Attitudes toward Mars

Mike typed:

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HF should only be compared to a domed community on Mars capable of
supporting 10,000 in a state of relative independence (and
with a product marketable to Earth).

Mars advocates seem confident that such a dome would be less expensive
than a Stanford Torus, but as far as I know, no study has
ever been done on such a dome with anything near the level of detail of
the Ames-Stanford summer studies. So I'd question if this
assumption has any quantitative backing.
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Pressurized domes are not feasible, period.

Not on Moon, nor Mars, nor underwater, not anywhere.

The stress concentrations at the edge require huge material thicknesses.

For pressurized volumes, the only three shapes which work are:

1) the sphere

2) cylinder with hemispherical end caps.

3) torus

That's it.

Nothing else works,

Period.

I challenge anybody to take a look at the world around you and find me a
pressurized structure (above 1 psi) in COMMERCIAL SERVICE which is not
one of those three shapes.

For example, it is illegal under Federal DOT regulations to transport a
pressure vessel with a different shape than the three listed above.