Life in a habitat.

List members,

I have been posting to a few threads at the moment and in the course of
thinking about the things in the posts, other questions arose so I thought I
might just ask a few questions of the list. Putting aside how they would be
built or what the shape they would be or where you would put them but assume
that there is a robust space infrastructure with a number of habitats at L5
and L4 as well as other places around other planets. Lets assume that there
is trade between the habs and Earth and (lets whisper it) Mars.

So you are living in a hab located at L4 (the type of hab is not important
but for the sake of argument assume a large island 3). Space craft can be a
simple thing if you cut away many of the things that are not needed such as
re-entry or high power thrust. But how simple could you make it and still
have it as safe as say a light aircraft, what kind of cost would you be
looking at and if they could be cheap enough and safe enough, would you be
allowed to have them? A spacecraft is a big mass and you DO NOT want it
hitting your habitat. Perhaps something like an override control could be
built in and certainly the habitat would have some kind of defence system.
But assuming that you are allowed to have your very own spaceship, what kind
would it be, what would they let you have and what is practical for you to
have? Somehow I find it hard to visualise an Orion (I am talking about the
old Orion, the one with the big nuclear bombs) in the hands of a weekend
pilot Sorry honey, I just have to pull into the service station and fill
up on bombs before we go, dont want to run out half way no, that just
doesnt work for me. But if we are talking about nuclear fuel what about a
NERVA? Of course being in space already you dont need a huge thrust, so how
about an ion drive or perhaps a VASMIR?

Other than personal spaceships, how about commercial or even military (okay,
I know there are treaties to stop weapons in space and we all know that is
going to stop all the weapons, right?) ships. What kind of commercial ships
would we see in use, what would they do, what kind would they be? What drive
types? And if we consider military ships, what would we be looking at then?

Life in the habitats aside, what would life be like outside the habitats,
what kind of work could there be outside the habitats? Mining, construction,
working in a giant non-rotating pressure vessel where micro-g manufacturing
could be done?

Comments please

Darren