L5 Society

[3] At this conference, O'Neill merged the Solar Power Satellite (SPS) ideas of Peter Glaser with his space habitat concepts.

[2] The first newsletter included a letter of support from Morris Udall (then a contender for US president) and said "our clearly stated long range goal will be to disband the Society in a mass meeting at L5.

"[5] The peak of L5's influence was the defeat of the Moon Treaty in the U.S. Senate in 1980 ("... L-5 took on the biggest political fight of its short life, and won").

Leigh Ratiner [a Washington lawyer/lobbyist] "played the key role in the lobbying effort, although he had energetic help from L-5 activists, notably Eric Drexler and Christine Peterson.

[9] While the L5 Society failed to achieve the goal of human settlements in space, it served as a focal point for many of the people who later became known in fields such as nanotechnology, memetics, extropianism, cryonics, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and tether propulsion, such as K. Eric Drexler, Robert Forward, and Hans Moravec.

The original L5 Society logo.
A diagram showing the five Lagrangian points in a two-body system, with one body far more massive than the other (e.g. Earth and Moon). In this system L 3 –L 5 will appear to share the secondary's orbit, although they are situated slightly outside it.
Artist's conception of a space habitat called the Stanford torus , by Don Davis .
NASA concept art from 2001 of an envisioned lunar mining facility .