Submissions must be received by February 15, and judging commences immediately upon closing of the submission portal. A PayPal account and/or major credit card is needed to pay the registration. There is an entry fee of $15 which can be waived in hardship cases. The grand prize is awarded to the best entry regardless of contestant age.īeginning in December each year, students can submit their entries on our AwardForce Platform at this address (also linked via Red Button at the top of the page that says “Enter the Contest”). We also have special categories for Artistic and Literary Merit in our ongoing effort to promote STEAM education and to remind us that space is for everyone. The age groups are 7th and younger, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th. Entries are also grouped by age/grade of the oldest contestant for judging. Individuals, small teams of two to five, and large teams of six to twelve are judged separately. Students can participate from anywhere in the world, and we receive a large amount of international submissions. O’Neill was screened at several film festivals, and it is now available to stream on several platforms (see ).

In 2020, a documentary about his life entitled The High Frontier: The Untold Story of Gerard K. O’Neill passed away in 1992, but his legacy lives on in many ways, particularly through the efforts and advocacy of the National Space Society. During his time at Princeton, O’Neill also hosted a series of Space Manufacturing Conferences, yearly gatherings to spread the word about his space habitat concepts, which drew attendees from all over the country. In 1977, O’Neill and his wife Tasha launched the Space Studies Institute, a nonprofit space and science research organization whose offices remained in Princeton until 2009. Gerard O’Neill continued to advocate for space settlement for the rest of his life, joining with colleagues to design a number of large space settlements including the Stanford Torus and the O’Neill Cylinder. The challenges, however, extend beyond engineering, as O’Neill addressed questions of culture, economy, security, government, leisure, health, human psychology, and more. Here, O’Neill first outlined his concept of “Islands in Space” and how humans might be able to make livable settlements in free space by addressing engineering challenges like in-space manufacturing, raw materials, energy production and storage, food supply and agriculture, radiation protection, artificial gravity, day-night cycles, etc.

Surprisingly, the conclusion they came to was that the best site was “somewhere else,” in orbit or in “free space,” and this lead to the publication of his book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space in 1976.

Space Settlements by Gerard K. O'Neill