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--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Richard" wrote:
>
> I knew one fellow who advocated living within the Moon. He felt
that
> space habitats were too easy to destroy.

This was a point I made earlier (I'm a bit overwhelmed by how many
responses I've gotten -- this is a busy group!), and someone replied
that an asteroid would be as destructive to a planet as it would be
to a space habitat. I was thinking in terms other than big asteroid
impacts. Certainly an asteroid is slightly more likely to hit a
large object like a planet than a small object like a space station.
But I was thinking more in terms of accidents, slow leaks, breakdown
of supply runs, fire, and any numbe rof things that could befall a
space station or space habitat or whatever you'd like to call it.

Stephen Baxter pointed out that it's uneconomical to live on the
surface of a planet, because most of its resources are deep
underground where they can never be reached. That's a very good
point. But I think as long as we live in our fragile human bodies,
we'll need to live on planets, because they're sustainable over
longer periods than any artificial space-based construction. No
matter what kind of disaster befalls a planet -- short of an asteroid
impact that rips away the planet's atmosphere -- there are bound to
be survivors, and the ecosystem will slowly repair itself. Too many
things could completely destroy a space station. I think space
stations are very important, and we'll need them, but I don't think
it's practical to colonize space entirely through space stations.
Planetary colonization is going to have to be part of it.

By the way, I really liked Red Mars! Haven't read the sequels yet,
though.

Collin