The High Frontier Quotes

“Yet all the projections confirm that SSPS plants built at a space manufacturing facility out of nonterrestrial materials should be able to undersell electricity produced by any alternative source here on Earth.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“A nonindustrial Earth with a population of perhaps one billion people could be far more beautiful than it is now.  Tourism from space could be a major industry, and would serve as a strong incentive to enlarge existing parks, create new ones, and restore historical sights.  The tourists, coming from a nearly pollution-free environment, would be rather intolerant of Earth's dirt and noise, and that too would encourage cleaning up the remaining sources of pollutants here.  Similar forces have had a strong beneficial effect on tourist centers in Europe and the United States during the past twenty years.  The vision of an industry free, pastoral Earth, with many of its spectacular scenic areas reverting to wilderness, with bird and animal populations increasing in number, and with a relatively small, affluent human population, is far more attractive to me than the alternative of a rigidly controlled world whose people tread precariously the narrow path of a steady-state society.  If the humanization of space occurs, the vision could be made real.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“Although the total volume of the asteroids is far smaller than Earth's, it is a volume much more accessible than the depths of our planet.  On Earth only a thin skin of material is available to us without deep mining under high pressures and intense heat.  Even if we were to excavate the entire land area of Earth to a depth of a half-mile, and to honeycomb the terrain to remove a tenth of all its total volume, we would obtain only 1 percent of the materials contained in just the three largest asteroids.  A striking contrast: we would have to disfigure the entire Earth to obtain only a hundredth of the material contained in three now-useless, lifeless asteroids; and there are thousands of those minor planets.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“The principal centers for these studies have been the U.S. Naval Medical Center at Pensacola, Florida, and the Soviet space program’s ORBIT centrifuge facility in the U.S.S.R.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“In areas of California, once regarded as highly desirable, overcrowding has become so bad that in a recent survey about a third of the Californians said they'd rather be living in some other state.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“During the past few years many nations have introduced population-control measures, enforced either by economic bribery (as in India, where the payment to a young man for undergoing an irreversible vasectomy is typically a quarter of a year's salary) or by social and governmental pressure (as in China, where early marriage is forbidden and where a third child is barred from receiving governmental welfare benefits).”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“Our housing, food, clothing, and the rest are purchased in SHARES (Standard High-orbital Acquisition-units Recorded Electronically) so our Earth salaries just accumulate in the bank.  When we went back we had a lot of money to spend, and even on a luxury basis we couldn't go through it in six months.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“We grow avocados and papayas in our own garden and never need to use insecticide sprays.  Of course we like being able to get a suntan without ever being bitten by a mosquito.  To be free of those pests, it's worth it to go through the inspections before getting aboard the shuttle from Earth.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“Our goal is to find ways in which all of humanity can share in the benefits that have come from the rapid expansion of human knowledge, and yet prevent the material aspects of that expansion from fouling the worldwide nest in which we live.  Necessarily, many of the concerns of this book are materialistic, but more than material survival is at stake.  The most soaring achievements of mankind in the arts, music and literature could never have occurred without a certain amount of leisure and wealth; we should not be ashamed to search for ways in which all of humankind can enjoy that wealth.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space

“it is clear that the early settlers in space will be exciting people: restless, inquiring, independent; quite possibly more hard-driving and possessed by more "creative discontent" than their kin in the Old World.”
― Gerard K. O'Neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space