Space Habitats

	I have never seen a convincing argument for widespread space habitats.
It costs overwhelmingly more to accomidate people/industry in a free floating
space station/habitat than on a planet or vaccuum world. Not to mention
maintenence.
	Granted, as long as there are high profit industries requiring
a micro-gravity environment (including, of course, research) you will have
habitat developments. But only as many as the industry can bear. Remember the
higher the tech level the less people needed for production. Unless a system
is setting itself up as a production centre for an entire sector there would
unlikely be more than one or two specialised instalations. Space cities just
aren't economical. If you do a cost analysis you'll probably find that it is
cheaper to shuttle your employees up from a planet.
	One possible analogy is an ocean going oil rig. It's a stationary
platform in a hostile environment. I don't know any riggers personally but
the impression I get is they're glad to get off it for leave. I do know that
there are no families on oil rigs. At the moment, space is a romanticised
topic. Loads of people think it's a really nifty idea to live in space. Once
spaceflight becomes more common it loses the romanticism. Capt. Kirk: "No,
I'm not from outer space, I just work there."
	Ok, lets suppose we have families and emotional attachments. Another
posible analogy for this situation is my own Dublin. Dublin is 1000 years old.
There are no wide suburban expanses like all those American cities. The majority
of people live in rows of terraced houses or council flats. Families are quite
large and very close. The attraction for one's street or one's "local" (i.e.
pub) is quite strong but the fact is there just isn't enough housing. Housing
is very expensive and there just aren't that many high-paying jobs or people
selling houses. The majority of the children are going to have to find houses
quite outside Dublin or, more often, move further aboad. Even unto the next
continent.
	Space habitats have a similar problem. They're very difficult to expand.
You just don't have the room for a growing generation and that generation
doesn't have the money to build more. They may hate living on a planet, as many
native Irish hate living in the States, but, well, that's life.

	Space habitats are interesting and unusual places. If you're style is
just escapist techno-wow they're fine. For me, I need some economic
justification for anything to be very widespread. Technology I am prepared
to treat by the "black box" principle but sociology is sociology.

				Jo Jaquinta
				[email removed]

PS> The mailer upset sysgen4 and Dan Corrin is still untwisting it. Due to
the holidays he has been unable to give me a concrete timetable. I think it
might be available on a "untried" basis shortly.