Human Relationships in a Habitat

On Wednesday, October 1, 2003, at 11:48 AM, victoriatangoman wrote:

>> I live in Capitola, CA, population 10,000. You do see people
>> occassionally, but not as often as you'd think.
>
> Does everyone in your town have a commute of 10 minutes? Do you work
> with your neighbors? Do you socialize only with people from the
> town? Do you do all of your shopping in the town? Does nobody in
> your town commute out of it? Do all of the children go to the same
> school? Do you go to any cultural activities outside of your town?
>

Actually, telecomuters like myself and many others spend an amazing
amount of time at home and in town. I do go for days at a time without
leaving Capitola, although I often go to neighboring towns. While I
don't like to spend entire days inside the house, I don't think leaving
Capitola on a frequent basis is critical to my quality of life. The
one thing I would really miss is that I sing with a chorus that
rehearses in the next town over. The point is, given people's long
history of living very close to home (current mobility is only a few
decades old), there is little reason to believe that living in a
largish (mile or so across, 10,000ish people) orbital colony is
fundamentally difficult for people, although it may be quite different
than the American life-style of the last few decades.

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect
and deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.