FAQ?

On Jul 24, 2005, at 1:08 PM, Ken Burnside wrote:

> the average lifespan
> of a hostile environment habitat is around 2-5 generations after
> local autonomy is given; longer durations come from more autocratic
> societies. This is, as technological societies go, a span of 40-180
> years. Failure mode either means a collapse of the local economy
> (followed by a collaps of infrastructure, followed by either a die-
> off or ecacuation), or a catastrophic collapse of infrastructure,
> followed by the death of the local economy.

What's the data behind this? I.e., which societies are you talking
about?

The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts
of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
Evolvable Systems Group (http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/projects/esg)
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.