Painting1975

A town inside a wheel in space

Stanford torus interior, Don Davis (born 1952), for NASA Ames Research Center

Painting: inside a huge curved habitat, glass roof panels arch overhead and the land curves up into the distance. Below lie a lake, green hills, pine trees, houses and a plaza where people walk. — Image: NASA Ames Research Center (ARC-1975-AC75-2621). NASA artwork; the artist labels it public domain.

In the summer of 1975 nineteen professors of engineering, physical science, social science and architecture spent ten weeks at Stanford University and NASA's Ames Research Center designing a settlement in space. Their technical director was Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University, who brought six years of his own work on the idea.

They designed a wheel 1,790 metres across, turning once a minute, where 10,000 people would work, raise families and live out normal lives, placed at the Lagrangian point L5 in the Earth and Moon system. NASA published their report in 1977 as Space Settlements: A Design Study.

Ames also ran an art programme in those years. Don Davis signed and dated this painting on 25 November 1975, three months after the study ended: the inside of the wheel, its glass roof arching overhead and the land curving up out of sight, with a lake, hills, houses and people out walking.

NASA's Administrator wrote in 1976 that "settlement in space is not an authorized program", and none has been built. Davis had started out at the US Geological Survey, hired by the Moon geologist Don Wilhelms, and later won an Emmy for his work on the television series Cosmos. He labels his paintings for NASA as public domain.