Space Settlement

--- In spacesettlers, "Jake" wrote:

> Well... One thing the first few generations of space settlements
> won't have is a bunch of symbolic stuff, or stuff that just "looks
> cool"..
> Everything must have a specific purpose and that purpose must be
> worth the material and energy it takes to build and maintain it..
>
> You can still have cool looking stuff and even symbolic crap, but it
> must to have a function worth designing and making trade offs for.
> Because every square meter of a settlement is premium space..

As you say, this is true of the first few generations. But the OP was
talking about four centuries from now. Plenty of time for capability
to build up to the point that we do things just to look cool.

And I suspect that even the first few will have a few things that are
"second best" in terms of efficiency, but pretty, because people won't
live in something hideous and depressing. All those "dark future"
science fiction cityscapes of oppressive ugliness are a sort of "looks
cool" in reverse. Such cities would soon find themselves abandoned.