A few different types of habitats

> The question is will (or should I say WHEN will ) the
>cost of habitats ever drop down to the point where a
>single company or developer can have one built for later
>resale or how about a single person building a small
>habitat as a single dwelling

Aside from his propensity for assuming that we'll find ways to adapt
healthfully to zero-G living, I like Marshall Savage's single family
homes on the Moon.
There's also this (another suggestion for clustered habitats -I don't
know if this was brought up in that thread)
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Nowicki/SPBI1G
H.HTM

>From the book "Interstellar Migrations and the Human Experience" I
learned that the most common population most everywhere humans have
set up as a nation, is 500, broken up into maybe 25 tribal villages
of 25 people. Maybe ten of fifty, but fifty people is rather a large
number to integrate into a single family grouping.

Mike Combs wrote
>in the story, a collection of four or five clans,
>consisting of several families apiece, begin building
>habitats in the Belt. I don't think I ever put a total
>number on the population, but imagined it was something
>approaching a hundred people.
> In assuming such a small number could build their own
>habitat, I assumed... vacuum vapor deposition... robotics
>... self-replicating systems

I consider SRS to be another unobtainium whiz-bang assumption. It
seems possible, but we don't know how to do it and we don't know
if/when several breakthroughs will allow it (A strong hint we have is
that the only way it's been done in the past is biological, and tell
me that isn't messy)
I doubt that a macrolife colony of 500 will be self-sufficient and
self replicating -unless one of these magic building techniques comes
about. Maybe not 5000. Too many little things go into each industry
that's required to make even a small thing.
Too many skills needed, and a self-teaching library conmputer
(that'll survive any real stretch of time) is another piece of magic.
History is messy, and it's almost too extravagent an asumption to
me, that it'll be any different.
All this is one reason I like Nomadic interstellar cometary colonists
as the long-run bet. It's extremely chaotic, and it assumes that a
large population with a widespread industrial infrastructure (not
near K=2, but at least using all the capabilities of a couple of
planet/mooon systems & many asteroidal colonies at least).
Little colonies could get lost in the Oort cloud, and they're still
within a few days communication of anywhere.

But I suppose it is harder to write stories based in this kind of
world. I've toyed with trying to write it into adventure games in the
GURPS RPG system which I could convince people to play in... S.F.
authors love a widget where you use techno-jargon, push a button, and
a thing is built and ready to use in the story, or the scene of
action is moved instantly instead of the mess of building or moving
the old-fashioned way. Everybody wants to get right to the action,
instead of role-playing all the deals with sub-contractors spread
across 500 cubic AU of space, and shipyard problems, etc.