Every year about this time we start thinking about the perfect holiday image to pass to the Space Studies Institute family. We’ve had some really good ones over the decades and because of our very long history and the legendary SSI archives we’d never just punt out a corporate logo with a Santa’s hat. Yawn.
This year though, we almost did the hat…
That’s not a logo, it’s a hand-drawn diagram of what we call “An Island” from its creator and our founder Professor Gerard K. O’Neill.
That was pretty good. But going to the art bins of the vault, there was a way we could encourage professional collaboration in the development of The High Frontier. This art – or collection of art, actually – fit that good message:
Gerard O’Neill and beyond-legendary futurism artist Bob McCall in the middle of a back and forth to make more of THE imaging of the SSI goals.
Good. Great, even. It was last week and we were ready to go! Until we flipped the page of the calendar and saw the first week of December.
December ’25. The first week ending on a Friday, the 5th of December. Something about that. December 5 …5.
And then it hit us: December 5th… 1975. The date of release of the Gerard K. O’Neill Cover Story in AAAS Science, one of the most referenced technical articles in the earliest days of the Space Manufacturing Revolution. December 5th 1975. The dawning text of the NewSpace generation.
AND, one of the most sought-after artifacts of space hoarders and collectors, which has always been very ironic.
O’Neill wasn’t about keeping things hidden and proprietary and kept from the people. He did have his patents but the goal was, as he wrote and said over and over on stages and at rotary clubs and on local and national tv and radio and ANYWHERE, the goal was to “Take It To The People” and give the people the power to make their own Space.
Even his and Tasha’s founding of the Space Studies Institute was part of that idea. NASA at the time was firing people and claiming post-Apollo poverty for Human Spaceflight. And the other side, the corporate and companies side, was circling the wagons around their ivory launch towers and closing all open windows for a private, closed, overpriced but stagnant industry that they hoped would last forever.
But then, right at that time of all of the closing down and private closing off and the taking away from the People came… The Message:
And It Can Be A Truly Good Thing For Everyone
Even for the people who will never care about Space.
So instead of a cap on a drawing, instead of a story about the making of an iconic poster that you might have seen as a kid in some museum… we give you something worth taking to heart. Again.
The cover article of the December 5th 1975 AAAS Science Magazine, “Space Colonies and Energy Supply to the Earth.” Plus, we’ve added some pages that no hoarder or collector has ever seen on the market, the behind the scenes notes and writings about how the art used in the magazine could be fixed to make it more factual and more beneficial.
We told you you’d like this gift.
To our Friends, Associates, to all of our SSI Family; From Co-founder Tasha O’Neill and President Robin Snelson and the all-volunteer staff of the Space Studies Institute, Happy Holidays, Thank you and Enjoy.
