Death and Legacy
O'Neill was diagnosed with leukemia in 1985. He died on April 27, 1992, from complications of the disease at the Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, California. He was survived by his wife Tasha, his ex-wife Sylvia, and his four children. A sample of his incinerated remains was buried in space. The vial containing his ashes was attached to a Pegasus XL rocket and launched into Earth orbit on April 21, 1997. It re-entered the atmosphere in May 2002.
O'Neill directed his Space Studies Institute to continue their efforts "until people are living and working in space". After his death, management of SSI was passed to his son Roger and colleague Freeman Dyson. SSI continued to hold conferences every other year to bring together scientists studying space colonization until 2001.
Henry Kolm went on to start Magplane Technology in the 1990s to develop the magnetic transportation technology that O'Neill had written about. In 2007, Magplane demonstrated a working magnetic pipeline system to transport phosphate ore in Florida. The system ran at a speed of 40 mph (65 km/h), far slower than the high-speed trains O'Neill envisioned.
All three of the founders of the Space Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to opening the space frontier to human settlement, were supporters of O'Neill's ideas and had worked with him in various capacities at the Space Studies Institute. One of them, Rick Tumlinson, describes three men as models for space advocacy: Wernher von Braun, Gerard K. O'Neill, and Carl Sagan. Von Braun pushed for "projects that ordinary people can be proud of but not participate in". Sagan wanted to explore the universe from a distance. O'Neill, with his grand scheme for settlement of the Solar System, emphasized moving ordinary people off the Earth "en masse".
The National Space Society (NSS) gives the Gerard K. O'Neill Memorial Award for Space Settlement Advocacy to individuals noted for their contributions in the area of space settlement. Their contributions can be scientific, legislative, and educational. The award is a trophy cast in the shape of a Bernal sphere. The NSS first bestowed the award in 2007 on lunar entrepreneur and former astronaut Harrison Schmitt. In 2008, it was given to physicist John Marburger.
In fiction, the protagonist of Stephen Baxter's Manifold:Time names his spaceship the Gerald K. O'Neill.
Read more about this topic: Gerard K. O'Neill
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