W. Patrick McCray - The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future

THE

VISIONEERS

THE

VISIONEERS

How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future

W. Patrick McCray

Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2013 by Princeton University Press

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New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCray, Patrick (W. Patrick)

The visioneers : how a group of elite scientists pursued space colonies, nanotechnologies, and a limitless future / W. Patrick McCray.

p. cm.

Summary: In 1969, Princeton physicist Gerard ONeill began looking outward to space colonies as the new frontier for humanitys expansion. A decade later, Eric Drexler, an MIT-trained engineer, turned his attention to the molecular world as the place where societys future needs could be met using self-replicating nanoscale machines. These modern utopians predicted that their technologies could transform society as humans mastered the ability to create new worlds, undertook atomic-scale engineering, and, if truly successful, overcame their own biological limits. The Visioneers tells the story of how these scientists and the communities they fostered imagined, designed, and popularized speculative technologies such as space colonies and nanotechnologies. Patrick McCray traces how these visioneers blended countercultural ideals with hard science, entrepreneurship, libertarianism, and unbridled optimism about the future. He shows how they built networks that communicated their ideas to writers, politicians, and corporate leaders. But the visioneers were not immune to failureor to the lures of profit, celebrity, and hype. ONeill and Drexler faced difficulty funding their work and overcoming colleagues skepticism, and saw their ideas co-opted and transformed by Timothy Leary, the scriptwriters of Star Trek, and many others. Ultimately, both men struggled to overcome stigma and ostracism as they tried to unshackle their visioneering from pejorative labels like fringe and pseudoscience. The Visioneers provides a balanced look at the successes and pitfalls they encountered. The book exposes the dangers of promotionoversimplification, misuse, and misunderstandingthat can plague exploratory science. But above all, it highlights the importance of radical new ideas that inspire us to support cutting-edge research into tomorrows technologiesProvided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-13983-8 (hardback : acid-free paper) 1. ScienceHistory. 2. Visionaries. I. Title.

Q125.M417 2012

509dc23 2012017061

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon LT Std with Helvetica Neue display

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

We who seek adventure everywhereWe are not your enemiesWe want to give you vast and strange domainsWhere flowering mystery offers itself to those who wish to pluck it...Pity us who fight always at the frontiersOf the limitless and the futureGuillaume Apollinaire, La jolie rousse (The Pretty Redhead), Calligrammes, 1918

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Many people, some of whom also appear as actors in this book, graciously lent me materials from their personal collections and took the time to answer my queries about matters both large and insignificant. While they may not agree with all of my conclusions or interpretations, the resources they shared helped build the foundation this book rests upon. In no especial order, my thanks to Dale Amon, Trudy E. Bell, Ben Bova, Stewart Brand, Taylor Dark III, K. Eric Drexler, Freeman Dyson, Don Eigler, Robin Hanson, Keith Henson, Mark Hopkins, Tom Kalil, Henry Kolm, Ralph Merkle, Mark S. Miller, Christine L. Peterson, Gayle Pergamit, Rusty Schweickart, and Ned Seeman. David Brandt-Erichsen, James C. Bennett, and Conrad Schneiker deserve special recognition for generously sharing extensive materials from their personal collections. Tasha ONeill gave me free rein of her basement in Princeton, New Jersey, to explore the personal papers of her late husband, Gerard ONeill.

Several students at the University of California, Santa BarbaraMary-Ingram Waters, Roger Eardley-Pryor, Samantha Rohman, Olivia Russell, and Sabrina Wuutracked down hard-to-find research materials.

Funding for writing this book came from a number of sources. Foremost among these is the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which the National Science Foundation funded under Grant No. SES 0531184. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed here are mine alone and dont necessarily reflect views of the NSF. I began writing this book in 2008 while in Cassis, France, via a fellowship from the Camargo Foundation. I finished it in 2012 as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. In between these two fortunate opportunities, a Collaborative Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies provided additional time to write.

Many colleagues and friends provided insights, critiques, and inspiration. Credit for where this book succeeds must be shared with them while demerits for not always heeding advice offered remain with me. Id especially like to acknowledge Peter Alagona, Sarah Bagby, Michael Bess, David Brock, Glenn Bugos, Hyungsub Choi, Angela Creager, Luis Campos, Matt Eisler, Brice Erickson, Fiona Goodchild, Evelyn Hu, Ann Johnson, David Kaiser, Bruce Lewenstein, Henry Lowood, Mara Mills, Joe November, Kathy Olesko, Nick Rasmussen, Luke Roberts, Paul Saffo, Josh Schimel, Howard Segal, Chris Toumey, Fred Turner, Spencer Weart, Peter Westwick, and Matt Wisnioski. Especial gratitude goes to my colleagues Michael Gordin and Cyrus Mody, who took time from their own writing to provide generous suggestions and gentle critiques. Finally, for those times when this books future seemed less clear, I want to thank Nicole Archambeau.

W. Patrick McCray

June 2012, Pasadena, California

THE

VISIONEERS

INTRODUCTION

Visioneering Technological Futures

I am vitally interested in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

Charles F. Kettering, inventor and head of General Motors corporate research, quoted in advertising campaign for Omni magazine, 1978

On August 11, 1977, some 1,100 invited guests trekked to the old Museum of Science and Industry in downtown Los Angeles and celebrated Californias first Space Day. Space exploration was big news that summer. At theaters all across the United States, Star Wars was raking in millions of dollars as fans queued to see the epic space opera over and over. The upsurge of excitement about space wasnt limited to just the silver screen. Out in Californias Mojave Desert, engineers were readying the space shuttle Enterprise for its first solo atmospheric flight. NASA had high hopes that Americas human spaceflight program, stagnant since the end of the Apollo era, would be revived by its new space truck.

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