually gonna be wrapping up here fairly soon and we're gonna open up for questions um so anyone in the audience if if you guys have questions for Annie or Gennaro. But for the last part, I want to talk about something that I think exemplifies how the communities of distinction are improving life for Luna City

and future generations. So I spoke to this woman named Yelena Jameson. She's a member of Constellations, which is a community devoted to engineering advancements through works of art. You guys have heard of it. Yeah, of course. Yes, of course. So, and for those of you who don't know, Constellations, they create these large, I mean, these huge works of art on the moon.

And their most popular works are these dust logos. Yeah, and this is one example of what can happen when you have creativity and collaboration and engineering coming together beyond what's possible before. Yeah, I think that it's remarkable what they've been able to do. And you know, I can admit that some of what they're doing is good and that it can maybe eventually work well for everyone. Oh my God, you guys almost agreed on something. It's beautiful. Because I'm really fascinated by their work. So for anyone who doesn't know, certainly people on earth who might not know, constellations began when a few artists were hired by a corporation to create company logos on the face of the moon. And they had to manipulate these huge piles of moon dust, which I don't know if you think that sounds easy. I thought

it sounded not too hard. It's really hard. I mean, the artists, they can't be out there 24-7 working on the moon. They need robots. But the bots were breaking down because the heat from the sun just kept frying their circuits. So the artists had to become engineers to overcome this problem. And the tech that they developed to create these corporate logos on the moon has been used throughout Luna City for humanitarian reasons to help everybody, which is amazing. I just think that's a really good note to end on because it's about a community that came together for what seemed like kind of a random purpose. I mean, you could be very cynical about corporations hiring young people to create logos together, but it resulted in something very

beautiful, something beneficial, and not just for people now on the moon, but people in the future. So, and I personally think that's what exploration is about somebody from earth. I mean, that's, that's always been my fantasy of what's so great about living up here. So before we go to questions, Gennaro and Annie, do you guys have any final parting thoughts? Sure. I think, you know,

while I get that yearn for exploration and independence, our independence here on Luna city you know, while I get that yearn for exploration and independence, our independence here on Luna City, you know, our culture, our art and our way of life, that's become something that's become essential to the way things have progressed. And we built it on a history of working together and not having these smaller pods of people go off on to adventure and find glory for themselves. Luna City is our home and it's our central hub for a new civilization that doesn't have to make the mistakes that past civilizations have. Without a unified Luna City, I don't think we have much at all. I disagree. I think that the beauty that you both mentioned, the creativity it needs, its intrinsic need is to be pushed. It's not the kind of thing that you can just hold on to forever in a bubble, Gennaro. There isn't going to be anything that's worth anything that withstands the test of time if we don't push, if we don't evolve, if we don't keep expanding and growing, if we don't fight.

For those on Earth and in Luna City listening, we can use your talent. Never stop imagining what's possible because the universe is ours to build what we want. You have that personal freedom. Use it. We need it. We need you. Gennaro was played by Jose Gonzalez Thank you. I posted the full audio to my website and the Imaginary Worlds page on SoundCloud. And by the way, Kim Stanley Robinson, who I interviewed on this podcast last year about his novel New York 2140, also took part in this event.

He was supposedly a hologram of Kim Stanley Robinson, who gave a lecture about his novel Red Moon, which is going to come out in the fall of 2018. I'll also include a link to that on my website. Anyway, that's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Robert Smith, Don Davis, and staff at ASU. And by the way, if you'd like to learn more about Gerard O'Neill,

the podcast 99% Invisible did a great episode about his career called Home on LaGrange. Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply Network. Stephanie Billman is my assistant producer. If you like the show, please leave a review in iTunes. Helps people find it. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweeted emalinski and Imagine Worlds pod.

And as always, you can help support this podcast by donating through Patreon or GoFundMe. I have links to my Patreon and GoFundMe pages on my site, imaginaryworldspodcast.org.