Two new space settlement papers available

How Small of a Free-Space Settlement Can People Be HappyLiving In?Al Globus and TomMarotta, February 2017 preprintWe have conducted an internet survey of 1,075 subjects toshed light on their views about thedesirability of living in a small spacesettlement in orbit close to the Earth. This is motivated bystudies suggestingthat early space settlements can be significantly smaller than previouslybelieved and located very close to Earth,makingconstruction, occupation, and operationvastly easier to execute. The primarygoal of the survey was to determine how small, both inland area andpopulation, a settlement could be and still attract a sizeable number ofpotentialsettlers. Roughly 6% of all respondents said they could be happyliving in a space settlementno bigger than a large cruise ship with no morethan 500 people and they would be willing todevote at least 75% of theirwealth to be able to live permanently in orbit. While this is a smallfraction ofthe subjects surveyed, when expanded to all space enthusiasts world-wide itshould be more than enough to populate a number of small settlements.http://space.alglobus.net/papers/MinSizeSurvey.pdfLosing the Geomagnetic Shield: A Critical Issue for Space Settlement. Philip K.Chapman. February 2017 NSS Space Settlement JournalThe geomagnetic field seems to be collapsing. This has happened many times in thedeeppast, but never since civilization began. One implication is that the cost of space settlementwill increase substantially if we do not expedite deployment of initial facilities in low Earthorbit.Another implication, less certain but much more damaging, is that the collapse may leadtocatastrophic global cooling before the end of this century. We must establish self-sufficientcommunities off Earth before that happens.http://www.nss.org/settlement/journal/NSS-JOURNAL-Losing-the-Geomagnetic-Shield.pdfSee http://space.alglobus.net/ for more space settlement papers.