Inside the habitat

[stevebowers]

Inside the habitat; a 3D model by Mark A.Garlick, showing the inside of an O'Neill cylinder. Note the numerous ledges and other megastructures within the cylinder.
3 months in the making; the best model I've seen so far. Click the link for a movie.


https://twitter.com/i/status/1645839712106446853

   

[stevebowers]

Another view

[Drashner1]

That is amazing and just darn cool!!!

I love the new, fresher look in general (the old O'Neill hab images are still pretty but...very old) and the intrahabitats in particular.

I wonder if the artist was inspired by OA or came to that idea independently on their own?

Also - Would we want to consider reaching out to this person and seeing if they would be open to us using at least the still image of the hab interior in the EG. We could provide proper attribution of course.

Thoughts?

Todd

[MacGregor]

This is very cool! Question, when do we think habitats like this would first be constructed in OA?

[stevebowers]

O'Neill habitats definitely exist in OA before the Sundering; I'd say around 400 AT would see the first habitats of this scale, although smaller ones might be built first.

[Drashner1]

We have several articles talking about smaller habs being built well before 400, but I don't think we anything that specifically mentions when large cylinder habs were first constructed. IIRC the Solar System in 560 has mention of such habs being in use in various places - so definitely before then.

[ProxCenBound]

I commented on this a bit in the Cislunar Alliance thread, but since we have Stanford Tori in 140ish AT, I don't think it would take 260 years to get up to O'Neill size. And we have a very significant orbital population by 560, so there'd be demand growing for a while for scaled-up habs. I could see the first O'Neill Cylinders being 150ish years after the first Stanford Tori, maybe even less.

Just my two cents and I'm sure we'll arrive at a consensus soon.

EDIT: Likely the earliest cylinder habs were smaller than ones that came later, and especially didn't have intrahabitats.

[Rynn]

I agree with Prox that cylindrical habitats wouldn't take too long to appear after Standford Tori. We have a consistent growth in space colonisation and development at that point in the setting so larger habitats make sense.

In terms of these pictures though I could very well see that this classic rural design might not come for a significant time after the first O'Neil cylinders. Large habitats aren't going to be cheap in the early timeline so it doesn't make a lot of sense that they'd have very low population densities like this. Unless it's a private gated community for future trillionaires I suppose. Rather I'd imagine most of the first O'Neill cylinders would like more like this:

[MacGregor]

Agreed, I think it’s all a question of scale. Small cylinders followed pretty quickly after tori and spheres. The big ones (we should define this) likely took another century or two.

[stevebowers]

I suspect that some of the smaller, earlier ones were quite densely populated. An 'urban' cylinder with lots of layers and lots of habitable space could support a large population, although they might feel a bit cramped. I know I would suffer from claustrophobia in a crowded hab. Also a crowded urban habitat would need to import food or manufacture it from recycled materials within the hab. But you might get used to it, especially with sophisticated design and social engineering.

A rural design could grow at least some of its food agriculturally, although I suspect most of the interior would be used for recreational purposes rather than food production. O'Neill's original design incorporated a series of external food production units, collecting sunlight for plant growth in greenhouse habs; a rural habitat would have a lower population, but would still probably need external greenhouse habs to supplement the food supply.