No, or at least mine does not. My 150w HPS uses a mogul base instead of the medium base that regular light bulbs use. I believe all HID lights use the mogul base but I could be wrong. Also, as johneym1 wrote, you also need a separate ballast.
i have a medium base 70w HPS bulb, too, and im wondering where i can get a ballast fitted for medium size. http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-growing/630179-medium-base-ballasts.html#post7856347
all hid and cfl fluorecent bulbs over 100 watts, actual, use a mogul base. a 70 watt ballast can be had from an industrial electrical supply as they are used more in security lights than growing. my thinking is , for the cost of a lightbulb, you might want to think about going to a 150w package. 70 watts in it self is not enough to flower a plant and by the time you have bought a 70 w ballast and supplemental lighting you will need , you have more than paid for a 150.
im pretty sure mine is a regular sized socket, but they require a ballast to control the electrical flow to the bulb and i wouldnt try plugging it in a regular light.
wont work in reg socket. basically you need a full sized mogul ballast setup with a mogul-med adapter. the 70w is impractical but if you happen to have the shit then try it.
I've never tried just twisting one in and going, but all a ballast does is act like a resistor due to the nature of HID lighting having a negative (maybe) resistance. That might not be the word for it, but it basically means that as it warms up the resistance drops, which poses a problem when the input current has not changed. However, I am 99.9999% positive that the series of tungsten resistors in there limits the power enough to the point where you don't burn your bulb up or your house down. I mean, they don't call them self balasted for no reason.
No. They are special bubs and not like the normal light bub. Know that the more light you flower with, the better plant you will end up with and better the harvest and quality of buds. A 150 watt hps lamp is not enough to even flower one plant properly. The least I would try to flower a single plant with is probably 400 watts or higher. We flower 4 plants under a single 1000 watt hps lamp...well, 4 per room, so we're working with 4000 watts hps. It was only after I got that strength of lighting in each room that I was able to grow the plants and buds I had been trying to grow all along. You have to have good enough lighting to produce the product and you also have to have enough knowledge of the plant to be able to tend it and keep it alive. If you can't keep a plant alive, you surely can't harvest it. There is a thread at the bottom of the "forums" page called "beginner growers." Open that thread and read the "sticky's" at the top of the page. These contain tried and true basic info on how to put a basic setup together AND how to tend the plant. If you don't know these very basics, you're going to have a rough time of it. The more you know about something you've never done before, the better experience you have when first starting out. But don't think that "nutes" are magic beans or something. They're just plant food and your plants don't even need any until they've used up what comes in the soil (assuming you're planning a soil grow....new growers shouldn't start out with hydro setups until they've had some basic experience with growing the plant). Just go read and get all the info on growing the plant that you can before you do anything. TWW