@Scott – that was what it made me think of, straight away! By the time I reached the end, I felt sure that either the art was inspired by the book, or possibly the other way around.
No, these are pictures associated with physicist Gerard K. O’Neill. He came up with several ideas about how to create large space stations in orbit around the Earth. For example, he suggested building the space stations from lunar material launched from the moon via a magnetic mass driver and assembling the station in Lagrange points 4 and 5 around the Earth.
If you look him up in Wikipedia, you’ll see the 6th picture, listed as a Bernal sphere.
Rama was similar, but was more solid metal–like a metal can. Except for the Cylindrical Sea though. And dead. Until it started to wake up.
Yes, the future was utopian back in the 70s, now we’re definitely on the slide backwards sadly. Check out ‘Culture’ novels from Iain M Banks, these pictures put me in mind of those. Great escapism for the sci-fi minded.
I remember these kind of images from my Omni Magazine days.
This is art for Arthur C Clarke’s novel titled Rendezvous with Rama.
@Scott – that was what it made me think of, straight away! By the time I reached the end, I felt sure that either the art was inspired by the book, or possibly the other way around.
No, these are pictures associated with physicist Gerard K. O’Neill. He came up with several ideas about how to create large space stations in orbit around the Earth. For example, he suggested building the space stations from lunar material launched from the moon via a magnetic mass driver and assembling the station in Lagrange points 4 and 5 around the Earth.
If you look him up in Wikipedia, you’ll see the 6th picture, listed as a Bernal sphere.
Rama was similar, but was more solid metal–like a metal can. Except for the Cylindrical Sea though. And dead. Until it started to wake up.
The future was much cooler back then. It’s sort of like a travel brochure – that hotel looks mighty nice until you roll up and check in.
Great pictures, brings to mind a lot of SF actually. Is it the same as the ‘Stanford Torus’ design for space stations?
Yes, the future was utopian back in the 70s, now we’re definitely on the slide backwards sadly. Check out ‘Culture’ novels from Iain M Banks, these pictures put me in mind of those. Great escapism for the sci-fi minded.
I see a lot of Babylon 5 in those pics.
A nice slideshow about those images: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkTal6yj0kI
Thanks