Author Topic: Space Settlement, the L5 Society, and Star Wars  (Read 1278 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Space Settlement, the L5 Society, and Star Wars
« on: 12/10/2018 10:05 pm »
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3621/1

Forces of darkness and light
How fears of resource depletion and nuclear war influenced American space policy during the 1970s and 80s
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, December 10, 2018

Peter Westwick, writing in a new book on space history, explores the links between both liberal and conservative activist groups and the initiation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the 1980s program to develop space-based defenses against ballistic missiles that was often referred to as the “Star Wars” program. Westwick’s thought-provoking essay, titled “From the Club of Rome to Star Wars: The Era of Limits, Space Colonization and the Origins of SDI,” appears in Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture After Apollo, edited by Alexander C.T. Geppert (see “Review: Limiting Outer Space”, The Space Review, July 30, 2018).

Westwick is a professor at the University of Southern California and the director of the Aerospace History Project at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He recounts how the 1972 Club of Rome report “The Limits to Growth” inspired the space settlement movement and the creation of the L5 Society. The Club of Rome’s report was decidedly pessimistic about humanity’s future, claiming that resource depletion would doom humankind (this was supposed to have happened by now.) The L5 Society was optimistic, believing that space offered an opportunity to rescue humanity by tapping into the solar system’s theoretically unlimited resources. But surprisingly, as Westwick writes, “the idea of an impending crisis in human society—helped lead to the military program known as SDI. The path ran through space-settlement groups such as the L5 Society and the science-fiction community. The perceived threat to human survival galvanized a group of technological optimists to propose outer space not only as a solution to the Malthusian crisis of overpopulation, energy depletion and environmental damage, but also to the possibility of nuclear Armageddon.”

« Last Edit: 12/10/2018 10:07 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Space Settlement, the L5 Society, and Star Wars
« Reply #1 on: 12/10/2018 10:09 pm »
I also thought about using this image:

Offline tyrred

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Re: Space Settlement, the L5 Society, and Star Wars
« Reply #2 on: 12/11/2018 08:29 pm »
Fascinating article.  I often wonder how much of the SDI program bore fruit, how much was a dead end, and how much may never be declassified.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Space Settlement, the L5 Society, and Star Wars
« Reply #3 on: 12/11/2018 10:01 pm »
Fascinating article.  I often wonder how much of the SDI program bore fruit, how much was a dead end, and how much may never be declassified.


Yes. The part that never got reported much was all the advanced sensor tests. I would expect that a lot of that went into what became SBIRS. But it could have helped a lot of other things as well, like sensor production and efficiency (not just for military IR).


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