how to build the station.

At 02:13 PM 5/18/2006, you wrote:
>first problem with that is that the sprayers would have to be brought
>up from earth, and they would have to be very complex to be able to
>withstand the lack of gravity, and the vacuum of space not to mention
>the heat and radiation from the sun. this means heavy, which means
>expensive to launch.

There is no reason to believe the sprayers would be particularly heavy, or
necessarily all that complex. They would need careful design and, I admit,
I don't have any particular design in mind. Perhaps just a solar furnace
to vaporize, some RF to ionize, and electro-magnetic fields to direct the
spray -- or maybe something even simpler.

>if it were internal, the furnaces would be in the open (during
>construction only) near the hub.

If the sprayers are on the inside of the balloon they are, by definition,
not in the open.

>they would be rotating with the
>station.

I don't think the balloon should rotate. The colony should rotate up after
all the easier-to-do-in-0g is done, which is quite a bit.