An Ocean Desert Dress Rehearsal For Space: Baby Gaias

1981 to 1983 I was the Miami local support team leader for Gerard O’Neill’s Space Studies Institute.

Jeff Bezos’s 1982 Miami high school valedictorian speech was on Gerard O’Neill’s vision.

Below is a proposal for Bezos that anyone who isn’t a pariah might consider taking up with Jeff.

Bezos’s Vision

“Maui on its best day” baby Gaias remediate civilization’s footprint.

Bezos says space is the place for these baby biospheres.

Why?

Like single cells in the primordial ocean they :

  • Are bathed in sunlight for energy.
  • Are surrounded by lifeless matter.
  • Can turn lifeless matter and energy into life.

Bezos was inspired by a proposal by Princeton University physicist Gerard K. O’Neill:

Plant two semi-automated industrial seeds:

  1. On the Moon.
  2. In lunar orbit.

The Moon seed absorbs solar energy and lunar topsoil to grow into a factory that:

  • Manufactures and plants more Moon seeds.
  • Launches lunar topsoil into Lunar orbit.

The lunar orbit absorbs solar energy and lunar topsoil to grow into a factory that:

  • Manufactures and plants more space seeds.
  • Manufactures “Maui on its best day” baby Gaias.

The Complementary Vision

Dress rehearsal equatorial ocean desert baby Gaias remediate civilization’s footprint.

The equatorial ocean is bathed in sunlight.

The material?

Chemical elements from the air and ocean water.

What do these baby Gaias look like?

Total recycling floating ocean atolls:

  • Lagoon aquaculture.
  • Maui on its best day beachfront condominiums.

Why now?

Automation is maturing on the strength of artificial general intelligence.

Gemini 2.5 Pro did a pretty good job of fleshing out the general strategy for Bezos, given the above as a prompt along with a request for a proposal that might appeal to Bezos:

The Next Frontier: A Comparative Analysis of Ocean-Based and Space-Based Civilizational Expansion

The infographic it generated:

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Speak of the devil… or rather The Bezos…

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One of the rather frustrating things about being a pariah is that when I have a falling out with someone with whom I sympathize, I feel an urge to remind them that this frees them to engage more directly with “polite society” to get something done that requires the resources therefrom. However, in doing this is, it concerns me that it might detract from their contempt for me which they may need to feel sincerely in order to signal their virtue to gain admittance there-to.

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