Dear Friends,
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Dandridge Cole's
untimely passing just 4 years shy of the first Moon landing. In his book
Islands in Space: The Challenge of the Planetoids" he already foresaw
the great waste land that laid after the Apollo program had achieved its
objective of placing a man on the Moon. One of his suggestions was a
manned mission to Eros using Apollo hardware. He even outlined many of
the robotic precursor missions being discussed today to explore the
Asteroids. In Islands in Space discussed the possibility of Mining and
Colonizing the Asteroids. He even discussed the use of the Mass Driver
to move Asteroids accross the Solar System. As Jim Oberg pointed out to
me in a recent e-mail "Cole's work largely presaged that of O'Neill a
decade later"

I am thinking of contacting Apogee Books again to see if they are
interested in republishing Islands in Space, with a commemorative
introduction by someone famous in the Astronautics field.

Since the B612 Foundation are really into Asteroids, we should enlist
their aid. And, how about a seminar devoted to Cole at next year's ISDC?

James Desmond (J.D.) Bernal pioneered much of the early speculation
concerning space colonies. Isn't it about time we asked some publisher
to reissue his book "The World, The Flesh, and the
Devil". It cost me $150 to find and purchase the 1968 edition. Arthur C.
Clarke could write the introduction to this book. While we are at why
not lobby to have the works of Tsiolkovskiy, Robert H. Goddard, O'Neill,
and Hermann Oberth see the light of day again?

Bye for now,

Alex Michael Bonnici

I didn't know about Dandridge Cole until now and I'm sure he'll be
included in the "History of Space Development".

In my early search for ways to excite governments, industry, and other
markets about space development, I mostly stumbled on asteroids as a
mere possibility. On looking at it more deeply, I suddenly realized
how valuable and absolutely essential asteroids are to us all.

I guess you could say I saw the light (lol) and it truly is a near
religion with me now.

But, oddly, I never got into the first conceptualizations and pioneers
on the subject.

Thanks, Alex.

--- In ssi_list@... Alex Michael Bonnici

Old fashioned thinking. Instead of having books reprinted the goal
should be to make all out of print books available on line.
http://www.gutenberg.org/>

Mitchell James
www.innertransit.org

On Bernal's The World, the Flesh & the Devil, you can find it online here:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/

From there:

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the
lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular
materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation
its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The
source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in
small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would
be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of
Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are
the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an
asteroid of some hundred years or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing
it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell.
Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and
more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by
diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by
which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational
field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of
its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy
through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an
enormously complicated single-celled plant. ... However, the essential
positive activity of the globe or colony would be in the development,
growth and reproduction of the globe. A globe which was merely a
satisfactory way of continuing life indefinitely would barely be more than
a reproduction of terrestrial conditions in a more restricted sphere. But
the necessity of preserving the outer shell would prevent a continuous
alteration of structure, and development would have to proceed either by
the crustacean-like development in which a new and better globe could be
put together inside the larger one, which could be subsequently broken
open and re-absorbed; or, as in the molluscs, by the building out of new
sections in a spiral form; or, more probably, by keeping the even simpler
form of behavior of the protozoa by the building of a new globe outside
the original globe, but in contact with it until it should be in a
position to set up an independent existence."

That is the future of space settlement IMHO -- especially the
self-replication part. Though I would add that they will form a network of
incredible diversity exchanging information between these globes.

--Paul Fernhout