Will Habitats ever have books?

> I remember writing a post to this group a few years back asking if
> we were going to have shuttle launches with a cargo strictly of
> toilet paper. The sheer number of goods we take for granted in our
> everyday lives will be startling when we consider their absense in
> orbit. This of course leads me to the proposition that the
> industrial and economic interconnectedness of Habitats will require
> a larger population base, rather than a smaller one, in order to
> amortize the multitude of industries to sufficient levels.

If you do require paper, but of course have no patience to wait until a forest grows to be turned into wood pulp, then smaller, swifter-growing plants will suffice. Cannot cotton be used for fine paper? Certainly hemp may be used to make paper. I heard that the original US constitution was written on hemp paper, though it was not the variety that you could smoke. Old George would have had to smoke acres of the stuff in one go to get stoned. Of course in the colonies there will be little need to use dope of any kind - people will be high enough as it is. But I digress --- rope was commonly made from hemp as well - a hemp necklace was a hangman's noose. I don't know if hemp was used to make cloth, they way nettles were.
Another digression: the word "nettle" is cognate to the words "net" and "needle". There is a historical reason for this.
A very small number of colonists, a vanguard of pioneers, will naturally be short of many consumer products that are as common as feathers on a hen to us. While fiber for producing paper, string and cloth may be swiftly grown as soon as the pioneers have agriculture, it is another thing to allocate people to process it into paper, string and cloth. Also machinery which is sufficient to provide these products for a dozen people may be too heavy to merit the expense of shipping them, even though the same machinery can easily provide for larger numbers of consumers - the benefits of mass production. The first few dozen pioneers will simply have to make do without such things, or import them. When we get into a hundred inhabitants, then a few of them may be allocated to making fiber, and process that into P, S & C.
The lack of petroleum to make plastics from will force colonists to find alternative materials. I am somewhat familiar with "plastic" products made from maize, namely plates and utensils intended for one use. They are chosen above plastic products for environmental reasons, because they are biodegradable, but in space they may be chosen for another reason. I suppose that many plastic items such as toothbrush handles may be made from such material, in an environment where crude oil to make plastics from will cost rather more than we Flatlanders pay the Saudis. Though perhaps the material degrades too swiftly. Metal will of course be in plentiful supply, but I certainly wouldn't want a toothbrush handle made from it, let alone the bristles, though the handle of a dishwashing brush may be made from that material if nothing better is available. At least if the dishes are made from metal and not porcelain. Any idea what to make the bristles from? But then again the bristles are such a lightweight part of a brush that they may be imported from the Earth anyway, even for a very long time, though the weightier handles be produced locally.

Jon Lennart Beck.