It is natural for most people, and particularly for reporters and art directors, to become preoccupied with two features of orbital manufacturing, both of which are non-essential. One is "Where is it going to go?" and the other is "What is it going to look like?". I think the proper answer, to the first question is "in an orbit high enough so that it almost never gets eclipsed," and to the second, "It will be a rotating pressure vessel, containing an atmosphere, with sunshine brought inside with mirrors." Beyond that, any further detail is almost certain to be wrong. At this time we have only limited knowledge of the real requirements for long-duration life in space. In our ignorance we must plan on fall-back parameters which are very earthlike: earth-normal atmosphere, earth-normal gravity, a very low rotation rate, and cosmic-ray shielding to the same level that we find at sea-level here. Given a fixed-dollar limit on the cost of the initial habitat for the workforce in an orbital facility, the relaxation of any of these physiological parameters would permit increasing the amount of personal space each man or woman worker could count on—and that may turn out to be the most important parameter of all, for long-term good health both physically and psychologically. Taking a cautious view, it is not even essential to the economic success of an orbital facility that its workforce grow its own food supply. Certainly water would be recycled, as it is on earth. In the case of the space facility the initial stock of
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