L4 settlement part 3

I have had quite a few more disparate thoughts concerning this L4 Space Settlement hosting 500,000 people in a 2500m dodecagon by 10k cylinder.

I did some research today to learn more about using a social democracy in this settlement and I have learned that what we actually want is democratic socialism. The socdem is essentially promoting socialism ideas, like universal health care, within a capitalist system. The demsoc is where the systems of production are owned by the workers, rather than an upper echelon, and those systems of production are democratically run.

If there are 208 apartment blocks in a sub-quad, it doesn't make much sense for there to be a monthly meeting with the chairperson of every apartment block. Dividing the sub-quad into quarters, a random selection will take place to pick the apartment complex from which that chairman will represent that quarter of the sub-quad, and all other chairpersons for the remaining apartment complexes will be able to contact this chair person. I mentioned a three year rotating schedule in a previous post, but it would make more sense to do four years given the quadrant nature of this settlement. So, at the very beginning each apartment block would either pick randomly, or elect five representatives, four with voting power and the fifth only for tiebreaking and that fifth is the chairperson. One person on this committee would only do it for one year, another for two years, another for three years and another for four years. The chairperson would do that for three years. Going forward all five positions would be 4 year durations.

Monthly the chairperson from the randomly selected apartment block for each of the four quarters of the sub-quad would meet and some random person from the sub-quad would be selected to be chairperson, again, only voting in tie-breaking situations. That fifth person would have a 4 year mandate and would meet monthly with the three other sub-quad chairpersons as well as a few others, like the farm manager, the industry manager and the infrastructure manager once a month.

Those managers would be elected by the groups of people involved, for example, the farm manager would be elected by the farm workers, the industry manager would be elected by the industry workers and the infrastructure would be elected by everyone. A minimum bureaucracy would be instituted so as to give a sense of continuity for whatever services would be required to be delivered.

In terms of the immigrants coming from Earth, half of the citizens will pay 250,000$ per person to be able to become a part of this settlement. The other half of citizens will be by lottery draw for applicants who pass all of the requirements (for example, be willing to live in democratic socialism, and maybe fulfil a role like teacher, nurse, doctor or farm worker) and will not pay. Having half of the citizens pay would raise 62.5 billion dollars which can be used to help pay for part of the settlement.

With a lunar gravity assist the travel from Earth mid LEO to get to L4, if the space vessel speed was 2.2 km/s and the gravity assist added 1.2 km/s this 3.4 km/s would allow a trip to L4 to be reduced to 509 days. Unfortunately the return trip would take 912 days as the lunar gravity assist would only be available at the very end of the travel and so would not make sense to be used. If a space engine technology is developed that can provide 1g of constant acceleration to the mid-point and then 1g of deceleration from the mid-point to L4, the trip could take 48.5 hours and would allow for a proper level of gravity throughout the voyage. A fission space engine appears to be the closest to being possible but isn't ready yet. Having a two day travel time would be ideal and so maybe this whole project doesn't happen until a space engine is created that can provide 1g accel/decel for an AU.

Some asteroids could have both clay or a clay like substance and silicates, or some asteroids would have the clay and others the silicates. If cement can be made with the water, clay and silicates (sand) then this simplifies significantly our construction. We can build with the cement alone, or we can use the cement as a mortar for asteroid regolith bricks.

I researched moving walkways and found that the longest one today is 207m, so it seems it would be easy to build them (with imports from Earth) to be 150m in length, which is the length in the sub-plan I drew two days ago that is between the transverse pedestrian walkways. This allows each of the transverse pedestrian walkways to go the full circuit around the perimeter of the dodecagon without interruption. I read about having higher speed moving walkways like in science fiction stories with parallel belts that each one closer to the center goes faster; however, existing attempts at having high speed belts were too complex and were either dangerous for people using them, or they broke down easily. So here we would stick with a single manageable speed moving walkways.

I thought more about the food situation at this settlement. First, instead of the kitchen person ordering specific items that would be delivered from the food processing part of the farm, there would be cameras and scales in the pantry and fridge for an AI to see what there is, and what is missing, and then automatically place a replenishment order. The farm manager would work out a system to determine what is the correct amount of food that is to be replenished based on the number and ages of the people in the apartment complex and feed this data to the AI. Also, if on any particular day the farm has excess of anything, this could be randomly given out to any of the 3330 apartment blocks that would simply be added to their existing replenishment order deliveries, with bonuses not hitting the same apartment block twice until all others have received.

Second, I thought about dairy and how up until now there hasn't been any talk about it. I researched goat milk and almond milk and so long as we can get goats from Earth to this L4 station, we can outfit a fairly sized field/pen to hold a large number of them so as to get their milk. Almond trees can't grow in containers, they get too big, and so the part of the farm that I mentioned an apple orchard would go; the apple trees could go in containers in the settlement, and instead that orchard can be replaced with almond and other types of nut trees.

About the trees in containers, as some of them will be olive trees, we would use the olives to make olive oil which would be the cooking oil that we give to the kitchens in the settlements. Of course, we could also give olives too. All of the trees in the settlement will also do their part to help with photosynthesis and to produce oxygen.

If from the farm or from the industry (or really, anything from the settlement) can be turned into something that can be sold to any party that is outside of the settlement, this kind of industriousness is something that we, as the settlement citizens, would place as a fairly high priority (though not higher than citizen happiness). The more we are able to sell, the more we can afford to import from Earth to improve our settlement.

As the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is about 2.5AU away from our L4 settlement it isn't exactly convenient for going there for mining, however, I can imagine that if we have managed to get a constant accel/decel ship engine to work, it would take a week to get to the asteroid belt from our L4 station and a week to return. So, we could develop spacecraft that go out there to capture a number of 10m sized asteroids to bring them back to us for processing. This would allow us to improve the settlement, but also, to process metals that we could sell to exterior parties.

There would be a newsletter issued out to all citizens, perhaps eventually daily or weekly but to begin perhaps only monthly. Part of the newsletter would include a farm report, to give high level production numbers and any future interesting plans. Another part would be from the industry, for any exciting news from there. There would be a population count, to show how the population of the settlement is growing or varying. There would be an export/import report that shows how much money we have made selling what we can, and how much we have spent with that money and what we got from it. There could also be a sports section and a culture section.