Home on Lagrange (The L5 Song)
Encyclopedia
Home on Lagrange is a filk song, written in 1977 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm, intended to be sung to the tune of Home on the Range
. It was inspired by the idea of placing large, self-contained space colonies into stable equilibrium at the or Lagrange points, which had been advocated by Gerard O'Neill
.
Higgins and Gehm originally published it in the magazine CoEvolution Quarterly
in 1978. It was subsequently republished in many other media, including the NESFA Hymnal and the L5 Society
newsletter, and eventually made its way into The Endless Frontier, a collection of stories about space colonization, edited by Jerry Pournelle
. Today, it can be found at various websites on the Internet, often without attribution.
Home on the Range (song)
"Home on the Range" is the state song of the American state of Kansas. Dr. Brewster M. Higley originally wrote the words in a poem called "My Western Home" in the early 1870s in Smith County, Kansas. The poem was first published in a December 1873 issue of the Smith County Pioneer under the title...
. It was inspired by the idea of placing large, self-contained space colonies into stable equilibrium at the or Lagrange points, which had been advocated by Gerard O'Neill
Gerard O'Neill
Gerard Kitchen O'Neill was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver...
.
Higgins and Gehm originally published it in the magazine CoEvolution Quarterly
CoEvolution Quarterly
CoEvolution Quarterly is a descendant of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog. It eventually became the Whole Earth Review.-History:...
in 1978. It was subsequently republished in many other media, including the NESFA Hymnal and the L5 Society
National Space Society
The National Space Society is an international nonprofit 501, educational, and scientific organization specializing in space advocacy...
newsletter, and eventually made its way into The Endless Frontier, a collection of stories about space colonization, edited by Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Eugene Pournelle is an American science fiction writer, essayist and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog....
. Today, it can be found at various websites on the Internet, often without attribution.