Should Space Habitats be tied to SPS?

[snikt]
> What this means to me is that there are non SPS approaches to electric
> generation that will delay the need for SPS for many many years.
> I believe that we need to decouple Space Habitats from SPSs and
> market the goal of Space Colonization independent of any possible
> financial reason for a habitat's existence.
>

I think that the SPS idea is already kind of decoupled from space
colonization for many people. For instance, Al Globus from the Space
Settlers list thinks (and I agree with him) that the most immediate venue
for space occupation (if not colonization properly said) is space tourism.
In a later phase, one can think of asteroid mining - Lewis says that
precious ores that are not-so-rare in asteroids could be sold on Earth in a
profitable way.

The problem with embracing a space colonization goal without any economic
benefit, for pure idealistic reasons, is that idealism does not make money,
and that is what people will ultimately need to go to space. It is a kind of
egg-and-chicken problem.

Even though, I do not discard a space colonization wave triggered by pure
idealism. We must remember that many wildfires of religion - Islamism,
Christianity, etc - and ideologies - Communism, Nazism, etc - played a major
role in Human history for better or worse, and in many cases they were
ultimately idealistic movements with few or no connections to economical
benefits. Sometimes, a simple idea can have more impact than all the money
in the world.

That may explain, for example, why people are *so* hyped about colonizing
Mars and Zubrin has legions of followers with Congress lobby and stuff. It
is the typical case of an idea with romanticism and grandeur, that makes
basically *any* kind of people - even ignorant people who barely understand
the Solar System configuration - dream with a new world, a new land, and
keep dreaming; and this idea is spread by a very charismatic leader, who can
convince almost anyone to follow him. On the other hand, O'Neil ideas are
basically dead among the great public, because the idea of living in
spinning cans seems alien and unacceptable to most people, and can only been
preferred through the use of reason - and people do not use reason often...

> Mitchell James
> mejames@...
> http://www.InnerTransit.net (Email distribution for multilevel
organizations)
> http://www.InnerTransit.org (Homebase for collaborative engineering)
[snikt]

Lucio Coelho