Boys and Girls in Space

1) there would be free sunlight, but moving a very large object
needed for creating a space station will require months if not years,

2)it will then require a very large amount of work, which would not
be free, to creat the new station.

from planning to actually moving in would require at least a decade,
during which the station would be at extream risk due to the fact
that the over crowding would be using up o2 faster than the amount of
plants originally needed will supply, nor the food. when a station
becomes over crowded, its not just the amount of space a person takes
up that counts, its where the o2 and food are coming from. also where
are the new ppl working, since all the space for factories and
buisnesses were planned out years before the station was build and
there is little room for more factories, buiesness and farms. on
earth, we either build higher buildings or deeper ones, or turn
deserts and forest in to farmland. that cant happen on a space
station. building higher is not possible when higher is towards the
center and thats already taken. digging deeper leads to space.

what this means is that the people will either have to be constantly
building for the next generation, or they will have to have a
limited growth, having a population boom only when the next station
is available.

another thing to consider is the gravitational pull of the various
planets and such. PLUS the fact that the stations will exert a
gravity pull on each other. putting them too close together without
some way of keeping them apart will spell disaster, while building
new ones near buy will eventually put too many in the same area.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Brad Walsh"
>
> But folks, don't you think that a colony facing crowding due to
population
> growth would just build their way out of it? With plentiful
materials from
> asteroids, NEAs, the moon, etc., and energy practically free, it
seems like
> building new Islands nearby would be the obvious answer to
overpopulation.
> Draconian solutions might be necessary in the short run, but with
human
> birth-to-reproduction times at 20 years per generation give or
take, the
> colony could start a leisurely building program and NEVER run out
of space.
> That is until mankind fills up ALL the cis-solar space. Even if it
does
> turn out to be not quite as cheap and easy as I suspect it would, I
can
> imagine the colony gladly voting the tax funds, increasing
productivity or
> pushing for other ways of making money so as to afford new
construction,
> rather than put up with lotteries, sterilization, exile, etc. I
just have
> to believe that within a two generations of the advent of orbital
habitats,
> construction of new habitats will have become so cheap that the
only limit
> on human population growth would be those imposed by couples'
choices, or in
> some habs, by the sterilizing effects of all the drugs and porn
they're