O'Neill cylinders

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Shameless Copypasta from Wikipedia

The O'Neill cylinder, also called an Island Three habitat, is a space habitat design proposed by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in his book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.[1] In the book O'Neill proposes the colonization of space for the 21st century, using materials from the Moon.

An O'Neill cylinder consists of two very large, counter-rotating cylinders, each 5 miles (8 km) in diameter and 20 miles (32 km) long, that are connected at each end by a rod via a bearing system. They rotate so as to provide artificial gravity via centrifugal force on their inner surfaces.

Each cylinder has six equal-area stripes that run the length of the cylinder; three are windows, three are "land". Furthermore, an outer agriculture ring, 10 miles (16 km) in radius, rotates at a different speed for farming. The manufacturing block is located at the middle (behind the satellite dish assembly) to allow for minimized gravity for some manufacturing processes.

An O'Neill cylinder is also called an Island Three habitat because it is the third space habitat design Gerard O'Neill produced. For more information on the Island One and Two designs, see the Bernal sphere entry.

O'Neill Cylinders in Fenspace

As of 2015 there are no full sized O'Neill cylinders in Fenspace. Compared to a Bernal sphere or even a ring station design such as Stellvia, an O'Neill cylinder is a very complicated habitat to construct with at least three large rotating parts. One would also provide a larger amount of habitable space (approx 270 km²) than most of the smaller factions need and most of the larger factions have other plans.

However, given the nature of Fenspace an O'Neill cylinder will eventually get built.

Notes

  1. O'Neill, Gerard K. (1977). The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. New York: William Morrow & Company. ISBN 0-688-03133-1.