A Free Country in Free Space

Daniel Ust's comment:
> [...] the regimentation needed in space travel and on
> space stations. While on Earth, your neighbor can generally do a lot of
> things which you wouldn't mind -- smoke tobacco or anything for that
> matter:), set off firecrackers, not clean house at all -- in space, some of
> these things would raise to the level of life-threatening for either a
> spacecraft or a colony. This would be especially problematic for small
> space colonies -- ones the size of small communities -- which I envision
> being the first to be formed. (Notably, small colonies anywhere have run
> into similar problems, though on Earth there's always air to breathe and
> usually food, water, and shelter. Much harder to procure in space.)

is certainly valid, though is this just "an engineering problem" as he
states because we can solve it simply by separating people far enough
from one another? In principle what Gerard O'Neill recognized was that
space provides us with immensely more energy (and other resources), so
we should in the long run have much more freedom to do anything we like
without fear of harming others. But I'm not sure most people would think
isolation from others really added to their freedom, and there seems no
doubt that at least early space colonies will have to have rigidly
enforced behavioral rules simply to survive.

Sourav Mandel gave 2 nontechnical and 3 technical reasons why it won't
happen soon. On the technical side Sourav requests advances in energy,
propulsion, and materials, but I personally think there is frequently
far too much emphasis on "new advanced technology" in space. In the
computing industry the latest and greatest wonderful ideas used to go
into one-off or small-run "supercomputers", which were fine expensive
toys, but never commercial successes, and the real successes were the
mini- and micro-computers using much less bleeding-edge technology. The
real successes in the space industry (yes there is one) are the
expendable multi-stage rockets; why not scale them up again using
established technologies? In fact, they can even be made re-usable
through the two-stage "flyback booster" concept promoted by Buzz Aldrin
(see http://www.house.gov/science/aldrin.htm for his recent testimony to
the House Science Committee). Of course some new things are needed, but
they should be at the Development end, not the Research end, of R&D.

On the nontechnical side, perhaps Dennis Tito's flight (mentioned by the
other two comments) will be a spur to increasing both the public
interest in space flight (lottery winners can imagine a flight to the
ISS!) and general commercial involvement. I think the time is right over
the next few years. But I could be wrong.

Arthur Smith (apsmith@...