"'Artificial miniworlds are fine...if you don't mind scanty elbow room, strict laws, dependency on outside resources, and vulnerability to attack.'" (pp. 257-258)
Why "mini-"? Surely it is possible to build big in space and for artificial maxi-worlds to maintain self-recycling ecologies? In fact, why live at the bottom of a gravity well as Larry Niven's Belters put it? They colonize the Asteroid Belt, not Mars.
"Vulnerability to attack" can be addressed first by building a civilization where no one is motivated to attack and, secondly, by always maintaining defence systems in case aggressive aliens do arrive from somewhere else. I suppose that this is at least possible.
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Planets have low tensile strenght -- they're effectively liquid, though that isn't apparent to us lice on the crust... 8-). If you built spun artificial environments past a certain size, they'd fly apart.
See Isaac Arthur's videos on possible futures
https://www.youtube.com/@isaacarthurSFIA/videos
Especially the ones on Megastructures. The land area for a single rotating habitat would be less than a continent but could approach that of a moderately large country.
Regarding vulnerability to attack: In some of these videos he mentions surrounding a rotating space habitat with a non-rotating structure mostly of loose asteroidal rock that would absorb the energy of an accidental collision or a weapon.
Kaor, Jim!
I have my doubts. It seems to me hostile warships attacking an O'Neill habitat can use missiles to blast thru such rocks. Or counter missile defenses, as when multiple Terran ships blasted their way thru the defenses of the "Hell Rock," a giant spheroidal Ythrian warship in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND.
Ad astra! Sean
Ad astra! Sean
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