Savager

--- In spacesettlers@y..., "John Frazer" wrote:

Not only that, but he's got trees and flowers and bushes (oh my!).
These things don't do well in zero-G! And will the trees on the Moon
really exceed 200 metres? With the girth to match? Or might they be
really skinny and no taller than on Earth? Or taller, but the same
thickness? The answer is that we don't know. I'd sure like to find
out, but wouldn't make any plans based on 200+ metre trees with mega-
thick trunks.

> 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)

Don't forget "It's all done with mirrors!" So?

> "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")

And the anthropic stuff. Rot. The universe got along fine for
billions and billions of years before we arrived on the scene. It
doesn't need us to exist.

> 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.

I'd be interested in reading more about this. Website?

> 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.

I like the domed-over craters. Anything wrong with them?

> 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.

AND! here on Earth, such scemes are subject to overcast. Not in
space. And you can probably bring in some UV, if it turns out to be
a good idea.