Dandridge MacFarlan Cole

Dandridge MacFarlan Cole (February 19, 1921 – October 29, 1965) was an American aerospace engineer, futurist, lecturer, and author.

Although he spent the early part of his career teaching and doing practical engineering work on airplanes and space vehicles, even from his time as a college student at Princeton, he was most interested in the future of space travel.

He gained national and even worldwide attention especially for his ideas about the mining, deflection, capture, and even colonization of asteroids. This led to his discussion of "Macrolife" as a possible next step in evolution.

Biography

Parents, education, and military service Cole was born February 19, 1921New Church Life 1921, p. 383 in Sandusky, Ohio to Robert MacFarlan Cole III and Wertha Pendleton Cole, the daughter of bishop William Frederic Pendleton. In 1928 the family moved to Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, where his mother had been raised.Searching for a Man of Iron 2012, p. 45 He spent the balance of his childhood there, residing elsewhere only during his college and wartime years.

He attended the Academy of the New Church Secondary Schools from 1935 to 1939 and entered Princeton University in the fall of 1939. In his application to Princeton, he mentions, as one of the things attracting him to the University, what Henry Norris Russell, then director of the Princeton Observatory, had written about interplanetary travel.Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 24, 1966, p. 15 While at Princeton, he reported in a letter home, he did student work for Albert Einstein.Searching for a Man of Iron 2012, p. 100 In addition to his studies in mathematics and science, he also competed on the varsity gymnastics team and received a medal for his outstanding performances on the flying rings.The Daily Princetonian, March 20, 1942, p. 15

As a special wartime provision, he was allowed, after 3 years at Princeton, to satisfy the requirements for the bachelor's degree in chemistry by beginning medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and successfully completing his first term. He therefore received his undergraduate degree at Princeton's midwinter commencement exercises in January 1943. His time at Columbia was short, however, and in March of that year he could no longer resist the call to serve in combat and he enlisted as a private in the army, joining the 139th Airborne Engineer Battalion of the 17th Airborne Division.Record of Burial Place of Veteran, Montgomery Co., PA, No. 178920 He saw action during the Ardennes Counteroffensive in the "Battle of the Bulge" and was discharged from the army on April 30, 1945.Pennsylvania, Veteran Compensation Applications, WWII During this time, Cole wrote his Songs and Poems of the Paratroops.

After the war, he returned to Princeton in 1946 under a program that allowed students who had left for the military to return and take additional courses. Cole took advantage of this to enroll in physics courses that would prepare him for graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received a master's degree in Physics in 1949.

On June 17, 1949 he married Charlotte Ellen Davis,New Church Life 1949, p. 374The Philadelphia Inquirer February 23, 1949, p. 41 daughter of Edward and Margaretha(Lechner) Davis. They had six children.

Career From 1949 to 1953, he taught physics and astronomy at Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire.Catalogue Issue of the Phillips Exeter Bulletin, Vol. XLIX, No. 2, January 1954, p. 11 He contended that his astronomy course was probably the first astronautics course in any high school, as he used Willy Ley's The Conquest of Space as a textbook.Science Digest Vol. 58, No. 1, July 1965, p. 13f.

In 1953, he took a job in the aerospace industry with the Martin Company in Baltimore, at that point settling for aircraft design. But in 1956, he moved to the Martin facility in Denver and began to work in earnest for the space program, helping to design the Titan II, which launched the Gemini space capsules. 1960 brought a change in both company and position, as he became a consulting engineer in advance planning at the General Electric Missile and Space Division at Valley Forge, PA.W. Raithel "A Tribute to Dandridge McFarland Cole 1921-1965." in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Vol. 140 December 16, 1966, p. 7

Cole died on October 29, 1965New Church Life 1966, p. 46Raithel, p. 7 at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Concepts During the Second World War, he made some specific suggestions for a practical underwater breathing apparatus. This made the Office of Strategic Services nervous, as just such an invention was already a classified project. After some interviews, OSS concluded that he had not received unauthorized access to classified information, but told him to keep quiet about the idea.Science Digest Vol. 58, No. 1, July 1965, p. 13.

As early as 1953, before the U.S. even had a space program, he predicted a crewed Moon landing by 1970.Fortune 1964, p. 130

Cole believed that government, industry, and education were neglecting systematic thought about the future and that it should become an academic discipline which would study the future in something of the same way that history uses its methods to study the past. With the pace of change accelerating, he argued, students should be trained in techniques for thinking about the future.Science Digest Vol. 58, No. 1, July 1965, p. 13.

He was concerned about trends that were becoming evident in the 1950s and 1960s, especially the rapid increase in population (which he called "bio-detonation") and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He saw the human race as being at a turning point, corresponding to the adolescence of an individual, in which humanity would either destroy itself or come to a collective state of maturity and relative stability."Extraterrestrial Colonies," Navigation, No. 7, Summer-Autumn 1960, p. 85.

Planetoids Asteroids, or "planetoids" as Cole argued they should more properly be called, were a particular focus of his work. In the early 1960s, he surveyed what was then known about what he termed "Cis-Martian" asteroids.A Scientific Survey of the Cis Martian Asteroid Group, (with George M. Kohler) General Electric Missile and Space Department: October 27, 1961. (These are now referred to as "near-Earth asteroids," or NEAs," a subclass of near-Earth objects" - NEOs.)

At the 1962 annual meeting of the American Astronautical Society, Cole warned that, as early as 1970, the Soviets could develop the technology to divert a near Earth asteroid to impact a target on Earth.Aviation Week and Space Technology, January 29, 1962, page 89. The title of his paper was prosaic: A Possible Military Application of a Cis-Martian Asteroid, but the wire services got hold of the story and the result was lurid headlines in many papers across the country.

On the more positive side, Cole was an early proponent of asteroid mining, suggesting that they could yield trillions of dollars' worth of resources."$50,000,000,000,000 from the Asteroids," Space World, Vol. 4, No. 2, February, March 1963, pp. 1–8. While one approach to the retrieval of this mineral wealth would be to send expeditions to the asteroid belt, Cole also laid out plans for asteroid capture, whereby near Earth asteroids could be brought into orbit around the Earth."Capturing the Asteroid," Astronautics and Aerospace Engineering, March 1963, pp. 88–93.

He was known especially for promoting colonization of the asteroids. Once captured, asteroids could be hollowed out, or actually inflated to create a bubbleworld with habitable space on the inside. The resulting space arks could orbit within the Solar System, or be sent out on interstellar expeditions.

Macrolife Especially in connection with the idea of planetoid colonies, he coined the term "Macrolife," as early as a talk for the annual meeting of The Institute of Navigation, 23 June 1960. In the published version of the paper, he notes the similarity of his idea to the "multi organismic life form" of Isaac Asimov just then published in the July 1960 issue of Analog-Science Fact and Fiction."Extraterrestrial Colonies," Navigation, No. 7, Summer-Autumn 1960, p. 93. He explains the concept as follows: "Macrolife can be defined as 'life squared per cell' or more particularly as ' multicellular life squared per cell'. Taking man as representative of multicellular life we can say that man is the mean proportional between Macro life and the cell, or Macro life is to man as man is to cell."The Ultimate Human Society, p. 8.

Cole conceived Macrolife as a possible next step in evolution, potentially as momentous as the transition from single-celled to multicelled life. Units of Macrolife, self-contained human societies in planetoid colonies or elsewhere, would have the capacity for growth, motion, reproduction, self-repair, and response to external stimuli."Extraterrestrial Colonies," Navigation, No. 7, Summer-Autumn 1960, p. 92. He developed further details in his 1961 The Ultimate Human Society and in subsequent books.

Cultural references Books Macrolife, a 1979 novel by George Zebrowski, explicitly takes it title and credits its inspiration from Cole's theory. Sunspacer, a 1984 novel by George Zebrowski, opens with the protagonist beginning college at Dandridge Cole University, in a space colony at Lagrangian point 5. The Romulan Prize, a 1993 Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, devotes a page to having the character Data outline Cole's conception of a planetoid colony.Simon Hawke The Romulan Prize 1993, p. 127 The Hollow Moon series (2012 - 2024) by Steph Bennion begins in the colony ship "Dandridge Cole," an inside-out world within an asteroid, the eponymous "Hollow Moon," of the book title.

Bibliography

By Cole

Books Songs and Poems of the Paratroops, Blaetz Brothers, Philadelphia: 1944 Exploring the Secrets of Space, (1963 with I. M. Levitt) Islands in Space: The Challenge of the Planetoids, (1964 with Donald W. Cox) Beyond Tomorrow, (1965 illustrated with space art originated by Roy G. Scarfo)

Monographs Minimum Time Interplanetary Orbits, The American Astronautical Society: December 1957. Around the Moon in 80 Hours, (with Donald E. Muir) Advances in Astronautical Sciences, Vol. 3, pp. 27–1 to 27-30; Proceedings of the Western Regional Meeting of the American Astronautical Society, August 19, 1958. Lunar Colonization, American Rocket Society: March 19, 1959. Feasibility of Propelling Vehicles by Contained Nuclear Explosions, American Astronautical Society: January 18–21, 1960. Space Vehicle Evolution, The Martin Company: February 1960. Extraterrestrial Colonies, The Martin Company: June 1960. Social and Political Implications of the Ultimate Human Society, The American Astronautical Society: January 18, 1961. The Space Booster Gap and the Panama Theory of Space Flight, General Electric Missile and Space Department: February 22, 1961. Report on the Panama Theory, The American Astronautical Society: August 1–3, 1961. Today is Tomorrow: Long Range Planning for the Space Age, Temple University: August 25, 1961. A Scientific Survey of the Cis Martian Asteroid Group, (with George M. Kohler) General Electric Missile and Space Department: October 27, 1961. A Possible Military Application of a Cis-Martian Asteroid, The American Astronautical Society: January 16–18, 1962. Strategic Areas in Space,: The Panama Theory, Institute of the Aerospace Sciences: March 15, 1962. Exploration of the Close-Approach Asteroids, General Electric Missile and Space Department: April 16, 1962. Some Scientific and Economic Aspects of Asteroid Capture, Institute of the Aerospace Sciences: July 19, 1962. The Next Fifty Years in Space: Man and Maturity, General Electric Missile and Space Department: 1963. Astronautics Applications of the Asteroids, The American Astronautical Society: January 17, 1963.