From: utzoo!decvax!cca!REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.space
Title: re where to build
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3400
Posted: Tue Sep 21 17:15:56 1982
Received: Wed Sep 22 06:37:37 1982

From: Robert Elton Maas 
When planning for the stresses on a structure while fully built, you
have only one configuration to check, the final structure. When you
build something that will be spun up to make artificial gravity, you
have two, during spin-up, and in stable spinning. But when you build
something on Earth or in any other gravity field, you have all those
intermediate states during construction. Most collapsing structures
that kill people occur either during construction or during
Earthquakes. Hardly any people are killed by structures that just
colapse suddenly during normal operation.

Thus construction in space will be much safer than construction on
Earth, assuming nobody is dumb enough to spin up a structure while
it's still being built.
Actual operation will be about the same as on Earth, which is
adequate.  (You don't have to plan for Earthquakes or hurricanes or
tornadoes or blizzards or heavy rain causing ground liquification in
space either, so in that respect space habitat will be safer than on
Earth.)
In space your only unpredictable hazards are collisions with objects
such as meteors spacecraft and mis-tossed industrial materials.