The Island One Space Colony

Designed in 1974 by Dr. Gerard O'Neill (Founder of the Space Studies Institute, www.ssi.org), described in his book The High Frontier, and described online at www.IslandOne.org. It is a self sufficient, solar powered space station that uses a unique system of mirrors to reflect sunlight to heat and light the habitation, while protecting the residents from direct exposure to to gamma rays and cosmic radiation.(Note: the mirrors are supposed be aiming the sunlight back toward the space station and not out into space to create lovely lens flare in our camera, as seen here, but it made such a nice picture. Perhaps the residents are in middle of re-aiming the mirrors, or deliberately darkening the station to for night, or something like that.)