Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (February 6, 1927 – April 27, 1992) was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder. He founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization.
O'Neill began researching high-energy particle physics at Princeton in 1954, after he received his doctorate from Cornell University. Two years later, he published his theory for a particle storage ring. This invention allowed particle accelerators at much higher energies than had previously been possible. In 1965 at Stanford University, he performed the first colliding beam physics experiment.
While teaching physics at Princeton, O'Neill became interested in the possibility that humans could survive and live in outer space. He researched and proposed a futuristic idea for human settlement in space, the O'Neill cylinder, in "The Colonization of Space", his first paper on the subject. He held a conference on space manufacturing at Princeton in 1975. Many who became post-Apollo-era space activists attended. O'Neill built his first mass driver prototype with professor Henry Kolm in 1976. He considered mass drivers critical for extracting the mineral resources of the Moon and asteroids. His award-winning book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space inspired a generation of space exploration advocates. He died of leukemia in 1992.
Birth, education, and family life O'Neill was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 6, 1927, to Edward Gerard O'Neill, a lawyer, and Dorothy Lewis O'Neill (née Kitchen)."Gerard K. O'Neill" Notable Scientists: From 1900 to the Present"Gerard K(itchen) O'Neill" Contemporary Authors Online He had no siblings. His family moved to Speculator, New York when his father temporarily retired for health reasons. For high school, O'Neill attended Newburgh Free Academy in Newburgh, New York. While he was a student there he edited the school newspaper and took a job as a news broadcaster at a local radio station. He graduated in 1944, during World War II, and enlisted in the United States Navy on his 17th birthday. The Navy trained him as a radar technician, which sparked his interest in science.
After he was honorably discharged in 1946, O'Neill studied physics and mathematics at Swarthmore College. As a child he had discussed the possibilities of humans in space with his parents, and in college he enjoyed working on rocket equations. However, he did not see space science as an option for a career path in physics, choosing instead to pursue high-energy physics. He graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1950. O'Neill then pursued graduate studies at Cornell University with the help of an Atomic Energy Commission fellowship, and was awarded a PhD in physics in 1954.
O'Neill married Sylvia Turlington, also a Swarthmore graduate, in June 1950."Sylvia Turlington Wed at Her Home" New York Times They had a son, Roger, and two daughters, Janet and Eleanor, before their marriage ended in divorce in 1966.
One of O'Neill's favorite activities was flying. He held instrument certifications in both powered and sailplane flight and held the FAI Diamond Badge, a gliding award.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, back matter During his first cross-country glider flight in April 1973, he was assisted on the ground by Renate "Tasha" Steffen. He had met Tasha, who was 21 years younger than him, previously through the YMCA International Club. They were married the day after his flight. They had a son, Edward O'Neill.
High-energy physics research After graduating from Cornell, O'Neill accepted a position as an instructor at Princeton University. There he started his research into high-energy particle physics. In 1956, his second year of teaching, he published a two-page article that theorized that the particles produced by a particle accelerator could be stored for a few seconds in a storage ring. The stored particles could then be directed to collide with another particle beam. This would increase the energy of the particle collision over the previous method, which directed the beam at a fixed target. His ideas were not immediately accepted by the physics community.
O'Neill became an assistant professor at Princeton in 1956, and was promoted to associate professor in 1959. He visited Stanford University in 1957 to meet with Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky. This resulted in a collaboration between Princeton and Stanford to build the (CBX). With a US$800,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research, construction of the first particle storage rings began in 1958 at the Stanford High-Energy Physics Laboratory. He figured out how to capture the particles and, by pumping the air out to produce a vacuum, store them long enough to experiment on them. "Gerard K. O'Neill" Notable Scientists: From 1900 to the Present CBX stored its first beam on March 28, 1962. O'Neill became a full professor of physics in 1965.
In collaboration with Burton Richter, O'Neill performed the first colliding beam physics experiment in 1965. In this experiment, electron beams from the Mark III linear accelerator at the Stanford High-Energy Physics Laboratory (HEPL) were collected in the two CBX storage rings and then directed to collide at an energy of 600 MeV. The results proved that the charge of an electron is contained in a volume less than 100 attometers across. O'Neill considered his device to be capable of only seconds of storage, but, by creating an even stronger vacuum, others were able to increase this to hours. In 1979, he, with physicist David C. Cheng, wrote the graduate-level textbook Elementary Particle Physics: An Introduction. He retired from teaching in 1985, but remained associated with Princeton as professor emeritus until his death.
Space colonization
Origin of the idea (1969)
O'Neill saw great potential in the United States space program, especially the Apollo missions. He applied to the Astronaut Corps after NASA opened it up to civilian scientists in 1966. Later, when asked why he wanted to go on the Moon missions, he said, "to be alive now and not take part in it seemed terribly myopic". He was put through NASA's rigorous mental and physical examinations. During this time he met Brian O'Leary, also a scientist-astronaut candidate, who became his good friend.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, p. 243 O'Leary was selected for Astronaut Group 6 but O'Neill was not.Astronaut Biographies: Former Astronauts
O'Neill became interested in the idea of space colonization in 1969 while he was teaching freshman physics at Princeton University. His students were growing cynical about the benefits of science to humanity because of the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, p. 233 To give them something relevant to study, he began using examples from the Apollo program as applications of elementary physics. O'Neill posed the question during an extra seminar he gave to a few of his students: "Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?" His students' research convinced him that the answer was no.
O'Neill was inspired by the papers written by his students. He began to work out the details of a program to build self-supporting space habitats in free space. Among the details was how to provide the inhabitants of a space colony with an Earth-like environment. His students had designed giant pressurized structures, spun up to approximate Earth gravity by centrifugal force. With the population of the colony living on the inner surface of a sphere or cylinder, these structures resembled "inside-out planets". He found that pairing counter-rotating cylinders would eliminate the need to spin them using rockets. This configuration has since been known as the O'Neill cylinder.
First paper (1970–1974) Looking for an outlet for his ideas, O'Neill wrote a paper titled "The Colonization of Space", and for four years attempted to have it published. He submitted it to several journals and magazines, including Scientific American and Science, only to have it rejected by the reviewers. During this time O'Neill gave lectures on space colonization at Hampshire College, Princeton, and other schools. The Hampshire lecture was facilitated by O'Leary, by now an assistant professor of astronomy and science policy assessment at the institution; in 1976, he joined O'Neill's research group at Princeton. Many students and staff attending the lectures became enthusiastic about the possibility of living in space. Another outlet for O'Neill to explore his ideas was with his children; on walks in the forest they speculated about life in a space colony. His paper finally appeared in the September 1974 issue of Physics Today. In it, he argued that building space colonies would solve several important problems:
He explored the possibilities of flying gliders inside a space colony, finding that the enormous volume could support atmospheric thermals.O'Neill 1974 He calculated that humanity could expand on this man-made frontier to 20,000 times its population.O'Neill 1974 The initial colonies would be built at the Earth-Moon and Lagrange points.O'Neill 1974 and are stable points in the Solar System where a spacecraft can maintain its position without expending energy. The paper was well received, but many who would begin work on the project had already been introduced to his ideas before it was even published. The paper received a few critical responses. Some questioned the practicality of lifting tens of thousands of people into orbit and his estimates for the production output of initial colonies.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, p. 253
While he was waiting for his paper to be published, O'Neill organized a small two-day conference in May 1974 at Princeton to discuss the possibility of colonizing outer space. The conference, titled First Conference on Space Colonization, was funded by Stewart Brand's Point Foundation and Princeton University.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, p. 249 Among those who attended were Eric Drexler (at the time a freshman at MIT), scientist-astronaut Joe Allen (from Astronaut Group 6), Freeman Dyson, and science reporter Walter Sullivan. Representatives from NASA also attended and brought estimates of launch costs expected on the planned Space Shuttle. O'Neill thought of the attendees as "a band of daring radicals". Sullivan's article on the conference was published on the front page of The New York Times on May 13, 1974. As media coverage grew, O'Neill was inundated with letters from people who were excited about living in space.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, pp. 250–252 To stay in touch with them, O'Neill began keeping a mailing list and started sending out updates on his progress.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, p. 252 A few months later he heard Peter Glaser speak about solar power satellites at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. O'Neill realized that, by building these satellites, his space colonies could quickly recover the cost of their construction.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, p. 255 According to O'Neill, "the profound difference between this and everything else done in space is the potential of generating large amounts of new wealth".
NASA studies (1975–1977) O'Neill held a much larger conference the following May titled Princeton University Conference on Space Manufacturing.O'Neill The High Frontier 1977, p. 256 At this conference more than two dozen speakers presented papers, including Keith and Carolyn Henson from Tucson, Arizona.Space Manufacturing Facilities 1977