The plans for something like this have been thought about by scientists for years. The Princeton conference I mentioned in my other post had top scientists from many different disciplines. I'm talking about rocket scientists that worked on the V2 under hitler and the engineers that built that Space shuttle. If the brains want to test their hardware, I'm all for trying it on Chickens or whatever. Success is success and could lead to getting the human race up there so that "all the eggs are in more than one basket" in case some natural or man made disaster makes life on this planet rough. It could be a lifeboat, in effect for any survivors. The only objection I would have is making the taxpayers foot the bill. The Big Beer can I mentioned above was to cost about 20 billion in 1970's dollars, about what the Alaska pipeline cost, and the technology existed then. That conference was primarily about Manufacturing in Space. The main thrust was a plan to capture solar energy and beam it down to Earth mitigate the energy crisis caused by the oil embargo. The environmentalists would have never let that happen, but the possibilities of manufacturing technologies that can only be carried out in 0g are still worth researching and are being done now on the space lab. I say if some one wants to pay for it, it can't hurt.