Space Solar Power Review Vol 7 Nums 3 & 4 1988

own their own residential units. But the panel regarded the ‘communal family' organizational structure, in which family members share private living quarters and personal interrelationships while support needs (laundry, meals, nursery and health care, education, etc.) are met by the community, as being most appropriate for optimal occupational integration. Lunar colonization will be an urban phenomenon; it will take place through development of discreet lunar communities (urban centres) that are linked through communication, transportation and economic networks. Currently available lunar habitat design concepts do not lend themselves to meeting the unique needs of a totally urban population at either the societal or the individual level; if these needs are not met, earthlike social problems, such as overcrowding, poverty, slums, high crime rates, sexual deviation, drug abuse, etc., may develop. Spatial arrangements will be important factors in minimizing the potential for such problems. The panel favoured an arrangement in which each lunar base consists of a number of relatively autonomous and self-sufficient residential centres clustered around a central core that provides major services to all neighbouring lesser centres. Care must be taken to assure that the various centres are not characterized by differential socioeconomic factors which are known to be causally related to various types of urban problems. Earth nations will seek to establish lunar bases in furtherance of their national aims, and individual bases are likely to reflect whatever culture characterizes their sponsoring nation. If this occurs, various lunar bases will exhibit the same nationalistic, ideological and economic rivalries which separate the sponsoring nations on Earth; lunar bases may become fortress-like installations. The panel regards such an arrangement as being highly undesirable, but highly probable. Long-range views, however, see lunar inhabitants as having common needs, in a common hostile environment, which will unite them in a common identification as distinct entities from their Earth sponsors. Eventually lunar inhabitants are likely to declare themselves to be a separate political entity, independent of any nation on Earth. Differences in occupational responsibility and importance, in income, or in access to social and physical resources may lead to development of a system of socioeconomic stratification which is similar to those found on Earth. Although serious social problems are known to be associated with systematic inequities which result from such stratification systems, the panel does not believe that adequate attention will be given to social stratification by lunar planners. Each lunar base will, therefore, exhibit whatever stratification system characterizes its sponsoring nation, and most of the social class related problems which are found on Earth will also arise in lunar communities. Ideally, the panel felt, lunar society should be egalitarian, without social class distinctions, and should exhibit an economic system which provides equality of access to all physical and social resources. Lunar bases must have political and economic systems if they are to function effectively. The panel found the following arrangements to be probable but undesirable: political control by dictatorship; lunar bases that are under the control of military agencies; lunar bases as ‘company towns' that are under the control of Earth economic entities; political and economic systems that are copies of those which characterize sponsoring nations. If such undesirable systems are not forced upon lunar inhabitants, the panel felt that lunar bases will be characterized by capitalistic, free enterprise economic systems, participatory democracy, and representative political processes, which were strongly favoured by the panel. Lunar society must have a social organization structure to insure that necessary tasks are carried out, and a social control system to ensure that people behave in a

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