The Space Homestead and Creation of Real Estate and Industry beyond Earth

摘要

During the 1970s large habitats were proposed by G. K. O'Neill and studied by NASA that could house 10,000 to 4 million people in Earth/Moon space. These people would be employed in building space solar satellites and more habitats for new settlers. Such a program, the NASA studies concluded, could reach financial break even in 38 years with peak Apollo level expenditures. It was suggested in a previous paper that human settlement of space could begin not by building city size structures but with a minimum technology habitat that could provide subsistence for a more minimal number of people and be capable of producing new habitats with extraterrestrial materials and energy. These habitats would be mostly independent from Earth. The approach could provide a quicker return on investment and lower start-up costs, and could be of a scale that could be developed and tested within the planned NASA transportation and lunar base architecture. This paper examines the population growth kinetics of humans in space, and the development of space solar power industry using small bolo shaped habitats in comparison to using larger habitat designs as considered in the 1970s.