
I disagree.  It think the average joe is interested/curious about spaceflight
but sees it as an elitist activity.  Not one which he is ever going to
participate in.


Why is the general public going to be interested in the technical details
of long term space habitation?  I like the idea of the study, but it should
be released to other scientists and engineers who will be able to use it.
If you want a general public document, you'll need a more general publication.


As one working on Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems, engineering
the microworld isn't the problem.  The problem is understanding the basic
chemical, biological and medical factors to be able to engineer them
efficiently.  For example, the only way we know how to produce food is from
plants and animals.  Food synthesis is not very far advanced.  So we have
to orbit a farm.  Well that's obviously not very efficient, so we use 
technology to reduce the mass and grow plants hydroponically instead of 
using dirt.  This is where the engineering comes in.  But new technologies
bring new basic questions that we don't have the answers to.  Like, in 
dirt we can grow tomatoes and lettuce right beside each other, but in 
hydroponics it turns out that you can't do that.  The lettuce growth is 
stunted when it's grown in the same hydroponic solution as tomatoes.  So 
now you have to consider what other plants are going to have similar
interactions.  This means some basic applied scientific research.  And that's
what needs to be done with all technologies that have been developed so far.
We also need to find out how they interact together.  That's where we are now.


First you need to do the literature search.  There is a lot of information
out there.  Maybe we should just pick a specific area of long term habitation.
This could be useful, especially if we make it available on the net.  Then
we can look at methods of analyzing the technologies.


Unless there is an unbelievable outpouring of interest on this on the net,
I think we should develop a detailed data base of the literature search 
first.  Then if we accomplish that we can go on to real analysis.  The data
base itself could be useful for future engineers.

That's my response Ken, what do you think?