(unknown)

> My question still stands - how will an international Habitat
> comprised of people from different cultures who hold political
> philosophies that differ by an amount greater than what is usually
> seen in one country make a viable go of it? Remember, we're not
> talking of a short mission duration but many years or even a
> lifetime couped up in a can in orbit.
>

The Russians put a lot of effort into crew compatibility issues,
especially for long duration space station missions. Seems that a
colony with widely divergent opinions will need a strong tradition of
tolerance.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~150 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.