Fred ScharmenBook Status (Space Settlements): about 35,000 words in on the first draft manuscript, out of a projected 52,000. For the next two weeks, taking a break from draft writing to do citations, outline the remaining 2 chapters and conclusion, and package it for peer review via the publisher (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City).
So here's a thread about the book project I'm working on, called #SpaceSettlements, due out late this year from Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.
#SpaceSettlements is about the design project that resulted in these public domain paintings. These were the products of a 1975 Summer Study sponsored by NASA (and, indirectly, by Stewart Brand. More on that later) https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArtHiRes/70sArt/art.html
The principle people involved were Gerard O'Neill, who had been working on these concepts for six years already, and two painters/designers, architect Rick Guidice, and space science illustrator don Davis.
On the periphery of the story I'm telling, are all sorts of people from the worlds of design, science fiction, science, and counterculture: like Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, Larry Niven, Jane Jacobs, Bucky Fuller, and Le Corbusier. #SpaceSettlements
The introduction tells the story of the project's inception, which goes right to the book's core questions: How, and why, do we try to make "new" space? And who is this new space *for* anyway?
Ch. 1 of #SpaceSettlements, "Topology: Future Primitives and the Shape of Space" is a primer on the many different ways that "space" away from planetary surfaces disrupts our preconceptions about space in general, here near Earth where we're used to being.