Vulnerability of Space Settlements to Attacks

--- In spacesettlers@y..., Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:
> However, I do concede that *economical* reasons may postpone the
building of
> big colonies to the far future. Human civilizations are not used to
build a
> whole city from scratch and then populate it; instead, we are used
to grow
> cities in incremental steps by adding new buildings as needed.

Was not Brasilia planned from scratch and built in one fell swoop?
Or am I thinking of another Brazilian city?

> We cannot do
> the same thing with a space colony. And I would guess that are few
(or none)
> buildings in the world housing more than 10,000 people - and,
although there
> are projects for ber-buildings 2 Km high housing 100,000 people,
those
> projects never left their blueprints.
>

I can't think of a building housing 10000 or more right off the top
of my head, but there are plenty of really big buildings that would
hold many more people. Take West Edmonton Mall as an example - sure,
nobody is _housed_ there, but imagine that those 900 or so stores
were converted to apartments... how many people could you house in
5.2 million square feet?

:) ed