Space Studies Institute

Space Studies Institute is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1977 by the late Princeton University Professor Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill. The stated mission is to "open the energy and material resources of space for human benefit within our lifetime".
In 2009 SSI moved its operations from its long-term base in Princeton, New Jersey, to Mojave, California. SSI is involved in several initiatives, including a solar sail project that it is developing with Carnegie Mellon University and an effort to find asteroids that could be mined for valuable materials. The use of extraterrestrial resources in space settlement has received increasing attention in recent years.
SSI's research priorities:
The Institute has sponsored research studies on several transport systems for the development of space. Their first program was in the development of prototype mass driver systems. They are also studying the use of an "Orbital Transfer Vehicle" as a component of space manufacturing. Other areas of research include a search for Earth-Sun Trojan asteroids, a design study of a "Lunar Polar Probe" to search for water and useful volatiles at the poles of the Moon, and studies of reuse of the Space Shuttle external tank. Dr O'Neill performed a pioneering study of a large space habitat named "Island Three" that could house 10,000,000 people.
Conferences.
SSI began hosting a bi-annual Space Manufacturing Conference in 1977, although the conference had actually begun in 1974 at NASA Ames Research Center. This is a list of conferences hosted or co-hosted by SSI.