Back in the 1970s, when paisley was still funky and NASA let its visionaries boogie down, the now-staid space agency turned its imagination to the design of space colonies.
How could hundreds of thousands of people not merely live in space, but live in style? Led by Princeton physicist and space-colony designer Gerard O'Neill, NASA's studies showed that the colonies "could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades and great wealth."
"In time," continues Al Globus, curator of NASA's space colonization page, "we may see hundreds of thousands of orbital space settlements in our solar system alone."
It's hard to imagine such a project moving forward under the reign of NASA chief Mike Griffin, whose actions have been less visionary than his rhetoric – but at least we still have these magnificent designs, suspended between dream and practicality, waiting for someone to make them real.
Images: Courtesy of NASA's Space Colony Art from the 1970's page.
Interior views of, respectively, and cylindrical and toroidal colony, followed by a cutaway of a Bernal Sphere.
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