Since 1977, when Gerard K. O'Neill's book The High Frontier was first published, there have been few attempts to push for new developments in large-scale, orbital space settlement, which remains an under-investigated subject. The most significant attempt to conduct this work, the Princeton Space Manufacturing Conferences established by O'Neill, ended in the late 1990s, and the systematic work conducted since then has mainly focused on peripheral topics such as lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), avoiding direct consideration of the possibilities of life in orbital space.
In 2021, the National Space Society, in collaboration with NASA Advanced Innovation Concepts (NIAC), hosted the NSS Space Settlement Workshop to revisit the idea. Over the course of two days, more than fifty academics, engineers, NASA officials, and high-level leaders in the space exploration industry worked in tandem to perform a careful review of plans for major space settlement. This contemporary update dove deep into previously overlooked and lightly addressed subject areas and introduced many new and unique approaches to living off-Earth. A compendium of the results, A Dream Renewed: O'Neill's Vision of Space Settlement in the 21st Century is an exclusive report of that work and is the first comprehensive update since the 1970s.
Through curated chapters by the most brilliant and forward-thinking scientific minds in the industry, A Dream Renewed offers a window into the possibilities of human expansion into the final frontier. Dale Skran worked with Bell Labs (AT&T and Lucent Technologies) for seventeen years and continued his career in executive leadership at several other companies including Ascend Communications, Sonus Networks, and CMWare. He was also a rapporteur at the UN International Telecommunication Union where he led the development of international internet standards for video conferencing and voice-over IP (VOIP) services. Skran holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University and a Master of Science in the Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan. An expert in communications, computer design, and software, his high-reliability code has been used on nuclear submarines and Air Force One, and his publications have connected the public to groundbreaking computer technologies. He is a frequent contributor to Ad Astra, The Space Review, and Space News, and was the editor of The Space Activist's Handbook. He is the Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of the National Space Society as well as a member of the Board of Directors.Rod Pyle is a space author, journalist, and historian who has authored twenty books on space history, exploration, and development for major publishers and NASA. His work has been released in ten languages. He is the Editor-in-Chief for the National Space Society's quarterly print magazine Ad Astra and his articles have appeared in Space.com, LiveScience, Futurity, Huffington Post, Popular Science, the BBC's Sky at Night, the World Economic Forum, Caltech's E&S magazine, and WIRED. He has written extensively for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, including Jet Propulsion Laboratory's annual Technology Highlights book. Rod co-authored and lectured for the Apollo Executive Leadership Program for NASA's Johnson Space Center and The Conference Board. His recent books include Space 2.0 and First on the Moon, both featuring forewords by Buzz Aldrin, Interplanetary Robots, and Heroes of the Space Age. First on the Moon and Missions to the Moon (with foreword by Gene Kranz) were national bestsellers. Pyle is a frequent radio and television guest, including on The History Channel's UnXplained with William Shatner, and he produces and co-hosts the podcast This Week in Space alongside Space.com's Tariq Malik.
