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From: omar vega [mailto:oevega@...]

>I think the space settlements will work as small towns. They will never
>have more than, let's say, 100.000 people each, and the average will be
>about 20.000 people.

"Combs, Mike" responded:

"Just remember that Island 3 could support a population of 10,000,000.
But I guess you're discussing what you think is desirable, rather than
the limits of what's possible."

Neither what is desirable nor what is possible are going to be the
determining factors. Necessity will decide the size of the habitats.

No one is going to build a habitat for 10 million people without a pressing
need for such a place. Habitats are going to be built to handle impending
population requirements.

Take NYC as an historical example: it started out as a tiny foothole at the
southern most tip of Manhattan, and I doubt anyone at the time thought the
city would spread over 5 counties and contain 7- 8 million people. When New
Amsterdam was founded, no one laid out a street grid for Manhattan and said,
"we better build the infrastructure this city might need in the course of
the next 4 centuries."

As another example, Charles Keating built a town somewhere in the Arizona
desert, and absolutely no one lives there. Keating went to prison, and it
costs the government (which seized the property) something like a million
dollars annually to provide upkeep until they can find a buyer. (Fat
chance.)

My point is that no one (except a crook) is going to buuild a city for 10
million people and then hang up a vacancy sign.

A Stanford Torus or comparable Bernal Sphere can house 10,000 people. If a
half dozen habitats of that size reach that figure and immigrants are still
flooding in, the habitats may share the expense of building a new city and
contribute a thousand people each as settlers. A dozen habitats
contributing 2000 initial settlers each might opt to build a bigger habitat,
perhaps one that can eventually hold 40,000 people or so (assuming that
their forecasts say there will be a need for the space).

Crude approximations on my part. My point is that, eventually, bigger and
bigger habitats may be built, but only if there is a pressing need for large
numbers of people to live in a specific locale.

I mentioned my novel-in-progress a while back, and one of the major
city-states centered on an iron-nickel asteroid about 180 km in diameter.
There are close to 100 towns of 10,000 or so people each orbiting the
asteroid. But as the population grew, the government eventually decided to
hollow out an asteroid of diameter 30 km and turn that into a major habitat.
It would be a long, expensive project, but the on-going growth in
population and wealth made it look like a sure thing.

At the time my novel opens (which is 1000 years after they started to build
the first mines and habitats at that particular iron-nickel asteroid), 75%
of the city-state's total population of 4 million lives inside the small
asteroid. They didn't all move in at once; government and civic centers
probably led the way, and more and more people keep migrating to the "city
center." Remember what Washington DC was like when it was first built? Now
look how big it is, and its only major industry is Government.

The only reason I mention my novel is because plotting a novel causes one
think about cause and effect. One starts out by saying, "Okay, 4 million
people live here," and then one starts thinking about WHY they live there
and where they came from and when.

Rome wasn't built in a day. (Nor without cost over-runs, I'd wager.) A
civilization linking the worlds of the solar system will take centuries to
build.