For or Against . . .

> 250,000 people is a huge number. I don't think I completely
> understand what you are proposing here. Are you saying that
250,000
> is a habitat minimum? That's sort of what it sounds like.

I'm not stating it as a fact, just as a "thinking outside the box"
type of argument to see where it leads us. The conventional wisdom
is small, bootstrapping efforts but if we follow that line of
reasoning, how do we ever achieve habitation while maintaining a
positive or neutral balance of payments, or for that matter, survive
without massive, budget busting subsidies?
>
> "Self-sustaining" is the key word here. You mean a habitat large
> enough to provide all material needs for 250,000 people, and that
> is a huge number.

Yes it is a huge number, and yes, self-sustaining is the key. I can
see a few years of subsidies from earth, perhaps a decade, but, and
pardon my momentary lapse into the ludicrous, but I can't really see
the mission controller saying "And we have lift-off of STS mission
number 256, transporting toothbrushes and toilet paper to the 1,000
hardy pioneers in orbit. STS mission 257, scheduled for next week is
on schedule for delivery of the essential shoes, pillows, razor
blades, pharmaceuticals, band-aids, watches and other personal items
for our band of pioneers."

> We probably won't be able to build habitats of that
> size for a few hundred years at the rate we are going.

Well, we're not going at a rate that I can even measure. :)

>
> On earth, the amount of farmland needed to provide year-round food
> for 1 person is around 2 acres. 500,000 acres for just farmland in
a
> habitat is a lot of space, and that doesn't include housing,
> recreation, or employment. I don't think we'll know the answer
until
> we get there.

Yes, what you state maybe true. But as I think through the whole
process of establishing a habitat, I'm finding I'm becoming more
comfortable with the idea of critical mass of population. The
numbers are definitely open to debate.

I've privately reached a conclusion in which I think habitats will
never be economically self-sustainable while small in size. The
alternative for all that industry in space will be either earth
launched or tele-robotically operated facilities from earth. No
cities in space, because incrementally, at each decision step, the
cheaper alternative will be to not send people into orbit,
therefore, more and more events will happen in space, but not
necessarily include more and more people.

So, my thinking came around to posing the question of an all-or-
nothing scenario.

>
> Let's start with getting the ISS up to 5, and go from there.

As the ISS has cost something like $90 billion so far, and people
are already yiping about the subsidy, do you really see that as a
part of the boot-strapping process?

>
> > I see that you're trying to provide an answer to my proposition
by
> > way of analogy, but the linkage of prehistoric Africa escapes
me.
> > Would you care to elaborate your argument?
> >
> > > Why? Because we came from Africa and the first groups which
left
> > were much
> > > smaller than 250,000. In fact there probably were not 250,000
> > humans when
> > > the first successful groups left.
> > >
> > > Why?
> > >
> > > > If the requirement for 250,000 people had been imposed on
> > previous
> > > > colonization efforts, we would all still live in Africa.
This
> > > requirement
> > > > is unrealistic, unhistorical, and would make future
> > colonization's
> > > > impossible. Jay Huebner
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Proposition: The first habitat, not space station, in space
> MUST
> > > > have a population of 250,000 people in order to function as
an