L4 Settlement Part 9

1:10000 paramedics (2 per truck for 20000) so 50 for the settlement, or we'll say 56 for the settlement with 14 in each Quarter. The paramedics will have intimate knowledge of the sublevel and have access to electric medic golf carts in the sublevel to transport people from wherever they are to the hospital. At the dining hall of every apartment complex and at various other points, there would be a person-laying-down sized panel in the floor that is motorized and allows for an injured person to be lying down with a paramedic next to them such that the panel lowers down to the sub level so as to transfer the injured person to the hospital's sub level emergency entrance. Within a certain perimeter of downtown, the paramedics would walk/run the patient on a rolling stretcher from wherever they are to the main level emergency entrance to the hospital. One or two teams of paramedics would be assigned to be in the industry cylinder at all times that there are operations happening that involve people. If overnight one factory that is fully automated is running, but nothing else is, there's no need for paramedics overnight.

The sublevel will have signs that are on chains lowered from the ceiling, as the ceiling is 4m high that give directions and indications. For example, some will be signs that denote the direction and distance of downtown, others will simply be the address of the apartment complex that is immediately above for either the kitchen or medical access. The sublevel will have train tracks as mentioned in a previous post to traverse the 10km distance of the settlement on each of the four cardinal points of the cylinder. At the one quarter, the half, the three quarter and at the end there could be a small station at the settlement surface to allow for cargo and/or people to move from ground level of the settlement to the sub-level platform for the train. For the full length of the tracks they will have the siding that allows for the emergency electric medic carts to traverse the tracks anywhere they need to.

Also attached to the ceiling of the sublevel will be the water supply and waste water pipes. Within the industry cylinder against the cyldinder wall that is shared with the settlement is the water and waste management system. As mentioned before, the urine and water would be separate from the maciated defecation. The former would be processed to extract the water out of the urine to then process it and enter it back into the water supply. The latter would be dried out, heat composted and processed. In traditional waste systems in cities, a gravity flow assists these waste flows to go in the desired direction. A gravity flow will only work for a certain distance, say from the 4m height of the sublevel for a 20m distance to get to 3m height. Given this there will need to be tanks and pumps to move the waste water and waste defecation from all of the various sources of waste from the farm cylinder, the settlement and the industry cylinder to this waste treatment plant. The final thing I'll add to this is that asteroid mining would continue throughout this settlement's development where we would continue to extract water which we would add to this water supply.

The sublevel will not be as well lit as the settlement, with LED light panels at different intervals like you might see street lamps on an urban street. Attached to the ceiling of the sublevel is all of the electrical work to provide electricity to the apartment complexes and throughout the settlement. In various parts of the sublevel will be truss work that connects the inside of the outer cylinder with the outside of the dodecagon; especially in places where the surface has something heavy, like the downtown buildings or any swimming pool. These trusses would be to spread the load of the weight above across a much larger floor area of the outer cylinder which is expecting a maximum of 25kg/m2.

Within the hospital's emergency room egress into the sublevel will be one of two elevators within the settlement. The other one will be beneath the university so as to allow supplies to be brought through the sub-level and then raised up into the university.

Using ChatGPT-4o I learned that the enclosed vacuum within the inner LED cylinder can be used as a heat sink. With proper heat exchangers and using a high thermal mass (PCM) material allows for large amounts of heat to be stored without significant temperature changes which is needed for the enormous volume of the settlement. I asked about a seasonal drop to 4c at winter with a seasonal raise to 25c in summer with a two week hot spell at 28c, and including night time drops throughout the year and it suggested ethylene glycol-water as the PCM as it offers flexibility in tailoring the phase change temperature to specific needs, making it highly adaptable to the required temperature range. Given the mass of the atmosphere in the settlement, it was calculated to be able to get 4c in winter and as high as 28c for two weeks in summer, 58.2 million metric tonnes of ethylene glycol-water mixture would be needed. Water usually represents 40% of this antifreeze mixture, so 23.28 million metric tonnes of water could be sourced from space, but the remaining 34.92 million metric tonnes of ethylene glycol would have to come from Earth. The pipes storing this PCM will be as close to the center of the inner cylinder as possible so as to have their gravity be as close to zero as possible. There would be heat exchangers with blowers taking the place of LED panels dispersed evenly through the inner cylinder surface.