For my senior term paper in high school, I chose space colonization as my topic. I found Gerard O'Neill's book "The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space" to be a gold mine of information. Born February 6, 1927, he got his PhD from Cornell and started studying high-energy particle physics at Princeton in 1954. He got the ideas for space colonization while teaching at Princeton.
His views of space colonies included long, cylindrical tubes rotating in space to create artificial gravity. Think "Babylon 5". Inside, the axis would be zero-gravity and O'Neill envisioned new sports activities in zero-g or low-g environments.
Unlike Babylon 5, O'Neill's colonies would be separated into six alternating sections of terra and windows, allowing residents to receive direct sunlight. Critics said how would someone react to look overhead and see a cow standing upside down.
I read another novel of his, "2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future" which did offer a non-depressing scenario of what life might be like in 2081, one hundred years after the publication date. It's interesting now, over thirty years later to see some of his visions already coming true. For example, people can now order groceries from their home computers and do not have to go to the grocery store.
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