Lunascaping and Zubrin

Perhaps it's a sign of age, but I'm coming to believe that new=>worse
at least as often as new=>better, if not more so. You've got it right that this attitude is always potentially a result of age. I'm only 41, but it already seems that music and movies from earlier decadesare markedly superior to what's being turned out now. I have to always remain open-minded to the possibility that O'Neill's ideas resonate more with me than do some more-recent ideas because that's what was hot on campus back when I was on campus. But I still think I can point to logical foundations for my biases. The interesting point is that when it comes to space colonization, we
are not dealing with a thoroughly worked out area - not even close. It's true that none of this has the benefit of experience. But I think High Frontier at least has the benefit of numerically detailed technical and economic studies. If there are similarly detailed studies of 10,000 person habitats for Mars, I'm unaware of them. Studies are always open to criticism, but having them is better than just using your imagination or relying on what "seems right". I believe that this
is a case where the relatively new ideas of Von Braun, O'Neill, and
Zubrin are completely wrong. All three (and indeed most people who have
published in this area) endorse what is effectively a monolithic
centrally planned approach to the problem. O'Neill may have started out with the expectation that a big Apollo-style program would build the first space settlement, but he later came to change this view. Past a point, he expected space settlement to happen only as anoutcome of SPS, which he in turn saw as a private enterprise rather than a government program. Zubrin and Von Braun strike me more as government program types. In fact, I just read where Adrian Berry chided Von Braun for predicting the first child would be born on the moon in the 20th Century, seeing as how he always pushed government programs, and government programs would never allow such a thing as what might lead to babies! In order to raise the kind of money needed,
either the promised payoff must be simply enormous, or the risk must be
negligible. There is no way for SPS to meet these criteria at present. I'm thinking all it would take is an increase in energy prices, and SPS could at least meet the former In the longer term it means that both SPS and Island
One (through Island 200, let's hope) will be privately owned and
operated, and designed to respond to the needs of the market as it
exists when they are built. I'm sure that's how O'Neill certainly viewed it.