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COGENT LITERATI FEELS ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY MOVING BEYOND

Island 3 also called an O'Neill colony or O’Neill Cylinder, has become a leitmotif in science fiction. It’s a concept of a space habitat is frequently used in science fiction stories. Gerard K. O'Neill, an American physicist introduced the concept in his non-fiction book, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space in 1976 and has now got the appellation of "O'Neill Cylinder" which is a space settlement. It’s essentially the colonization of space for the 21st century, using materials extracted from the Moon and later from asteroids.

Artificial gravity                                

The Island Three design, better known as the O'Neill cylinder, consists of two counter-rotating cylinders. The cylinders would rotate in opposite directions to cancel any gyroscopic effects that would otherwise make it difficult to keep them aimed toward the Sun. Each would be 6.4 kilometers (4 mi) or 8.0 kilometers (5 mi) in diameter and 32 kilometers (20 mi) long, connected at each end by a rod via a bearing system. Their rotation would provide artificial gravity.

The cylinders rotate to provide artificial gravity on their inner surface. At the radius described by O'Neill, the habitats would have to rotate about twenty-eight times an hour to simulate a standard Earth gravity.

While teaching undergraduate physics at Princeton University, O'Neill set his students on the task of designing large structures in outer space, with the intent of showing that sustainable living in space could be possible. Several of the designs were able to provide volumes large enough to be suitable for human habitation. This cooperative result inspired the idea of the cylinder and was first published by O'Neill in a September 1974 article of Physics Today.

In his book The High Frontier, he suggested that space colonies might be the ultimate solution to such terrestrial problems as pollution, overpopulation, and the energy shortage. 

O'Neill's project was not the first example of this concept. In 1954, German scientist Hermann Oberth described the use of gigantic habitable cylinders for space travel in his book, People in Space—New Projects for Rockets and Space Travel. In 1970, science-fiction author Larry Niven proposed a larger-scale concept in his novel Ringworld. Then, three years before O'Neill proposed his cylinder, Arthur C. Clarke used such a habitable cylinder with extraterrestrial construction, in his novel Rendezvous with Rama. 

Gerard K. O’Neill, like many scientists of his generation, viewed the United States space program, particularly the Apollo missions, with great interest.  When NASA allowed citizen scientists to become astronauts in 1966, O’Neill jumped at the chance.  Unfortunately, he did not make the cut, but that rejection didn’t stop him. 

In the early 1980s, O’Neill founded the Geostar Corporation to create a satellite position determination system for tracking aircraft.  This business was a forerunner to the numerous GPS businesses that operate today. Thereafter, in the early 1990s, he started a business that specifically concerned magnetic trains which would provide fast travel from one destination to another. At the time of his death he was working on such a high-speed vehicle powered by magnetic forces and traveling through a vacuum.

Though the scientific world is yet to build the kind of space colonies O’Neill had proposed, the influence of The High Frontier is reflected in works from the anime franchise Mobile Suit Gundam, the 2013 film Elysium, and the 1990s science fiction series Babylon 5.