Once again, thanks everyone...

> It is my understanding that there is a planet-centered camp
> and a space-orbit-around-earth camp (please forgive me if my
> jargon and semantics are a little off).

I would just say "orbital space" without being more specific than that.
We who advocate orbital space certainly expect the process to start in
Earth orbits, but long-term we expect the habitats to spread outward
beyond cislunar space. I think if you were to go away for a few hundred
years and come back, you'd find many more habitats orbiting in the
Asteroid Belt than circling the Earth.

> http://www.human-evolution.org/startravelhabitat.php

You mention "water, collected in the form of ice from the moons of Mars,
can be used to design rivers and ponds." I wouldn't get that specific.
The water could be formed from hydrogen brought up from Earth combined
with oxygen brought up from the moon (the latter being the substantially
heavier part), from ice at the lunar North or South poles, from hydrated
minerals in a NEO, or from the core of a spent comet also in a
Near-Earth trajectory. The moons of Mars would doubtless be the source
for just about all materials needed to build habitats in orbit of Mars.
But for habitats in any other location, the moons of Mars may not be the
best choices, since they orbit deep inside of a planetary gravity well.

"solar energy can be used to create artificial light inside that is
safe."

I hear tons of people on Usenet with unknown credentials express great
optimism that large settlements with agriculture could be sustained with
artificial lighting, but I've never heard a space professional who was
doing detailed numerical studies on space settlement express the opinion
that this was even remotely economical to do. All of the published,
peer-reviewed studies assumed large mirrors reflecting natural sunlight
in through mirrors, for both agriculture and illumination of living
areas. The artificial illumination idea takes two major efficiency
hits, and would doubtless be much more expensive to set up.

"The larger the "bottle," the faster it will turn to produce a force of
one g."

This one is a bit tricky: It depends on what you mean by "faster". If
you mean the speed of a point on the habitat on the circular path it
describes, true. But if you mean RPMs, the bigger the habitat, the
slower the RPMs.

You talk a bit about making soil. Note that NASA took some lunar soil
from Apollo and successfully grew plants in it. Of course they had to
add nitrates and bacteria to the soil, but there was nothing magical
about this process and it was well within their abilities to calculate
what was needed.

Regards,

Mike Combs