New Member

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Collin R. Skocik"
wrote:
>
> --- 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