3.2 III .1. 2: Course Personnel and Organiz·ation: Fourteen students took part in this study. Table 3.1 lists their names, classes, and major courses of study. To streamline the research efforts, the study group was first organized into three teams: the Environment and Systems (ES) group, the Structural Design and Analysis (SDA) group, and the Fabrication and Test (FT) group. Later, individual students were assigned to write sections for this report. Table 3.2 lists the research teams, and in parentheses the chapters which each student contributed to. III.1.3: Direction of Investigation: Within the framework of a proposed overall configuration, this study identifies and attacks specific engineering problems in the design, fabrication, assembly, inspection, and operation of a space colony. The design is iterated when it generates excessive technical difficulties. The technologies, materials, and techniques proposed are either current (1976) abilities or conservative extrapolations of current abilities. This permits detailed designs and evaluations based on an engineering approach-- quantative rather than qualitative decisions--and a more accurate estimate of overall program scheduling and cost. Time and skill limitations steered our study group away from certain areas of research. We had only fourteen weeks to do our work, and we had no trained ecologists, crystallographers, microbiologists, microwave and antenna specialists, economists, physiologists, or acoustic specialists in our group. Therefore, we did not attempt to evaluate the economic benefits (as listed in I.2) of our space colony. We did not develop a detailed ecology--though the issues of food production, thermal balance, and humidity ~ontrol were carefully studied. We did not investigate the acoustics of our designs. Also, we made two general assumptions concerning the location of the colony and the procurement of its materials; these are described in Chapter IV. III.2: THE REPORT This report was written in sections by all the students in the study group, and then edited by Dave Smith and Mitch Green. The following labeling conventions hold throughout the text.
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