New Space Colonies book

Many thanks to Mike for posting this both here and on the web. Small
correction, I'm writing the book, it's not done yet. I wanted to get a
few key points out while decision makers can still remember the
Columbia.

On Dec 9, 2003, at 6:30 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> Just wanted everyone to know that Al Globus (NASA-Ames) has written a
> new
> book about space settlement titled "Orbital Space Colonies" to be
> released
> by Windstorm Creative. An excerpt (Introduction and part of Chapter 4)
> is
> available on the Space Settlement site at
> http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/settle.htm
> . Direct link:
> http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/excerpts.html
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
> Canada.
>
The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts
of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

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.