What Types of Space Colonies Have Been Proposed?
Proposed space colonies can be broken down into three general categories; colonies on satellites or asteroids, colonies on other planets (though one might not consider these “space colonies”, per se), and entirely artificial space colonies. Science fiction writers have discussed these possibilities almost since the beginning of the craft itself. For example, in 1869, Edward Everett Hale wrote The Brick Moon, a story about an artificial space station made from brick. In 1929, Dr. John Desmond Bernal conceived of the Bernal sphere, a rotating space colony with a diameter of approximately 15 kilometers (9.3 miles), filled with air and colonized around the equator, where the rotation of the colony would create centrifugal force to simulate Earth’s gravity. In the 60s and 70s, speculation and research into the possibility of space colonies experienced a renaissance, brought on by the Space Race. One of the most prominent thinkers participating in the design and advocacy of space colonies wa
