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Establishing an outpost on another world is no easy task, but growing it into a thriving

new colony may turn out to be even harder.

We've often looked at space colonization, but usually from the standpoint of getting our ships

and colonists there, the raw nuts and bolts of setting up a colony, or the life of the crew

in getting there, but rarely the time after landing or the lives of those colonists once there.

A couple weeks back, we started correcting that by taking a look at life as a space colonist,

and I thought we would continue that today by asking what happens as a newly founded outpost or colony

grows to be a real city. That's a fairly critical notion, too, grows to be a city, because whether

we're talking about a small outpost on a small asteroid growing into a larger near cylinder,

or one small domed base on a vast new planet, a critical part of becoming a true civilization

is going to be the rise of that first true city. Whether that remains a small provincial

town of a few thousand, or grows to be megalopolis, megacities, sparring over huge areas,

housing billions, it seems almost inevitable that a growing colony will have some for a city,

even if that city is some sort of virtual world designated for remote gatherings.

How it would arise depends a lot on the nature and purpose of a colony, and I thought we'd

walk through a trio of examples today, so we're going to be following the growth of a base

...