“Electricity has just two disadvantages: it is difficult to store cheaply, and it can be transmitted easily only on high-voltage lines, above the ground and visible. Automotive lead-acid storage batteries are as cheap as mass production and the cost of… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share
“Next my guide explained that we would travel to Erie on an underground high-speed vehicle called a "floater," which ran in vacuum through a… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share Image
“At the other extreme, and far less threatening, will be the "house computer" of 2081. It will store all the information from all the books, musical recordings, and reminder notes that are now to be found in a well stocked home, and in addition, will filter the deluge of spoken, musical, and video information that will arrive every day at… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share
“To minimize the sense of confinement, one of our video channels provided a breathtaking view of our journey, as seen from a helicopter flying low over the landscape, following our exact route on a lovely spring day. The photographic sequence had been speeded up so that each view corresponded in real-time to a point directly above our location deep underground… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the Moon,… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share Image
“She showed me the controls for the stereo, the video, and the lights, and added that if I just spoke in a normal tone in any room the house computer would hear me and carry out my instructions. I wasn't at all sure I liked the idea that every word I spoke was being listened to, but it seemed to… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share
“It would be quite feasible to project materials from the Moon's surface down to Earth by means of electrically powered catapults or launching tracks,"… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share Image
“It's an established fact that the very few naturally gifted "born teachers" are enormously more effective than the great mass of those in the teaching profession who teach with care and attention and even with good new ideas, but without the charisma and the flair that distinguish the best teachers as well as the best actors. In my ideal school… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share
It is the hope of those who work toward the breakout from planet Earth that the establishment of permanent, self-sustaining colonies of humans off-Earth will ... make human life forever unkillable, removing it from the endangered species list, where it now stands on a fragile Earth overarmed with nuclear weapons. Second, the opening of virtually unlimited new land areas in… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share
“The venerable Walt Disney commercial empire had established around the turn of the century one of the largest "theme parks" in the country, on… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share Image
“All of the homes, shops, and office buildings in Waterford are linked by an underground package-transfer network that uses the "floater" technology. It takes… — Gerard K. O'Neill Copy Share Image
