May 14, 2019 23:00:00

The 'Space Colony' model that appeared in Gundam is the basis of Jeff Bezos's space advance concept

On May 9, 2019, Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will hold a conference on behalf of Blue Origin, a space company owned by Amazon, to uncover

plans for landing on the moon by 2024. did. And the image of the move to space that I looked forward to in the plan was not original to Mr. Bezos, but was based on the grand idea that one physicist advocated more than 40 years ago.

Why Jeff Bezos's Space Habitats Already Feel Stale-CityLab
https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/05/space-colony-design-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-oneill-colonies/589294/

You can see the whole of the press conference Mr. Bezos held on May 9 from the following movie.

Going to Space to Benefit Earth (Full Event Replay)-YouTube


At the conference, Bezos presents an episode of American physicist Gerard O'Neill . In 1969, during a lecture one day Mr. O'Neill asked the students, 'Is the surface of the extraterrestrial planet the best place for humanity to enter the solar system?'

Intuitively, the surface of a star similar to the earth is likely to be the base of human activity. However, O'Neill and his students did various calculations, and as a result, they came to the conclusion that they were 'in theory'. The reason is that, first of all, Mars and Venus next to the Earth have smaller surface area and gravity than the Earth, and they can not exchange supplies because they are too far away.

So, in the summer of 1975, O'Neill announced a new space expansion concept. O'Neill's vision was to design a large space station '

Space Colony ' where human beings can live off the earth, at the Lagrange point located between the sun, the moon and the earth.

O'Neill's space colony is a huge cylinder with a diameter of 3 to 6 km and a length of 30 km, and a space where human beings can live is provided on the inner wall, and artificial gravity is created by rotating. In addition, the idea of reflecting sunlight into the interior with a movable mirror and creating day and night was also included. Unfortunately, although the construction of the space colony was not realized, it is said that the space colony appearing in the Japanese TV anime '

Mobile Suit Gundam ' was modeled on the concept of Mr. O'Neill.

Bezos, who studied electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton University in the 1980s, was studying with O'Neill. Mr. Shamen points out that Bezos has this master-child relationship at the root of his announcement of the space advance concept based on O'Neill's concept. In fact, the image shown by Mr. Bezos in the middle of the presentation was a depiction of the reproduction of Seattle and Florence within the space colony that O'Neill thought. In addition, the moon landing project announced at the main of the conference will be the first step in long-term efforts to advance into space.

The Space Colony Project is a concept published by physicists based on scientific considerations, but unfortunately, the contents of 40 years ago today are optimistic and old, says Shamen. For example, O'Neill did not understand the complexity of environmental ecosystems. Even if you could construct a space colony as O'Neill's plan, it would be very difficult to maintain the complex environmental ecosystem as well as on earth. Shamen argues that 'Bezos does not work on the complexity and unknown parts of environmental ecosystems.'

Also, in the middle of the presentation, Mr. Bezos screened a talk between Mr. O'Neill and

Isaac Asimov, science-fiction writer. Mr. Asimov was asked by the presidency, “Did you have a vision like Mr. O'Neill's space colony plan?” And “No one imagined at all.” The science fiction writer is a planetary supremacy, He said, 'I think people should live on the planet.'

As the screening was over here, Mr. Asimov, a sarcastician, said, 'If you build Israel in space, Palestine in space, Northern Ireland in space, etc., the conflict on the earth will be over,' or O'Neill But the real question is whether my wife will come to space with me. She loves cooking, so I would like to run a restaurant in the space. It was not done.

Schamen mentions this, “I'm emphasizing the remaining uncertainty in a large project. Is it possible to create a new world from scratch? If so, for whom? Bezos He is a leader in the technology industry and a real estate developer, and his plan is to divide the world into two, industrial and commercial, how is it? He criticized Bezos's plan for nothing new.