10 Facts about Space Pioneer Gerry O’Neill
Explore the fascinating life and work of Gerry O’Neill, as well as his contributions to the space industry.
1. Gerry O’Neill was an American space activist.
Gerard Kitchen O’Neill was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 6, 1927. He was the only child of Dorothy O’Neill (née Kitchen) and her lawyer husband, Edward Gerard O’Neill.
The family relocated to Speculator, New York, when Edward O’Neill retired. Gerard attended Newburgh Free Academy, where he edited the school newspaper, and also took a job at a local radio station as a news broadcaster.
2. He served in the US Navy during World War II.
Upon graduation in 1944, Gerry O’Neill enlisted in the US Navy on his 17th birthday. He underwent training as a radar technician, sparking a lifelong interest in science. Gerry received an honorable discharge from the US Navy in 1946. He enrolled at Swarthmore College, where he studied mathematics and physics.
3. Gerry O’Neill started working on rocket equations at an early age.
As a child, he often discussed with his parents the possibility of human space travel. While in college, he enjoyed conducting rocket equations during his spare time. Nevertheless, Gerry did not regard the space industry as a career option; instead, he concentrated on high-energy physics. Gerry graduated in 1950 with Phi Beta Kappa honors.
4. He was an experimental physicist, writer, teacher, and entrepreneur.
Gerard K. O’Neill’s work in experimental physics led to his development of “storage rings,” a technology that is now integral to all high-energy particle accelerators.
As a writer and teacher, he explored the possibilities of creating industrial development and human settlements on the moon, as well as in orbiting space colonies. While as an entrepreneur, Gerry founded several companies with the aim of developing new commercial technologies, from the Geostar affordable satellite navigation system, to the secure short-range communication system Lawn, to VSE, a high-speed train system.
5. Gerry O’Neill worked for Princeton University.
After earning a PhD in 1954, Gerry took a post at Princeton as a physics instructor. He remained affiliated with Princeton until his death in 1992.
During his time at Princeton, O’Neill started researching high-energy particle physics, publishing his theory for the particle storage ring in 1956. However, his ideas were not considered feasible by other scientists. He set out to build a storage ring himself to prove his theories.
Eventually, this groundbreaking invention facilitated the development of particle accelerators that were capable of achieving much higher energies than previously possible.
6. During his time at Princeton, O’Neill became interested in space colonization.
While teaching physics, O’Neill’s interest in space travel was resurrected. He became interested in the possibility of humans surviving in outer space — even perhaps living there one day.
He started developing futuristic concepts for human space settlements, including the O’Neill cylinder, an idea for a space habitat he put forward in his first paper on the subject, The Colonization of Space.
7. In 1975, Gerry O’Neill held a space manufacturing conference at Princeton.
More than two dozen speakers presented papers at the event, including Carolyn and Keith Henson from Tucson, Arizona. Carolyn set up a meeting between Gerry and Morris Udall, an Arizona congressman. Udall wrote O’Neill a letter of support, recommending his work. Carolyn and Keith Henson sent a copy of the letter to everyone on O’Neill’s mailing list.
8. Gerard O’Neill led a 10-week NASA study of permanent space settlements.
O’Neill also appeared before a Senate Subcommittee, presenting the case for an Apollo-style space program for building extraterrestrial power plants.
Meanwhile, scientists from NASA continued with detailed plans to establish moon bases where space-suited workers could mine the natural resources necessary to build solar power satellites and space colonies — concepts established by Gerry O’Neill.
9. The O’Neill cylinder concept utilizes materials from the moon and asteroids.
Gerry O’Neill first proposed the idea in the 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. He proposed that, in the 21st century, man could start building O’Neill cylinders from materials extracted from space.
The O’Neill cylinder consists of two counter-rotating cylinders. By rotating in opposite directions, they effectively cancel out each other’s gyroscopic effect, making it easier to keep them aimed toward the sun. O’Neill proposed that they would each be around 20 miles long and 5 miles in diameter, connected by a bearing system at each end. He designed them to rotate, providing artificial gravity through centrifugal force. O’Neill cylinders were designed to have pressures similar to the terrestrial atmosphere. They would also use special mirrors to reflect sunlight into the cylinder in order to mimic daytime on Earth.
In May 2019, Jeff Bezos proposed constructing O’Neillian colonies when he spoke at Washington’s Blue Origin event.
10. O’Neill’s book won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science in 1977.
O’Neill won the prestigious award for The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, a work that established him as a spokesman for the growing space colonization movement. That same year, he received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater Swarthmore College.
He died from leukemia-related complications in 1992, leaving four children. Gerry O’Neill requested that the Space Studies Institute continue his efforts after his death, so that one day, people could live and work in space.
A note about the Space Studies Institute.
