I'd consider each "station" or installation a "city" more than an independant "state". However, all facilities are not going to be the same, different places doing different things. Therefore the same operating rules, policies and procedures are going to be unsuitable for universal application. Just in the way each city in your current country adheres to the rules of the country but then takes care of it's own management within those rules, each of our facilities should take care of it's own management within the broader confines of our law. Government will still be government, and the stations operational hierachy will still be in control of the operational policy for that installation. Quite how each installation should go about this I'm personally of the opinion this should be left up to those in control of that facilty - with possibly some sort of "standards organisation" able to produce recommended practices, and minimal conformance specifications to cover spefics for that facility type that are not covered by "standard law".

Nation is both a generic and technical term with a broad range of meanings. I don't think it's necessary to specify that we do not mean it as a nationalist term. If we were to use an alternate term, the appropriate ones include country, state, polity, realm, and land. Federation is, as you say, not an appropriate alternative term as it changes the meaning substantially. Given the small size of Asgardia, there is not really room for federal organization unless we divide ourselves into national constituencies based on our nations of origin, which would be a very bad idea and enshrine nationalism directly into our government. I do not believe we will be inevitably divided by self-segregation. Historically, groups have a stronger tendency to syncretize than to segregate unless there is a political push to maintain distinct identities. Multiculturalism as a government policy has generally increased segregation, so I think we should just not formally recognize nationality and let our culture sort itself out.

Quite basically, they're too small. I can't build a three ½ meter long arm for a centrafugal launcher, it just won't fit. And that's just the first thing I thought of - I'm sure I can provide an entire list of why it'd be no good to me, and an even longer one for why it'd be no good for Asgardia.

@EyeR, Could you help me out and explain how they "...unsuitable for [your] purposes."

Because biggelow possibly might want some financial compensation for this, and they are generally unstuitable for my purposes. Unless of you'd mean for long term habitation, then it's vastly unsuitable. When it comes to long term residence in space, you want safe not cheap. Well, you can sit in the inflatable tent, and I'll sit behind the five meter thick NiFe skinned in 7½CM of titanium that'll assuredly absorb even the most active solar weather and the meter thick MgAl foam bolted to the outside that should provide for much greater resistence to MMOD strike.

Hello Skilfer, as the content of this post is not related to Asgardia in any way, we will be locking this thread and scheduling this post for deletion. I would recommend creating a proposal and submitting to the Admin teams in regards to this topic. Here are the guidelines for that: Thank you for your understanding.

now I've read a few of the post to see where you guys are at. I think all the posts are a good read, a thought i had on money and potential station was Cruithne (earth 2nd moon). we could hollow it out, i know hollowing it out would take some serious work my initial idea was you could design a Solar laser to heat up the rock and drill through it. suck in the molten rock then separate it into materials that we could sell back to earth. i realise this would be very hard and is a little off the mad scale. additional as its some what within our orbit would reducing its mass or eventually increasing its mass change our orbit much? could potentially kill life on earth. an additional way to make money is we work towards space hotels? with powering such an object i think fission is a must until we work out fusion we will have to use it. unless you could heat up water from the sun with concentrated mirrors if it was always facing the sun. but that may be a bit hard :P

Okay saw the questions, I will address both. There are some issues with using L1 point for a colony. A lagrangian point is a point in space where the pull of gravity is equally matched by two or more bodies, if memory serves. Using the lagrangian points has its advantages and disadvantages. L1 in the Earth-Moon system has the advantages of being placed close enough to both bodies to be highly relevent in a number of ways. Any resource procurement operations or colonies on the moon would benefit from such a station as it would be close enough to potentially act in an emergency as well as be able to relay communications. It would also serve as an Earth-moon hub for traffic back and forth. Resources being brought up from the moon or in from asteroids would likely come to this station as well. This would also be an ideal platform in which to contruct spacecraft designed for launch deeper into the solar system as it would be more economical than sending them up out of the planet's gravity well. L1 has its downsides too. It is not a particularly stable point due to gravitational interactions changing slightly over time as orbits progress. The Earth orbits the sun in an ellipse, and is therefore not equidistant from the sun at all times. This is true of the moon orbiting Earth as well, though to a much lesser extent. So any station placed here will have to undergo a process called stationkeeping, which means utilizing some thrust measures to course correct and keep its orbital plane and velocity where it needs to be. The amount of thrust needed would not be much relative to what it would take to put such a thing in orbit from Earth in the first place, but it is not negligible either. Low thrust devices such as scaled up ion drives could provide the thrust economically over time. Also the L1 point is at a high enough altitude that it only gets some protection from Earth's magnetopshere. A colony here would need a fair amount of shielding as compared to one in LEO (Low Earth Orbit). Still it would have some protection. The advantages far exceed the disadvantages in my opinion, as the problems can easily be handled with existing, established technologies. As for using thrust tech to maintain the rotation needed for centrifugal gravity, very little of this would be needed beyond imparting the original spin. It would be required over very long periods of time, though, due to collisions of space debris and micrometeors striking the hull and slowing the rotation as some of that kinetic energy is expended. This can be overcome as I mentioned in my posts by having the rotating habitat within a nonrotating shell. If this shell gets struck, it not only takes the damage the hull would have taken instead, but keeps the rotational energy of the habitat from being depleted. Also by not rotating, the shell itself would take less damage. An impactor would add its velocity to that of the rotating body if it impacts the right way, causing more damage. As to which thrusters could be used to maintain the spin over time? Existing ion thrusters would work as well as conventional rockets. As for if using the Earth-moon L1 point would be good for placing satellites for income, sure. Depending on where the satellite needed to be placed and on what orbital plane and velocity, more work would need to be done than, say, from LEO. But this could still work because building and placing satellites from this langrangian point would still be far cheaper than sending one up from Earth. The same applies to repairing existing satellites. We could still reach them more cheaply than it would cost to build one and send it up from Earth. And it is true that some harvestable light is blocked at the Earth-moon L1 point, but this is easily overcome by placing solar satellites in orbits that are not in shadow to beam power back to us. As for the EM Drive, it has passed peer review but I am not a big proponent of it just yet. I think enthusiasm for more research to be done alone is the only reason it passed. I reviewed the papers and found flaws that should have failed it. The margins of error they graphed were so wide to show readings so low they were nothing to as high as outputs beyond their expected maximum yield of the device. This tells me that they have little confidence in the values given and the consistant operational parameters of the device. Also the proposed theory as to how this device does conserve momentum by pushing against a "quantum fabric" or "vacuum" is ridiculous. The papers would have done better by getting their margins down and by simply saying "we did x tests, using y instruments and these protocols, and got a result of z. More study and experimentation needed to explain the how of it." If this device works, it shatters the standard model of physics. Newton says that momentum must be conserved, no matter the circumstance. This device propelling anything is like you sitting on a bike and propelling you and that bike forward by pushing on the handlebars. It should be impossible.

Thank you very much Brandon for the highlight ! And I agree with Clive about the location at the Lagrange Point even if the position between the moon and the earth will block a part of the harvestable light.