RE: asteroid habs

G'day,

> [Tomb] As for the whole issue of 
> men/women on a colony: If you don't want 
> kids for the first 2 years, everyone who 
> goes (men or women) gets a 24 month 
> contraceptive. 

A less savoury solution (and I'm not starting an argument, just making
an
observation) maybe the strict enforcement of laws on birth control, in
much
the same way as the Chinese enforced their one child laws in their
seaboard
provinces during the last decade or so. 
 
> [Tomb] As far an Antarctica goes, I think 
> the people who get to go there (correct me 
> if I'm wrong Beth) are super-select. They 
> tend to be carefully picked. If I'm sending 
> out 100,000 colonists, I think you have to 
> imagine a few bad apples in the bunch. So 
> I'm not sure Antarctica is a fair 
> comparison. 

Actually I think its a pretty good one as 100,000 or not if you're
setting
up a colony that is fairly isolated, but taking a good deal of input
(resource/financial) to start you do want some yobs wrecking it on you.
At
least at the start the people with the kinda money to do this are going
to
be major nations with millions to chose from so 100,000 still allows you
to
be selective. However, that doesn't mean you won't get the odd "things
go
wrong" events (which can make for exciting scenarios) because the stress
may
make facets of personalities come out that may have gone unnoticed
during
the selection process - as has happened in Antarctica a few times even
in
recent years. In addition living in confined quarters with a limited
number
of people (OK 100,000 is limited, but you're not likely to mix with the
entire group) is gonna mean that things get on your nerves and tempers
flare. We watched a doco on Jamestown the other day, that led to some
interesting ideas for scenarios/future history events to do with
colonies.

Cheers

Beth