Savager

> (Sometimes I'm also a bit "Savager". Maybe it is possible for
Humanity to also thrive in zero-g habitats. Unlike Savage,
however, I don't believe that the inhabitants of those weightless
micro-worlds could have Earthling physiques in any conceivable
way.
> Moreover, I don't see the point in making them having Earthling
physiques. If I were Savage, I would strip way the section "Sing
the Body Electric" in the chapter about Asgard and substitute it
for another section named "Human beings born and raised in
space will be freaks. And so, what?"...)

Savage missed the point here. The problems with living in
microgravity aren't just associated with stress on the bones, and
exercising the muscoskeletal system.
They've come close to exercising the skeletal muscles as
intensively as Savage proposes (how he could ever expect
people to sleep in those things is beyond me), and none of it
-repeat nothing- does any good beyond maintaining a little
muscle tone. Shannon Lucid kept with her exercise regmien
while on Mir, and walked off after landing on Earth, but she still
had lots of problems not remotely associated with muscle
atrophy or bone loss.

Microgravity living is bad for you in many insidious ways, and
there seems to be some doubts that it will ever be possible.
An article in the Dec 2000 "Science" magazine wrote about one
aspect: when astronauts nick themselves shaving or get little
bruises, these minor injuries take weeks & weeks to heal, if they
do heal.
Many of the problems with microgravity relate to this seeming
inability for cells to regenerate or divide. Blood cells don't grow
very well, if at all, and this is only loosely attributed to the bone
decalcification.

Savage took a few hopeful sounding things from laboratories,
and wrote his view of the future as if it was the one & only way
things could possibly turn out.
He sneered at O'Neill colonies mostly from a wierd new-agey
point of view that looks at all high technology from the
established government & military-industry as the enemy (note
the flawed picture of the stanford torus he re-printed; the sheild
is depicted as a lumpy bunch of rocks, and he used this as a
foundation for dismissing the entire space settlement study)
"How much more picturesque & eco-friendly we'll be if we live in
these water shielded zero G colonies!" (note that all the people
depicted in the artwork in his book were caucasian... Also the
artist & apparently Savage didn't know that the graceful
appearing "swan dive" posture is more difficult & uncomfortable
to hold than the normal "free-fall crouch")

His Asgaard colony is probably as useless & bankrupt from an
engineering standpoint as his "Bifrost Bridge" launcher. The LUF
openly admits that he didn't know what he was talking about
when he designed Bifrost (or the electrically accreted 'seacrete',
or open-cycle OTEC), but there are still some holdouts over
microgravity living and 'Asgaard' colonies. Note that Savage
himself isn't remotely involved anymore. He must be satisfed
with the royalty checks from the book.
I'll be the first to say that the idea for floating ocean cities
with
extensive mariculture use are useful in their own, and must be
built eventually, even if they get power from SSPS rectennae to
pump up the cold water, make CH4 fuel for export, and drive the
maglev rocketplane booster rails and air-breathing laser-thermal
second stage.
I like the idea of aeroentry of a 1km open hexagon foamed
sintercrete form, built to be made into an ocean city-farm after
splashdown (interesting to see how the "Aquarius" city geometry
lends itself to aeroentry/splashdown). Contrary to his 'Plan' of
sea cities funding space colonization, it'll be the other way
around. There's lots of reason to think that something in space
will be made to work profitably, before they work the bugs out of
Savage's "Vision".

Curiously, the more someone learns about the O'Neill studies,
the more they discount Savage colonies, as nice sounding, but
not central or necesary.
(I noticed that some LUF people, as with some of those in the
Mars Society, don't seem to know about any other work done
towards living in space. The more opinionated they seem
towards their founder's views, the less they've studied
alternatives)

Ravings aside ("All fanatics must die!"), even if you let people's
legs waste away, or don't worry that the children don't grow legs,
that's the least of your problems.
People who live in zero G simply won't live long, and they won't
be very healthy after a few months of it. Face it: People who don't
get lots of exercise aren't as healthy as someone who does.
The idea of living in zero G, and it supposedly being beneficial,
and people from heavyG worlds being unhealthy & short lived,
seems to come from bad S.F. All evidence points the other
direction.
I've heard one point of data in the opposite direction from the old
S.F. idea. A study with rats in 3G (they lived in centrifuges) On
average, they were more healthy, with longer lifespans.

If you place your faith in future medical advances allowing us to
avoid too much harm from microgravity adaptation, then you're
hoping for far more revolutionary advances in science than just
using space resources to live in rotating, rock shielded colonies.
If you just acccept that they'll be freaks, then you're helping
advance the idea of spreading Gaia off this rock, but you're not
talking about letting people move out there. Only their tinkered
children?

I've become a concrete convert. Since reading Sheppard's
article, and some other reading, I've decided I like the sound of
having a couple of meters of rock between myself & space. The
water shield is picturesque, but not needed.

For sunlight, have light pipes bring in light to anywhere. Ignore
the fact the it's not coming in from a transparent roof, and have
bright filtered sunlight in any room. So much for Savage's
complaints about living in a rock-shielded colony (a cave, as he
said) in space.
There's a Japanese firm selling these units that mount on office
buildings. They use fiber-optic trunks to bring light inside, and
split it off to a room. Sunlight anywhere. They've found that
people are much better in this 'natural' light; less fatigue, better
temper, less health complaints. Block the harmful frequencies,
and have actual warmth from sunlight, without harm.