New Member

Hi Mike!

>True, but then we have to ask the question: What does the planet
provide
us with for free that has to be engineered in space?

Familiarity? Glamour?

Let's face it, sticking a flag in some solar-system dirt is going to be
better TV for today's masses - the perfect 30" news item - than building
an environment in space for long-term experiment and eventual economic
benefits.

What we need to do is to educate the general public that habitats are
ultimately /the/ way to go (your articles do this well, and are
deserving of a far wider audience). We need to make rational, scientific
and economic arguments in favour of orbital settlement over planetary
colonisation. We need to take our time to passionately explain to the
nay-sayers why they are wrong, and hopefully enthuse them with the big
ideas, and the right way to achieve them.

That said, it's going to take a lot of work. Take the number one
experimental priority - do spun habitats produce effects humans can live
with, and what are the lower boundaries for practical artificial gravity
wrt boneloss and other associated physiological effects? Apart from the
two virtual failures in Gemini flights, more-or-less failures in Shuttle
SED experiments, there's been no demonstrably positive work done on
tethers as a way of achieving spin gravity. Why not?

Andy Goddard