More choices will draw more interest and money. The first colony will be like an army fort on the frontier. This will give the families the confidence to move in and start new homes and businesses. This will also attract healthy seniors seeking to rebuild their bodies in a lighter gravity. There's no reason why only big corporations be the only ones to build it. The religious order like Knight Templars and the Hanseatic League, which was made up of many guilds of the North Sea economy, can also be the good models of organization to build one.
I agree with Max - space colonies allow alternative political visions, though one can see obvious pitfalls with corporate controlled orbitals - but space colonies, whether Mars, earth orbit, or a Lagrange point, besides being cool real estate, also serve as drivers for additional development and exploration. That might be their most important function.
Its real estate development, basically. And the real estate has a fantastic location already outside the Earth's massive gravity well, giving you access to the rest of the solar system much more cheaply
For me, the main reason to build a colony in space: There is nowhere on Earth that is not under the jurisdiction of existing governments. Space is a wide open frontier where experiments in economic and social organization might have a chance to flourish. That makes space colonization incredibly valuable.
The value of being able to create a new sovereign government, that can claim vast amounts of resources, is not fully appreciated because we have no modern corollary on Earth.
More choices will draw more interest and money. The first colony will be like an army fort on the frontier. This will give the families the confidence to move in and start new homes and businesses. This will also attract healthy seniors seeking to rebuild their bodies in a lighter gravity. There's no reason why only big corporations be the only ones to build it. The religious order like Knight Templars and the Hanseatic League, which was made up of many guilds of the North Sea economy, can also be the good models of organization to build one.
I agree with Max - space colonies allow alternative political visions, though one can see obvious pitfalls with corporate controlled orbitals - but space colonies, whether Mars, earth orbit, or a Lagrange point, besides being cool real estate, also serve as drivers for additional development and exploration. That might be their most important function.
Nice article, but I keep asking myself “why?” I am all in favor of space exploration, but why should we build a colony in space?
Its real estate development, basically. And the real estate has a fantastic location already outside the Earth's massive gravity well, giving you access to the rest of the solar system much more cheaply
Good luck to everyone involved! I’m in my mid-60s, and I am hopeful that I will live to see a man on Mars like I saw them on the Moon.
For me, the main reason to build a colony in space: There is nowhere on Earth that is not under the jurisdiction of existing governments. Space is a wide open frontier where experiments in economic and social organization might have a chance to flourish. That makes space colonization incredibly valuable.
The value of being able to create a new sovereign government, that can claim vast amounts of resources, is not fully appreciated because we have no modern corollary on Earth.