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C00002 00002	oneill[f81,jmc]		lunch with Gerard O'Neill, Nov 20
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oneill[f81,jmc]		lunch with Gerard O'Neill, Nov 20

	O'Neill has also given up on achieving his space colonization
objectives by Government action.  His goal is to develop space
manufacturing using lunar materials.  He now envisages a project of
the order of magnitude of the Alaska pipline (7 to 8 billion dollars)
financed by private investment.  The object is to make a highly
automated (perhaps even unmanned) facility on the moon to dig
lunar materials and mass-drive them to the L5 points (or lunar orbit?).
I suppose the main goal is to manufacture solar power satellites, but
I forgot to ask if there were other goals.

	His Spacce Studies Institute at Princeton has a budget of
about $300,000 per year and sponsors two kinds of actual research.

	The first, based at Princeton, is an improved mass driver.
They have a new design which they hope will be much cheaper.

	The second is a $100,000 contract with North American Rockwell
for actual experiments on processing lunar materials.  The San Diego
(space studies ?) at Scripps with which Criswell is associated is
a partner with Rockwell in this.

	The Space Studies Institute issues a bulletin of which
O'Neill gave me a copy.

	He affirms that the solar wind may deliver enough protons
to be worth extracting hydrogen at least for some purposes.

	His outfit isn't pursuing studies in life support systems
(recycling or otherwise) or in ionic propulsion.  He mentioned that
the Japanese are pursuing ionic propulsion.