Why build space colonies?
Why?
Nice place to live
Great view
Low-g recreation
Plenty of reliable solar energy
Environmental independence
Room to grow
The largest asteroid can provide sufficient materials for space colonies
containing 1000 times the surface area of the Earth.
Once the the good places in the solar system are taken, whole colonies
can travel to neighboring stars. The trip will take generations, but the
inhabitants have lived in colonies their whole life.
Low gravity recreation: You are only limited by your imagination for this
one. You could go skydiving without a parachute; you could dive up to a
swimming pool over you; Dream up some others. . .
For more good reasons see WHY
Survival...
Should disaster strike the Earth, a large space colony civilization can
insure life's survival and, if possible, succor Earth.
Earth went through catastrophic changes in its history which changed the course of biological evolution many times. For example, according to a recent theory about 500 million years ago Earth "fell" over due to imbalance created by the distribution of continents. This caused major shifts in the distribution of continents and resulted in the evolution of multi-cellular organisms. Future catostrophic events could make earth inhabitable for people.
Nobel laureate physicist Luis Alvarez, and his co-workers, proposed
over 15 years ago their astounding theory that an asteroid collided with
the Earth causing the extinction of the dinosaurs. The physical evidence
for an impact with Earth 65 million years ago has been most overwhelming.
An impact structure, called the Chicxulub crater, located off the coast
of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, has been identified as the site of
"ground zero" for an impact event that took place approximately 65 million
years ago. Consequently, many people (including some scientists) believe
that the dinosaurs' demise was the result of an asteroid or comet impact
with Earth.
The Popigai impact structure is a remnant of a huge crater in Siberia,
100 km across. It was formed when a comet or asteroid hit the Earth. It
has now been dated to about 35.5 million years ago, almost the same time
as the Chesapeake Bay crater off the coast of North America. These
two impacts together may have caused the mass extinction of the late Eocene.
Dieter Stöffler and Philippe Claeys
Earth rocked by combination punch
Nature 388, 331-332 (1997)
Jupiter was hit in 1994, and it could happen to Earth any time again...
Hubble ST Images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy
collision with Jupiter
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