August, like a celebration made of

Not all of the items that were used to determine the day of the week reminded people that they should ensure that their shoes are tied of the correct tightness to not be so loose as the shoe would fall off, and neither be so tight that the circulation in one's foot would be interrupted.

It would remind me of the witch that cast a spell, in the hopes that a Goldilocks-zoned exoplanet would be so close as to be heretofore unknown to anyone yet easily transited to using existing technology. Proxima Centauri B does look appealing, even though it's star is a Red Dwarf and it is 1.3 parsecs away. Imagine if an as yet undiscovered habitable planet was only 1.3 light years away; that ought to change things significantly.

Of course, not all of the spells that the witch could cast are made up of cream cheese. I should know.

L4 Settlement part 12

I started to recreate a sub-quad of the settlement in MS Excel where one square was 3m. After doing this and putting in the 208 apartment complexes I came to realize I have made a big mistake in my calculating.

Using this site I did a rough calculation of apartment sizes, given each would have a living room, one, two or three bedrooms, a bathroom, but no kitchen since all meals will be eaten in the communal dining hall. I found that one bedroom, two bedroom and three bedroom apartments would be size 46, 55 and 65 square meters respectively.

With 20 studio, 30 2 bedroom and 4 3bedroom this adds to 2830 m2. Add 15 m2 for the dining hall, 9 m2 for 3 laundry rooms and 16m2 for a 4x4 central courtyard and this adds to the total to get 2870 m2. I rounded it up to 3000 m2, but since it is a three level building, those 3000 m2 are split over three levels, so the foot print is only 1000 m2.

The population I had planned for was half a million, divide that in four parts to get the population per Quarter which gives 125,000 people per quarter. Each Quarter is divided into four parts to create sub-quads and so each sub-quad would have 31,250 people. Each apartment complex is to hold a max of 150 people, so to fit 31,250 people into the apartment complexes we'll need 208 of them.

208 apartment complexes at 1000m2 per apartment complex means that all apartment complexes in a sub-quad requires 208,000m2.

The area of a sub-quad is one quarter of the circumradius distance (15530m) by one quarter of the length (10000m), so it is 3883m by 2500m. This gives a total area of a sub-quad to be 9,706,250m2.

So all 208 apartment complexes requiring a total of 208,000m2 is to be placed in a sub-quad of 9,706,250 m2. The apartment complexes represent 2.14% of the total available space.

If I reduce the radius of the cylinder, it would need to spin faster to get the 1g at surface; and, it would mean the food cylinder would need to get longer. If I reduce the settlement cylinder to be the same radius but 5km long instead of 10km long, it doesn't make a big difference; the 208 apartment complexes now take up 4.29% of the new sub-quad area.

I could easily double the population, within the 5km settlement cylinder, but then I would need to double the food cylinder size. 

Anyhow, I have had enormous fun writing all of these posts about asteroid mining, space farming, space fish farm, getting Nitrogen from the Kuiper belt, learning about YBCO semi conductor and about methalox and Hydralox fuels. Due to the miscalculation I've noted in this post I would have to go right back to the drawing board, though many of the ideas that were applicable previously would still be useful, like my learning about democratic socialism, about farming goats, chickens, nut trees and aquaponics.

Maybe I will come back to this at a later time and do the figuring more accurately, but for now I will push this aside.

L4 Settlement Part 11

Having decreased the travel time to get from Sun-Earth L4 to an Earth mid LEO gateway station to be just under a week using first and last quarter of distance to accel/decel at 2m/s2, I though to apply the same thing to retrieve ammonia from the Kuiper belt for the purposes of getting the Nitrogen for the settlement, farm and industry cylinder atmospheres.

I had ChatGPT-4o assist me with this. I start with a dry weight 20t space vehicle that has the capacity to carry 200t of ammonia asteroids, that has thrusters on both sides so that it doesn't have to turn around to decelerate, it leaves our L4 settlement and for one quarter the distance accelerates at 2m/s2 and then decelerates for the last quarter at the same rate to end up at the 1/3 mark of the Kuiper belt. Then I have it spend two months there accumulating 200t of ammonia laden asteroids. Then I have it fly back under the same conditions, but now under load.

The total trip, including those 2 months in the belt, adds to 100 days and would take 1884t of Hydrolox fuel, needing most of it on the return trip since there are 200t of mass to push. In my previous post about going to the Kuiper belt it was close to a 12 year round trip, so bringing it down to 100 days is a huge improvement and makes it easier to obtain the required Nitrogen.

I found out recently that Titan, one of Saturn's moons, has an atmosphere that is 95% Nitrogen gas with most of the rest methane. I was going to try to figure out what the gravity well would be to land on Titan, simply pressure air from Titan's atmosphere into tanks and then take off again back to L4, but then I learned that this moon is almost as far from L4 as the Kuiper belt is, so rather than fight the gravity of Titan, we would just go that little extra distance.

I realized that if the farm is 5km long and the food processing plant is only on one side of the dodecagon, the farmer at the 180 degree opposite side and furthest away at 5km will have a very long way to push bins that contain harvested food to get it to the food processing building. Given this I have decided to keep the roller tracks that are between farms that lead to the food processing building, but I will also have conveyor belts replacing the roller tracks in many places. The conveyor belts will not run every minute, but rather will activate when a sensor somewhat upstream notices the presence of a bin, and then will turn on for a set period of time that surpasses the length of time a bin would be on that belt.

For the food processing building, I can imagine a long three alley system. The alley that is closest to the farms side of the building (alley 1) will have harvested goods come on a conveyor belt where sorters empty the bin. For any food that is ready to go immediately to an apartment complex, that food goes on a wide table that separates alley 1 (from the farm) to alley 2 (goes to the apartment complexes). The way food is put on that table is to ensure that it follows FIFO order. So an alley 2 person, a fulfiller would take the food and put what is allocated into the outgoing bin.

The sorter would take, for example, potatoes, carrots, corn and fish and put those in a different queue so that cleaners can take them to clean them. This cleaning station would be outside of the sorting station. Once clean, these food items would go back into bins to go on alley 3 (from the cleaners) so that sorters on alley 3 can put these food items on the wide table that separates alley 3 from the fulfilment alley 2. So fulfillers on both sides of alley 2 will fulfill the outgoing bin from alleys 1 and 3 and then just push it along until it has been fulfilled to 100% to then be sent out into the settlement cylinder through the sub-level ceiling automatic distribution network.

The sorters in alley 1 would take the empty harvest bins and put them aside to stack and accumulate. At night, the conveyor system that brings harvest bins to the food processing building will run in reverse so as to return empty harvest bins back to the farms. So the last task that the last sorter does at the end of the day is to place the empty bins in smaller stacks back on the belt so they can be reversed out back to the farms. The farm workers will just need to retrieve them from the conveyor system as their first action of the day so that the belt is ready for sending harvested food to the food processing  building.

In addition to the imported prokaryotes in the soil, a small number of species of flying insects and a small number of types of spiders will be brought into the farm cylinder across all levels. Once there are a good number of farms, perhaps one or two hundred, we would import from Earth some robins and sparrows and perhaps one or two other birds, and let them free in the farm cylinder. This way the human workers will have some bird song to keep them company. I think of robins and sparrows as they seem to be the most adaptable in my neighbourhood.

To help the birds along, on every farm scattered within the goat and chicken hectares, a few species of tree can be planted, ones that don't grow higher than 4m. For the goat hectares, these trees would need to be planted as early as possible as otherwise the goats will simply eat the seedling. Perhaps some goat fence can be put around the early trees to protect them from the goats.

L4 Settlement - Farm Cylinder - part 2

I did further research on the growing needs of the nut trees and it seems they all have slightly different growing conditions, some like it dry, some like it hot, some like it humid, some need to have an above freezing but below 7c winter. Some grow as high as 40m while others grow only to 10m. So, I have decided to move all of the trees up to the top level of the farm cylinder and to build dividing walls to separate the top level into four individual zones.

Doing this allowed me to rearrange the farms on levels 1-3 and so now I am able to pull back the length of the farm cylinder to 5000m instead of the 5150m I had mentioned in the previous farm post. So dividing 5000m by 4 gives each tree zone a 1250m length and a 15455m dodecagon perimeter to provide 1932 hectares for each of the four planting zones.

I've added a fourth as I have decided to add peanuts into the mix, so the four different zones will have peanuts, almonds, pecans and walnuts. The peanuts will be able to produce within the first season, the walnuts may only be able to produce after 10 years; so not all of these forests will produce nuts immediately. Once they do, however, they will produce a lot.

I learned that some of these trees stop producing nuts, or, have alternating years with low yield and high yield years. For those that stop producing, we can, a few years in advance, prepare seedlings and then when it is time, we can cut down and use as lumber (either for within the settlement, or for export) the wood that has been cut and then plant the seedlings.

So now each zone can have exactly what is needed for whatever is growing in there in terms of soil depth, soil makeup, soil ph, watering schedule, seasonality and diurnal/nocturnal schedule and air humidty and temperature. As much of this will be made automatic but all within a software controller that an assigned Tree Farm Manager will be responsible for. This manager will need to know everything there is to know about growing the four different types and to check in on them periodically. This is not a full time role, however, the person doing this will need to inform the overall farm manager at anytime that a harvest needs to be done and then there will need to be many people that go to do it.

Goat manure and safely heat-composted and aged humanure from the settlement's waste will get mixed in with the asteroid dust and Earth soil that makes up the ground for the trees; though for the peanuts we won't put the humanure since peanuts grow in the ground, they don't get pulled from the trees. In addition to this there will be some fertilizers that will need to be imported from Earth.

L4 Settlement Part 10

More disparate notes

Adjacent to the hospital downtown will be a ground floor blood/plasma donor clinic and blood test (and other medicinal test) center where donors can give blood and plasma and any citizen can go to get the blood tests, or other tests done that their doctor has asked for. On the second and, if needed, third floor will be the Public Health Agency whose mandate it will be to help improve the physical and mental health of everyone in the settlement. This agency will also make any policy decisions that are backed by scientific evidence and implicated by public health. In this same building could be where there is psychiatry and psychotherapy offices.

In past posts I looked into the travel time between an Earth mid LEO Gateway station and our L4 settlement. I asked about 1g accel/decel or an 'existing technology' which gave 2.5 days or 908 days respectively. The former is impossible while the latter is too long. Today I thought of a different idea; what if we had our ferry travel between L4 and the LEO Gateway station where it provides some amount of thrust for the first quarter and then reverse thrust for the last quarter and coasts in between. I found that doing a 2 m/s2 acceleration for the first quarter, and then coast, and then decel at that same rate would cut the time down to 6.72 days. I used an example of 10t of payload to represent a large group of people heading back to Earth during the University's summer break and this required 320t of methalox fuel where, for example, the SpaceX Starship's capacity is 1200t. I redid the calculation with hydralox and found only 78.5t was needed. That acceleration rate would provide 0.2g for 2.24 days, 0g for the middle 2.24 days and then 0.2g for the decel 2.24 days, so the passenger experience will be mostly weightless or near weightless for that ~one week duration. Being weightless will make it easier to turn the ship 180 so as to face the other way during the coasting so as to provide the reverse thrust to decelerate. With this new much faster way to get to/from L4 from Earth, we could very easily match departures from L4 to coincide with takeoffs from Earth surface such that we meet at the LEO gateway station at about the same time. In this way people/cargo from our settelement could return to Earth while at the same time, people/cargo from Earth can be transferred to the ferry to go back to L4.

For the farm cylinder livestock I have further thoughts. For the goats, since there will be about 17 per farm, they can have full run of the hectare assigned to them. From the industry cylinder, or perhaps constructed outside of it into coldwelded pieces, will metal fences that are high enough to be goat proof be made with an option for a gate or two. These tall fences will surround completely the goat hectare. There will be a gate for the farm worker to get in and out, but there could also be a gate that is between farm one's goat hectare and farm two's goat hectare. The idea is that we start with 15 goats in the very first farm. They procreate and eventually reach 20. At about that time we open the gate between farm 1 and 2 to allow five goats to start in farm 2. Now both farm 1 and farm 2 will procreate where farm 2 will keep growing and farm 1 will feed any excess past 17 to farm 2. We would join all of the goat hectares with gates this way so as to be able to move the goats among them. There would be numerous low and high bushes planted within the goat hectare so as to give the goats something to eat and as well some interest to their land. Water sprinklers attached to the ceiling will water these bushes and get the goats wet too. Once the goats in farm 1 are no longer milk producing they would slowly get culled and then new goats from a different level would be brought down to replenish that farm. Over the goat hectare there can be fairly dim lighting except for one area in the center of their area that has an area twice the size of all of the goats together that is as bright as the sun (or as close to as bright as the sun as we can get). This way if the goats want bright light, they can go to it. This light as would all lights, would dim in the evening to be mostly dark at night.

For the chickens, for the purposes of making it easier to get the eggs for 988 hens/hectare, and also for the purposes of starting with smaller batches and moving them to bigger ones; I have divided the hectare into 44 seperate chicken pens each of 220m2 and each holding about 22 chickens and each would have it's own coop. So when we get a first batch of ~22 chicks, they would grow in a warm place somewhere on the farm and then get put in plot 1 of the chicken hectare. When we get the second batch of ~22 chicks we can reuse that same warm place somewhere on the farm, and then the second batch into plot 2. This would continue until all plots are full. Eventually the chickens in plot 1 will reach the stage in life where they aren't producing as many eggs or aren't producing any at all. This would be the time to cull those chickens and then start a new batch of chicks.

Somewhere in the farm cylinder there would be one farm whose chicken area is at least partially set aside for the production of chicks that sadly have most of the males euthanized after hatching, and then the rest made ready to deliver to any farm that has a plot ready.

For the ground crops - potatoes, carrots and corn, we would use no-till farming to help build up the soil as we will start with a 2 parts asteroid regolith dust and 1 part Earth soil mix that has various prokaryotes and worms mixed in. With respect to worms, these we will get from Earth and keep that first shipment seperate so as to first create a worm farm, and then from that worm farm we will distribute randomly the worms out into the ground crop hectares. It may be necessary to have a tractor for the farm, so we would import an electric one from Earth that gets shared among the farms, perhaps 1 for every six or eight farms; we'll have to see what uses they fulfil.

L4 Settlement - Farm Cylinder

The farm cylinder is a second cylinder attached to one end of the settlment cylinder of same construction with an outer 2504m cylinder and in inner 2500m circumradius dodecagon. I would increase the thickness of the carbon fiber exterior layer to improve the strength as the mass for this part of the cylinder will likely exceed the 25kg/m2 average that is found within the settlement.

I did quite a bit of research to determine what would be the makeup of the farm cylinder. The way I planned it, probably not the most efficient, but it does allow for the farm cylinder farms to grow as the population grows. I determined the yield of an aquaponics setup growing lettuce and tilapia, a livestock farm with goats and chickens for milk, cheese and eggs, inground crops like corn, potatoes and carrots, a big raised bed aquatic system to grow rice and an orchard of nut trees. Put all of that together and call it one farm.

I found that pasture raised eggs could produce 296400 eggs per year for a hectare (10,000m2) with 988 hens. I found that goats (17 of them) could produce 16065kg of goat milk per year per hectare. For corn, potatoes and carrots, each on half a hectare, producing 6276kg, 16500kg and 2500kg per year respectively. One hectare of rice provides 4000kg per year. Within a 2000m2 area 20 aquaponic setups would altogether produce 640kg of tilapia and 3600kg of lettuce. 3 hectares of orchard, though some of the orchard could share the chicken and goat area produces 11,000kg of nuts (almonds, pecans and walnuts) per year.

So one farm occupies 77000m2 and produces 83081kg food / year plus 24700 dozen eggs.

I found that a fair average for human consumption of food by kg was 715kg/year and so given how much food a single farm produces, for a total settlement population of half a million people, 4313 of these farms are needed. To fit that many farms in the farm cylinder I had to make the farm four levels and extend from my originally planned 5km length of 2500m circumradius dodecagon to 5150m length. I allowed for 4m of height between levels, and in this configuration all of the orchards for all of the farms would be taken out of the farms of levels 1,2 and 3 to reduce the footprint of those farms so as to give the nut trees a higher growing area on the top level.

For each farm we would need certain personnel:

For the 20 aquaponics setups it would take a lot of work and effort to get them setup and started, but once started it could be 3FTE (full time equivalent) that manages it. Tasks would include feeding the fish and doing all sorts of monitoring of all of the plants and the various levels of ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, oxygen, ph and other aspects of the water passing through each of the 20 setups of the farm. One person could work from 7am to 2pm and another could work from 1pm to 8pm so that they have one hour of overlap to discuss everything aquaponic. With three people they could split up their time however they want with respect to weekends. Tasks would include planting/harvesting the plants and fish and bringing them to the food processing building.

For the livestock I also figure 2FTE to feed and care for the animals, to get the milk and eggs and to clean up as needed. Tasks include feeding the animals, retrieving and cleaning the eggs and bringing the eggs to the food processing building in reusable egg-dozen containers. Getting the milk from any goats that are lactating and delivering the milk to the food processing building. Calling a farm vet if one is needed.

For the corn, potatoes, carrots and rice, I figure 4FTE, one for each of these, however, many many more at times of planting and harvesting. In this case we would try to stagger all of the farms on a level to have their planting and harvesting on different days so that a planting team can be created that moves from farm to farm, and a harvesting team is created that moves from farm to farm. It could be one person responsible for each of the corn, potatoes, carrots and rice such that each person becomes or is already total expert at everything there is to know about growing their specific food. It could be that during the growing season these workers do not need to spend a lot of time at their respective farm; especially if we get an automatic watering system in place. However, on planting and harvesting days they will need to be there to direct all of the casual workers (and of course to do the work themselves).

So there would be 9FTE who are the permanent farm workers who would be assigned to work at one specific farm. They could all help each other at specific times when more help is needed.

9FTE for 4313 total farms means we would need 38814 permanent farm workers.

The casual farm workers that have been described in previous posts would be anyone who isn't a farm worker who is expected to do about 3 hours per week in the farm. These people would work on the planting and harvesting teams that move from farm to farm and simply need to follow the permanent farmer's instructions.

These farm components will need all sorts of inputs, hopefully we can source many of them from the farm itself.

Fish food pellets - I have found some recipes online that make it appear that what we grow can almost fully be processed using potato starch as a binder. If there is any component that is critical for the fish that we can't produce, we will import it from Earth.

Aquaponic minerals and ph controllers - these would need to be sourced from Earth on a continuous basis until we find a way to produce these or manage them ourselves. Aquaponic growing medium would be something we would need to import from Earth until all 4313 farms are built, and then maybe we can find a way to recycle the growing medium with just occasional imports from Earth.

Herbicides and pesticides ought to not be needed so long as we do not allow for weeds or plant diseases to show up in our farms. Fertilizers on the other hand may be needed. A potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus compound, or Potassium nitrate; these are also things that we would need to get from Earth unless we could find a way to produce it.

I am assuming the chickens, goats and fish will all find ways to reproduce once we get the initial imports from Earth, but we'll need the permanent farm workers to manage that. This may include euthanising the male chicken chicks at hatching, culling the non egg laying hens, culling the aged out goats, but making use of all of these things perhaps for some for fish food, some for human consumption and some for composting.

In terms of the construction, each farm on each level will be setup on half of one side of the dodecagon so that it is entirely flat. So two farms would be back to back of a depth from the dodecagon vertice to the center of the side by 647m, and lengthwards into the 5150m direction by 114m. Between them at the center of the edge will be a narrow path that has a waist high rollor track that goes the length of the farm cylinder so that all of the farms that back on to this center of dodecagon edge can use the rollor track to walk with/push the universal bin that is used for the purposes of transporting harvest(s) to the food processing building.

The food processing building will span all four levels but will occupy only one side of the dodecagon, so those roller tracks that are on each of the other 11 sides will need to then turn left or right to follow a circumradius track that leads to the food processing building that is at the settlement end of the farm cylinder.

The processing building on levels 2, 3 and 4 would just be to finagle a way to roll those harvest bins down to level 1 and to roll or lift up those bins now empty back to the upper levels. Level 1 and part of the sub-level is where all of the food processing is going to happen. 

Examples of what the food processing building could have people do:

Take the lettuce, kale, bok choi, strawberries and anything that was harvested aquaponically and is to be delivered raw and put them directly into a bin destined for an apartment complex.

Taking the egg dozen containers, putting two or three into an export bin.

Process the goat milk into goat cheese and then package both the milk and the cheese into reusable containers and put an appropriate amount into an export bin.

The farm workers will do a cursory cleaning of the potatoes, carrots and corn, the food processors will do a final cleaning of these items and then distribute them into the export bins.

The fish would be prepared in a certain way for ease of cooking for the apartment complex kitchen crew, packaged in a reusable container and then put into an export bin.

Take whatever is needed to make the fish food pellets, make the fish food pellets, and put that into bins that go back out to the farms.

My original idea was to have people riding cargo bikes in the sub-level to deliver the food bins to the apartment complexes, but with 3333 apartment complexes and some of them over 10km away I came up with a different way. Though there are already numerous things (water supply, waste water, electricity, HVAC) attached to the ceiling of the sublevel, there ought still to be room to have a conveyor and roller track system with numerous switches that lead both to and from every apartment complex' kitchen. There would be a slot on the front side of a food bin that gets put into it a card with the apartment complex number in a big and clear UPC code. Scanners distributed throughout the network of conveyors and roller tracks will scan the UPC and set the conveyor switches correctly to guide the bin to that apartment complex. On the back side of the bin is the 'home' UPC that is fixed, so the kitchen person would empty the bin in the kitchen and then put it back in the floor, now with the bin facing the direction that scanners would guide it 'home' - back to the food processing building. This is why the food processing building in the farm cylinder drops into the sub-level though most of the work is being done on level 1, it is so that the bins can be moved into this sub-level conveyor and roller track system to get to its destination.

My last thought about all of this is that some of the things that grow may need proper seasonality while others may need diunural/nocturnal changes and still others would be happy with the same temperature, insolation and humidity perpetually. If this is the case, we would need to break apart some of the foods from all the individual farms to have those specific items grown in an environment that is created specifically to suit their growing needs. All of the assumptions I made above in terms of farm space would still hold; for example the space for rice could be removed from all of the individual farms which then opens up a space where a new hot sunny (artificial sun) place is created where only rice grows.

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.

L4 Settlement Part 8

Some more ideas, starting with countable roles to be fulfilled.

I did a quick search about numbers of professionals per capita for healthcare and education.

Doctors ought to be about 2.5 per 1000 or 1250 for the entire settlement. I would assign a quarter of the doctors to each live in a Quarter of the settlement. In this way the doctors in a quarter can split their time between the medical clinic within the Quarter and the hospital downtown.

Nurses ought to be about 15 per 1000 or 7500 for the entire settlement. I would assign these at 2.25 per apartment block; this way every apartment block would have 2 or 3 nurses. These nurses can help with any needs within their apartment block, or at the medical clinic, or at the hospital. If, for example, there are gerontological or palliative care needs for someone within an apartment block, the pair of nurses there could take turns being close by.

Patient attendants ought to be about 20 per 1000 or 10,000 for the entire settlement. I would assign these to be 3 per apartment complex, this way if there is a gerontological or palliative care person at the apartment, the patient attendant can be there, or can be at the hospital.

Primary school teachers ought to be 6 per 1000 or 3000 for the entire settlement. I would assign a quarter of these teachers to live in each Quarter of the settlement so as to teach in one of the four primary schools held within, preferably living in an apartment complex close to their school.

Secondary school teachers ought to be 8 per 1000 or 4000 for the entire settlement. Similar to the primary teachers, I would assign a quarter of these teachers to live in each Quarter of the settlement so as to teach in the one secondary school of that quarter, preferably in an apartment complex close to the secondary school.

I determined that 4.4% of our total population would be university age students which gives us 22000 students. Given a student to teacher average ratio of 25:1 this would require 880 university teachers. The university is downtown so these teachers could live anywhere within the settlement. Their preference could be to live in an apartment complex close to the university, but I would leave it open to them.

As mentioned in the nurses and patient attendants section above, if someone within an apartment complex reaches a certain elderly age where they start to need help, obviously well before that their apartment would be changed to be a ground floor apartment if they had previously been on the second or third floor. One or two of the ground floor apartments can be converted to be a long term care room to make it easier for the nurse and patient attendants to help with the elderly person. We would have them age in place rather than have a long term care home that groups them all together for efficiency. The doctors described above can make house calls to any such patients by going to visit the patients that are in the apartment complexes closest to where they live. Additionally, anyone else living in that apartment complex can spend time with this elderly person.

Pool lifeguards; I found that having about 16 per municipal pool can handle all the needs of that pool. This could be reduced to a quarter in the pre and post summer season if the pool opens earlier than school lets out and has reduced hours. For the 16 pools at the settlement we would need 256 lifeguards; assigned to have a quarter of them to live in each Quarter, preferably each living in an apartment complex close to the pool where they fulfill that role. Perhaps an additional 16 would be needed at the Olympic pool adjacent to the university.

There are likely other roles that I am not thinking of presently, but they would be counted up and assigned as are the ones mentioned above. It is difficult to determine how many people are needed to fulfill roles in the farm cylinder or the industry cylinder, or for bureacratic or recreational roles.

From my own city I would make an agreement with Cozey to have an ongoing order of a wide variety of sofas, chairs and accessories that would be shipped to the warehouse near the launch from Earth space port; to be flown up to the Earth's mid LEO gateway station, to then be loaded onto an L4-Earth ferry ship to be delivered to the settlement zero g box warehouse and then distributed to the apartments within the apartment complexes as citizens arrive. If we have sufficient units in our stock, the newly arrived citizens would get to choose from the variety, then it would be 'shipped' to their apartment by our logistics/warehouse team, and then the citizens can assemble them.

I would order a combination of Casper and Endy boxed mattresses for the beds. We would have a factory in the industry cylinder to make the metal rails of the bed frame, but could import from Earth a small selection of a variety of headboard-footboard combinations that would make use of the metal rails to create the bed. For ease of ordering and for ordering of sheet sets, every bed in the settlement will be of identical size - Full (75" x 53").

The industry cylinder would also have a factory to create towel racks for the bathrooms of the apartment complexes, however, we would likely need to import bathroom mirrors from Earth and hope that they don't break during lift off from Earth. Once at the mid-LEO Earth gateway station they ought to be okay. Perhaps once it is known what elements we can get from the asteroids we could find a way to fabricate mirrors in our industry cylinder.

The apartment complex kitchens will have six or eight induction burners, three or four electric ovens, one or two refridgerators, a commercial dishwasher, and one or two freezers in addition to all sorts of cooking equipment. Most of the food will come on an almost daily basis from the farm, so there won't need to be tonnes of storage, however, occasional shipments from Earth that are plentiful enough for many (or all) apartment complexes could require the need for more storage. There will be stainless steel counters and fixtures that will be produced at the settlement, but the actual induction burners, ovens and other appliances will need to be shipped from Earth. Somewhere in the kitchen or dining hall area will be a small raised bed herb garden so as to provide various fresh herbs for the cooks.

The communal dining area will have long rectangular tables and chairs that could sit eight per table and can be removed if ever that dining area space wants to be opened up for different kinds of events or for more easily cleaning the floor. There would be a fountain drink station that is open at all times as well as snacks so that outside of meal time, people from the apartment complex can still come here and have a snack and drink.

L4 Settlement Part 7

I decided I wanted to verify that that outer cylinder would be able to withstand the force of everything that gets pushed against it once the cylinder starts spinning at 0.6rpm.

First I calculated the weight of construction panels that are 1.5m x 2.5m x 20mm. The two large outer side layers are of 2mm thickness of steel, the interior is filled with 16mm of asteroid regolith and there is a 2mm thick steel strap that encloses the regolith and joins the two large outer sides. Using the density of steel and regolith this comes to 203kg for this panel and is all cold welded together.

I then calculated a structural panel that is similar to the one just described, but has within it four structural steel beams (one at each end, and one at 1/3 and 2/3). These beams are 60mm wide and with the regolith decrease due to these beams the new weight is 241kg. In real production there may be cross members too for additional strength and stability.

I drew out a simple two bedroom apartment and found it would take 30 panels for the walls and ceiling, I divided those in half to have half regular and half structural so that the mass of an apartment is 6657kg. For an apartment complex I multiplied that by 75 to give us about 150 people and rounded up this comes to 500,000kg per apartment complex. For half a million people with 150 people in each we need 3333 apartment complexes, I doubled that for things like the university, hospital, stadium, pools and so on and then divided by the surface area of the settlement. This gave 21.46kg/m2 which I rounded up to 25kg/m2.

I then asked ChatGPT-4o to help me figure out the steel thickness of the cylinder spinning at 0.6 rpm and having that much weight applied. The first response I got was that it needed to be 3860m thick. This was totally unreasonable.

After various back and forth with ChatGPT-4o I finally figured it out; with a 60% carbon fiber and 40% cold welded steel combination for the outer cylinder the thickness needed is 4.72mm. Carbon fiber has a much higher tensile strength than steel and this is exactly the strength we need. This is much more reasonable. This could be a 1mm outer steel surface, an inner 1mm steel surface and sandwiched between is 3mm of carbon fiber. To make this possible there would need to be a carbon fiber factory built in space that can build long strands; ones long enough to wrap the 2504m radius outer cylinder.

I've done a little bit of research to learn more about carbon fiber and it seems the production of it is complex requiring both chemical and mechanical processes that in some cases occur simultaneously and in others not. I also found that it may not mix with steel well on Earth due to oxidation, but in space we won't have that problem. Well, on the space side we won't, but on the interior side we will, so we'll need to make sure the interior cold welded steel cylinder is a true oxygen barrier.

L4 Settlement part 6

A lot more disparate thoughts.

For the apartments and the dining hall kitchens, have only a water source that the temperature is not regulated and have a tankless hot water heater in each apartment to feed hot water to the bathroom sink and shower, and in the dining hall kitchen for the sinks and the dishwashers.

Have those four restaurants mentioned in a previous post make use of a single commercial kitchen. On the opposite side of the restaurants, have a reception hall for wedding and other large parties, and have the reception use same commercial kitchen.

Have an immense shoebox shaped space warehouse/port that is attached to the center of the end of the cylinder on the industrial side such that the box does not rotate but that the cylinder does. Have an opening between the two at the center that has a door that can be atmospherically sealed. The door will have a person sized opening that is within a large cargo opening for large items.

This microgravity space box will have numerous zones:

• A room temperature atmosphere included storage area for shipments to/from Earth that require atmospheric pressure and can't be frozen. 
• A -10c temperature atmosphere included freezer room for anything that would do better frozen.
• A large enclosed space with no atmosphere and no temperature control, to store anything for shipments to/from Earth that can be held there.
• A large spaceship port - an enclosed space that has an enormous door that is big enough with a wide margin to allow a space ship to enter and be tied down. There will be air tanks such that once the ship is tied down and the door is closed and sealed, the air tanks can be emptied into this space. When it is time for the ship to leave, the air is returned under pressure into those tanks. The ship would be tied down to an enormous disc that can rotate such that we can have the ship come nose first in, and then once in at any time it can be rotated 180° so it can be nose first on exit. I don't know if this is a good idea, but I was thinking there could be a mechanism to push safely the ship to exit the port with enough force to exit the L4 gravity well. Of course there would need to be an equal and opposing force but I figure this could be managed. Doing this would use the plentiful electricity we have rather than the previous fuel on the ship.

With all of this warehouse space having almost zero g, the insides can be empty and four storeys high but have lots of hooks embedded in the floors, walls and ceilings. Those hooks with some straps can be used to fix cargo such that it doesn't float around. For safety, workers will always be tethered in these large empty space volumes as otherwise they could find themselves somehow within the center with no method to get out of the center.

Within the industry cylinder up against the end where this end-box is, there will be the administration office that is the place where, with many cameras inside the box, the logistic manager will work, and where warehouse workers will go to hangout and receive instructions as to what needs to be done in the box 

For example, we might receive a shipment of 500 tankless water heaters but the rate of construction only has a need for them at a rate of 12 per week. So every Monday, for example, a warehouse worker will take 12 units and with the ease of zero g, move them into the industry cylinder. Once there, an elevator will move them down the ~2504m to get to the sub level to then have a different worker move them, now under 1g, to the construction site.

Continuing with this microgravity box, there would be space for atmosphere and non-atmosphere zero g manufacturing, for machines to be built that do mass production of anything that benefits from being manufactured at microgravity.

Still more with this very large microgravity box, some of it will be a laboratory under room temperature and atmosphere zero g experiments. Another will be for no atmosphere experiments. And another will be for 70 Kelvin experiments.

And finally this end-box will have an observation area that has atmosphere and has a clear view in the direction of Earth, with a handful of fixed telescopes to allow for a better view.

Different topic - clothes. There will be in each quarter a clothes exchange shop where any citizen can bring clothes at any time and any citizen can retrieve clothes at any time. I also thought that bulk t-shirt orders from Earth could be made for school age kids from K-12 that would be given to the students with their school supplies on the first day of school. We would hand down the t-shirts until the shirts are worn out. Similarly shoes, socks and underwear of a fairly wide variety will be ordered in bulk and simply distributed evenly to each of the four quarter clothes exchange shops.

Have the HR manager have a sub office for census, registration and passport control. Census would be every month for the early months as we grow from a few 100 citizens to a few thousand. Then the census could be every quarter until getting to 10s of thousands, and then it can be annually. Census could be taken simply by having people respond to an email or mobile device notification. Registration would be for things like births, marriages, divorces, deaths, incoming immigrants, outgoing emigrants and Earth students. Passports would be issued for any citizen going to Earth. Perhaps we would work with the Passport Canada office such that we use their services by validating all of the information and then simply sending them the info for them to produce the passports and send them back to the settlement.

I had ChatGPT-4o assist with determining the light fixture for the settlement. I asked it to mimic 85% of solar insolation producing only 360-700nm wavelengths of light to avoid the worst of UVA and UVB that causes skin cancer while also providing the correct wavelengths for photosynthesis. It determined that using our brightest available LEDs the light source would need to be 250m to 500m above the surface of the dodecagon. Given this I have revised the construction of the whole settlement, now it will be an inner cylinder of 2200m radius that has a vacuum within, but has the LED light panels on its outer surface which faces the dodecagon at 2500m circumradius. These two are connected by sparsely put cables as there will be no force that causes the central light cylinder to fall, but we will want it to rotate with the rest of the station. As before, below the dodecagon with a radius of 2504m will be the sub-level and the whole settlement will be as before, 10km long.

Given this new construction, nothing changes with respect to the settlement interior for the people, except that now it isn't possible to see as far around the cylinder as it would have been with a 2200m ceiling. One big difference is how much less atmosphere will be needed since we are no longer filling the whole cylinder. I had not calculated the nitrogen needed for the full cylinder, but for this new cylinder within a cylinder I asked and found that 49,612 tonnes of ammonia would be needed to get the Nitrogen gas required to fill this space.

In a previous post about getting the Nitrogen from ammonia mined at the Kuiper belt, instead of having a single ship to go there, we would create a continuous process. First send to the Kuiper belt the mining apparatus to gather up any asteroids that have ammonia. Then, every month, send a cargo vessel out to that mining apparatus to be filled with the ammonia asteroid. Do this continually, monthly, until the first cargo vessel returns and deposits the ammonia so as to produce the Nitrogen gas, and then now no new cargo vessels need to be created; the first one can be sent back again. Once that first one arrives, every month we will receive a shipment of ammonia to convert into Nitrogen. If we can get these cargo vessels to transport ~10,000 tonnes each, after five months we would have the Nitrogen gas needed, and then going forward we can store the ammonia and sell it for profit.

I asked ChatGPT-4o if we had a ship that could produce constant acceleration that provided 1g for the passengers to the midpoint and then decelerated at 1g to the 1/3 point of the Kuiper belt and use a Jupiter gravity assist, how long would it take, and I got 15.6 days. If we were able to produce an engine that provided such constant accel/decel this would be a game changer for the retrieval of ammonia.

There are five or six municipal pools in my town; in this space settlement we could create one for each sub-quad, near the daycare-dining hall-primary school; in this way part of the kids education could include swim lessons. Similarly we could create at the university complex an Olympic sized swimming pool and a lap pool to allow for swimming and diving competitions. In each case the pool would ingress into the sub-level to the required depth of the pool such that it would be mostly flush with the dodecagon surface.

Further roles that people would need to fill now include lifeguards at these pools, restaurant and reception hall waiters and waitresses, the kitchen crew for preparing the meals, serving them, busboys and dishwashers, logistics people to work in the external box warehouses, and to be moving cargo from there to wherever it is needed for the industry, farm or settlement. I am assuming that with a population of half a million people that there will be enough population to have all of these roles filled just by the desire of the different people to do different things. I do not know if there will need to be an incentive for any roles that few or no people want, but that need to get done. I do not know what could be an incentive, but perhaps for these least liked jobs we can have short shifts and ask many people to do them. 

If products arrive from Earth and are intended for the furthest distance of the farm, that could be as far as 20km away as the industry cylinder might be 5km, the settlement 10km and the farm 5km. Given this I have thought to add train tracks and an electric train to the sub-level to transport mostly cargo from being received from the warehouse to then be moved out to where it is needed. In fact, there could be a train line at each of the four cardinal points of the outer cylinder. Similarly, from that portal that exists between the rotating industry cylinder and the stationary warehouse-box, there could be elevators to descend to the Industry cylinder surface at each of the four cardinal points so as to meet up with the trains.

L4 Settlement part 4

Further disparate notes.

There is a centrifugal force being applied by the mass of all of the settlement contents being pushed against the dodecagon which is pushing against the metal cylinder that is the separator between space and inner atmosphere. I do not know how to calculate that force per sq m as I do not know the mass of the settlement; but I know this could be calculated. I had originally thought that having a 15700m continuous steel strapping would need to be wrapped around the cylinder to offset that internal force, however, I have since learned about the idea of cold welding. Cold welding would allow the steel curved panels to automatically weld to each other when in space such that they become a single piece. What would be left would be to determine an appropriate thickness for this cylinder that, if it is was all one piece, how thick would it need to be to support the mass held within. Given this new knowledge about cold welding, the inner dodecagon will be built first to allow it to be cold welded together, and then the support beams that join the round outer cylinder to the inner dodecagon will be cold welded to the dodecagon's exterior and finally the cylinder will be cold welded outside of that and cold welded to the support beams. Perhaps some of the support beams can be in a triangle truss structure to improve the strength between the two.

There are various departments that arise within a city. Doing some digging  I found the following departments and I attach my thoughts to each one.

Fire department - there will be a fire inspector per quadrant to continuously verify the fire extinguishers that we obtained from Earth to do the same types of extinguisher inspections are done on Earth. We may import one firetruck and build a fire station located centrally, downtown.

Finance - since there are no payments going to the city from citizens, nor any fees for anything, nor any expenditures, the finance person or team will be responsible for managing the sales the settlement does to external to settlement parties, and manage the orders and payments made to Earth for supplies brought back to the settlement.

Public Works & Utilities - there will be a public works person in each quadrant whose purpose it is to solve problems, for example, any appliance within a kitchen, any window that ceases working, any clean up that needs to happen in public places and so on. This person will be responsible for making sure all of the infrastructure is working.

Economic Development - this would be the Industry manager, someone I already described, who would be managing the industry cylinder and assisting any citizens who have production ideas for anything we could sell to the outside, or that we could use on the inside.

Human Resources - this person or team could manage the selection of people for all of the committees at sub-sub-quad and up; and keep track of them as they will vary from year to year. This person could also handle immigration into the settlement - to assign an apartment complex and to give an introduction once the new settler(s) arrive.

Recreation & Culture - there would be a recreation person in each quadrant and a manager for the whole settlement. This team will organize as many sports and cultural events as we can manage, making use of the facilities in each quarter as well as the facilities downtown. This will include quarter vs quarter sports events, the marathon and half marathon twice a year, drama plays in any and every performance hall, help music bands get started and so on.

Information Technology - this would be centralized and would be our local internet and mobile device network team. There would be a fibre optic network piped in to every apartment and as well into the schools, the medical centers, the hospital and the university (and anywhere else). Additionally, there would be Wifi across the settlement and we would use wifi for communicating with each other rather than a 4g or 5g network. The IT team will be there to set all of this up, and to maintain it.

Police - we would have a very small security force that is full time, but then with perhaps a few thousand on reserve so that at big events where there are lots of people, we can have those reservists assist. Perhaps the reservists would have a rotation on the security force. There would be no guns in this settlement and the only knives would be ones in the kitchens that are safeguarded.

City Planning - The location of the moving walkways, the pedestrian paths that run the circumference and are perpendicular to the moving walkays, the downtown core and the sinuous half marathon circuit around the settlement will all be pre-planned. The first ~100 settlements (25 in each quadrant) will also be pre-planned. Following that, each quadrant can have a city planning committee that decides when and where to build the next apartment blocks, where to build the daycary/primary school, where to build any commercial area. This committee could propose a few plans for expansion and put them to a vote to all of the existing quarter citizens. They would need to adhere to just a few rules, for example, each sub-quad needs to have at least 208 apartment blocks.

City manager and clerk - these are people who are the small amount of bureacracy. Both would participate in the monthly meetings that include each Quarter rep as well as the farm and industry managers. The clerk would take the notes and publish everything for citizens to learn about what is happening in the city. The manager would see to it, through some delegation, that the whole settlement is operating smoothly.

Olive trees, and perhaps other of the trees that will be in pots in the settlement area, will need to have a dormant time if they are to grow properly, and the only way they can have a dormant time is by lowering the temperature. My original plan was to have the settlement have the same sunrise and sunset year round and have the same temperature all of the time as well. Upon revision, we will have Mediterranean seasons without the extremes of cold or hot. So the sunrise and sunset will allow for longer days in our summer and shorter days in our winter, night time temperatures throughout the year will drop a little, and the winter low would go down to 4c with the summer high go up to 25c. And there would be variability included, though there wouldn't be precipitation.

Given this, the apartments will need to have some amount of insulation and a simple electric heater for those colder months.

Next, in my original plan I had a small, perhaps 200m radius cylinder that traverses the center of the cylinder from end to end that is the light source for the settlement. At 200m radius, this would put the light fixture about 2300m from the surface of the dodecagon. I do not know and have not been able to find online what would be a good solution for this. Do light fixtures that exist today meet the requirements of providing equivalent to sunlight light at the surface from 2300m up? Do we need to significantly lower the light fixtures down to 50m above the surface in order for them to be effective? Perhaps there is a way to pipe in real sunlight from our Sun, but I am not certain how we would do this in a spinning cylinder. Or perhaps a whole new technology is needed for this.

Immigrants from Earth would be instructed to bring clothes that are good for temperatures from 4c to 25c but that take into account zero precipitation. They would also be permitted to bring books that would go either in the apartment complex bookshelf, or perhaps a sub-quad library, or perhaps a central library. They could also bring a few small decorative items to decorate their apartment. People who are doctors, teachers or nurses would be permitted to bring extra things corresponding to their role. They could also bring any laptop computer and mobile device, but no monitors and no desktop computers. A bulk shipment of monitors would be ordered and given to people who request them. There may be a few more items these immigrants would be permitted to bring with them but I can't think of them at present.

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.

L4 settlement part 2

With a population of half a million with living spaces divided roughly into four equal quadrants there would be 125,000 citizens in each quadrant. Further dividing  the quadrant into sub-quads, each sub-quad would have roughly 31,250 citizens. Building apartment complexes that fit 120-150 residents and using 150 as the dividing amount, 31,250 citizens would fit in 208 apartment complexes. If I define an apartment complex to have 20 studio apartments at 46m2, 30 two bedroom apartments at 55m2 and four three bedroom apartments at 65m2, add a dining hall and kitchen, three laundry rooms and a central ground level courtyard I found the total would add to about 3000m2. As this will be a three level apartment complex, each floor would then have 1000m2. So in the chart below of one sub-quad there are 208 apartment blocks in about a 30mx33m block size.

In addition to the numerous pink apartment blocks is the purple path, which is a circuitous path that does a full half marathon circuit through every sub-quad, that is, through the entire settlement. It would be used twice a year for a marathon and half marathon race. There is a primary school near the center, this is for daycare and elementary school aged kids that only come from this sub-quad. In the upper right corner is the high school, it is in that corner as that corner is the center of the Quadrant. The other three sub-quad corners that meet there will also have something significant at the corner. The high school receives students from all four sub-quads (ie, the entire Quarter). There is a commercial area also near the center in a gold colour, there are dark horizontal lines, these are pedestrian paths that wrap around the entire perimeter and there is a green line to the right, this is a moving walkway that goes to/from the downtown area.

As a sub-quad is 971m by 625m, not every sub-quad will have a 150° change of inclination at a dodecagon vertice within it; if any did, the plan above would simply have a column empty of anything, like the empty column that is about the fifth one above. It can be seen that there is plenty of empty space for rearranging the plan for the apartment complexes to allow for a tennis complex, for example.

I did the above planning as I was curious if the population I had chosen (half a million people) would really fit well with the dimensions I picked (2500m circumradius dodecagon of 10km length), and it looks like it fits nicely with a human scale density.

Principally along the purple park line, but definitely all over the 'streets' of the sub-quad there will be trees grown in pots. A mix of decorative ones and ones that produce something edible, like olives, figs, apples, cherry, lemon and other citrus would be grown. 

I was also curious about the centrifugal force that provides us gravity. How much does gravity change depending on how high up we build? I did an analysis and found that even if the university or hospital goes up to seven floors, the top floor would be 0.9977g where at the ground floor it is 1.0062g.

Next I was trying to figure out what all of these apartment buildings and other buildings will be made of. It would be very expensive to bring in building supplies from Earth, so we would have to make do with what we can find nearby. For sure now that we have an industrial cylinder that has gravity, we can more easily create a brick factory that uses asteroid regolith as a base. Instead of making cinder blocks, bricks can be made that are 4x8x16 instead of the standard cinder block of 8x8x16. If we can make millions of these 4x8x16 and develop the mortar we could do a large portion of the construction with bricks and steel beams.

Depending on how much metal we can obtain panels could also be made that have one thin sheet of metal and then a layer of fine regolith dust and then another thin sheet of metal. If these panels could be mass produced they could also be used in numerous places.

The next thing I thought about was this idea of running the settlement like a social democracy with no income, no cash and no expenses and decisions made at various levels by the citizens who rotate into positions of authority. Obviously for teachers, nurses, doctors and farm workers they all have a specific role to play which gives them a place to go and something to do at specific times. Everyone who is not a farm worker will be expected to do a minimum, say 3 hours, per week at the farm, so for people who aren't in those specific roles, what will they do? So I thought of a bunch of different other roles: journalism, music and visual arts, sport coaching for a wide array of sports, sports teams and leagues management, hair dresser, sex worker, maintenance in terms of janitor but also fixing and renovations, infrastructure team, asteroid mining team, and any job inside the industry cylinder.

If a person is found to not be doing anything except for the minimum farm working hours, the sub-quad committee could meet with that person and try to work out for that person what they could do or try from the numerous different options. 

Additionally, from the earliest school years the kids will be taught that living on this settlement works as a social democracy where each is expected to play a role. Adults who are already filling a role could be called upon to come to a classroom and speak to the students to talk all about the role that this adult fulfills. As more and more different roles are displayed and explained to the students, each student may be able to form an idea of what role they intend to fulfill as they get older. In the later years of high school more detailed and specific information, like what is expected of you for each role will be given.

space L4 settlement

My next idea is a half million population settlement at the L4 Lagrange point. Situated there the large cylinder will be gravitationally held in place by the Sun and the Earth so very little position correction will be required. It will be made up of three connected 2500m radius cylinders. The middle one is the settlement, 10km long, and on either side is a matching radius but shorter cylinder, on one side for food production, and the other, for industry. The whole complex will be radiation protected by a powered superconductive solenoid that is in the shade so as to be kept cold. What follows are the ideas I have about it.

As with other past posts, this would begin with sending an automated system to that L4 point that processes ERO NEA asteroids to get fuel and to build regolith bricks and to produce metal ingots that can then be fabricated into metal sheets and beams for construction. In fact, at L4 there may already be asteroids or comets being held in place due to the nature of L4.

Shipped from Earth would be the YBCO Superconductor as this is not something that is easily produced and that could be produced in situ at L4.

To handle radiation, have on the shady side of the cylinder, the length of the cylinder the YBCO solenoid fixed to an insulating backing to keep the temperature at or below 93K. It requires only 100kW for 10 seconds to charge it up. This initial charge would be done before the cylinder has begun to spin, so that it would be easy to attach a cable from the cylinder to the solenoid to charge it. It would have affixed to it a few thrusters throughout so as it can be repositioned periodically since it will not be attached to the cylinder once the cylinder is spinning. Attachable is a separate autonomous machine that has thrusters, significant batteries, capacitors and solar panels. The charger can detach and move into sunshine to charge up the batteries. When it is needed to recharge the solenoid it can return and attach to it and charge up the capacitor and the capacitor can feed the solenoid.

Paris has a population density of 20,000/km2. If the settlement cylinder is 2500m radius and 10km length, the surface area is 2*pi*r*l = 157 km2. If all 157 km2 was at Paris density it would be 3.1 million people. With half a million population in this cylinder the population density will be 3183 people per square km.

The construction will consist of an outer circular cylinder and then 4m within that a regular dodecagon; so the outer cylinder would actually be 2504m to allow for a 2500m circumradius dodecagon which provides 12 equal sides of 1294m and a perimeter of 15530m.

With 15530m perimeter and 10km length, the interior surface area would be 155.3 km2. The inner dodecagon will be supported by support beams that connect the outer cylinder to the inner dodecagon perhaps every 10m at every vertice and at the midpoint of every dodecagon side.

Using thrusters positioned at the four cardinal points on the exterior of the cylinder positioned perhaps every two km along the length of the cylinders, the thrusters will initiate and adjust as needed the position and rotation of the cylinder to bring it up to 0.6 RPM which will generate 1.00g at the 2500m circumradius dodecagon interior and ever so slightly more at the 2504m cylinder radius.

As with past posts where I’ve described the construction, the exterior will be coated with 2m of asteroid regolith bricks to protect further about radiation or any errant space debris that could come into contact with the exterior. Resting on that exterior of asteroid regolith bricks would be solar panels across all of the round surface of the 2500m cylinder. Using ChatGPT-4o’s help, I found that a 2500m radius 20km length cylinder covered in 18% efficient solar panels and spinning at 0.6rpm would generate 77GW. To put that into perspective, the province of Quebec with cold winters and over 8 million residents, generates around 42GW. We will be flush with electricity.

The interior of the cylinder will be coated with an impermeable and smoothed out layer to protect from space egress and to provide a smooth surface to the infrastructural needs of this sub level.

The sub level would only be accessible to specific people, not to the general population. Principally it is for infrastructure like water and sewage management, electricity and internet supply and other uses. For example, a handful of electric medic golf carts could be imported from Earth so as to bring anyone from anywhere in the settlement to the hospital quickly. Also, the temperature control system could be attached to the ceiling with occasional vent holes up into the settlement.

Now we get to the interior of the settlement cylinder where we have essentially a 15.5x10km rectangle with a 150 degree incline change every 1294m in the 15.5km direction.

The first thing I would suggest is that we divide it into quadrants, NW, NE, SW and SE and that at the center of this configuration we create central city things like a sports stadium, a concert hall, the hospital and university. I wrote a previous post about having a space university that gives details about all of the programs that it could offer. In addition to those programs it could give one year certifications for becoming full time farm worker or working on the industrial side, or on the infrastructure team.

The next thing is that there will be no cars; instead, at every second vertice along the dodecagon perimeter, there will be bidirectional moving walkways that lead to the center. Being at every second vertice means that at maximum a person would have to walk 1294m either to the moving walkway to the left or to the right, and most people would be walking less. There will additionally be paths that are perpendicular to the moving walkways that do a full perimeter circuit and that lead to the moving walkways. I would have km markings installed on the floor of these perimiter following walkways so that if someone was using the path for running exercise, they could track their kms.

Each of the four quadrants will be further divided into quadrants (called sub quads) and at the center will be a high school, a gymnasium and pool and other facilities that could be used by all of that quadrant. The high school would also have a dining hall so that the students (and staff and teachers) there can have both breakfast and lunch. There would also be a medical facility with GPs, physiotherapists, psychotherapists, dentists, gynecologists and others.

Each of the four sub quads will have a daycare/primary school and perhaps smaller shops like a hairdresser, barber shop, pedi/mani place. The daycare and the school will be separated by a kids dining hall. Daycare kids would enter on one side and primary school aged kids would enter the other side and all of these kids would have breakfast and lunch provided. Each sub-quad could also have a poly-denominational church/mosque/synagogue. Maybe one sub-quad for each quadrant will have a tennis complex, while another sub-quad in each quadrant will have a soccer field. In this way quadrants could have competitions with each other.

In terms of the living quarters, the first level of all of the apartment complexes will be for accessible purposes, the second and third level will only be accessible by stairs. There will be no elevators at this settlement except perhaps at the university and/or hospital at the center. The apartments will have no kitchen as all meals will be eaten in communal dining halls. There is significant food waste on Earth, here on this settlement we need to do everything we can do avoid food waste. By having dining halls for groups of 120-150 residents we can make certain that we serve to people as closely as possible exactly how much they will eat, and leftovers management can be managed better. Also, by centralizing meals this way we can ensure everyone gets all of the nutrition that they need, including vitamin D which without sunlight would be harder to obtain. Given this plan of having a dining hall for 120-150, there will be apartment complexes that will hold that many people with an interior courtyard that is a communal place for dining and hanging out and for kids to play.

The apartments will have a small living room, one, two or three bedrooms, a balcony and for the bathroom I am thinking of it being a little more complicated. I would want the urine to be processed in such a way that it can be cleaned and re-entered into our potable water system, something that the ISS is already doing. I want the defecation to be macerated, transported to be heat-composted and then aged and accumulated and then used in the farm that I’ll get to later. Also, since any form of paper will be rare, all of the toilets will have the bidet function built in, basically Japanese toilets. So it could be that each apartment will have two toilets, one clearly marked for urine and the other clearly marked for defecation; though unlike the ISS, if someone has to pee while pooing, we would let that go down the defecation channel.

Now would be a good time to indicate the social structure of this city; it will be a social democracy where once the settlement is mostly populated, it is the citizens that run it. There won’t be money or salaries and each member of the city will be expected to contribute in any number of ways. This could include janitorial, working in the kitchen, having a more official job like teacher, nurse or doctor, being a full time farm worker, being a full time industrial worker and so on. All food and lodging are provided as well as internet access, heating and hot water, attendance at sporting events and music concerts and so on. Any farm produce that is in excess of what the settlement needs can be sold to anyone outside the settlement with that money coming to the settlement and that the highest level committee will decide how it is to be spent. Similarly if there is any industrial revenue, that revenue will also be spent by the settlement committee.

The lowest level of the social structure is a small committee that represents the apartment block of 120-150 people. This small committee will manage things like who is working in the kitchen of the dining hall, who is cleaning the hallways or responsible for repairs and so on. A chairman of the apartment block would be chosen and this person would meet monthly in the sub-quad committee.

The sub-quad committee would meet monthly to discuss things about the sub-quad, like who are the daycare workers, who are working in the kids dining hall, who are the teachers, what are the teacher’s needs and anything else pertaining to that eighth of the entire settlement. A chairman would be chosen to represent the sub-quad at the Quadrant level.

At the quadrant level the leader from each of the subquads would meet with a fifth person who is chosen or selected from anywhere within the Quadrant to act as chairperson with a tie breaking vote privilege. This committee would manage things that are quadrant related, like about the high school, the facilities and of course to hear about anything at the sub-quad or apartment block level.

In all cases of these committees the members would be on the committee for three years and it would be staggered. Of course the very first committee would be all members starting together, but one third could have a 1 year mandate, one third a 2 year mandate and one third a 3 year mandate. Committee members can stay on if they choose to for a second 3 year term, but then must leave for at least one year before applying for or being elected to the committee again.

Finally at the settlement level there would be each of the four quad chair people, as well as a few others, like the Farm manager, the Infrastructure manager, the Industry manager and perhaps one or two others. This committee would make decisions that affect the whole settlement, things like the schedule for sunrise/sunset, the temperature of the settlement, immigration decisions, settlement security and others. I would be curious to know if this committee would allow for sex workers to setup shop which would be a little odd in a no pay social democracy.

In each of the four quadrants and connected to each other so that it forms one continuous and sinuous path, is a park that may be narrow in places and wider in others that will have plants, trees, benches, in some places games like ping pong or a few mini-golf holes and all with a central path the leads through it. It should be possible to make this path have a total length of exactly half of a marathon so that once or twice a year we can have a marathon (two laps) and half marathon race open to all citizens.

With most buildings being residential and being three stories high, there could be rooftop terraces from which it would be possible to see far to either side of the cylinder to see the settlement curve up into the ceiling, and also to see towards the center where some taller building are for the hospital, university and sports stadium.

The next construction part is a circular light panel that spans the length of the cylinder with a zero g catwalk within it to allow access if ever needed. The light panel would be bright enough to simulate sunlight, or bright enough to simulate a cloudy day. At sunset it would dim and change colours gradually for the span of an hour until it is all dark except for a few random lights that stay on brightly, acting as stars in the sky. In the morning the lights would slowly come on through various hues over the span of an hour and will end up back in daylight.

The first people to arrive will be the construction workers who are helping to build the settlement; they will have brought with them MREs. The second group of people to arrive are for the farm so that they can get it started, there will be more about the farm later. The third group of people to arrive will be more construction workers to accelerate the building of the downtown buildings (university, hospital, sports stadium, concert hall). With those under construction the first residential apartment complexes will start to go up, first in one quadrant, and then the first one in the second quadrant, and then the first one in the third quadrant, and then the first one in the fourth quadrant. Further residential buildings, moving walkways and the linear continuous sinuous park would get created as needed in all quadrants.

Once that has come along, the settlement will be ready to receive new settlers at a higher rate, to populate the hospital, the university, to help further with the construction and the farming.

In terms of immigration, at the beginning it will be very specifically for construction workers, farmers with aquaponic and hydroponic experience, the nurses, doctors and teachers. Of course for all of these people, they will need to agree to the social democracy way of living without money or income but getting the benefits of society. Once a certain threshold is met, then the requirements for immigration will become more lax and a constant flow of incoming people will get us to the half million citizens.

In addition to all of the different roles already described, I can imagine a media company being created that has people that do radio broadcasts, television broadcasts, sports broadcasts, make TV shows, even make movies. So all of the production staff, actors and actresses, extras, directors, producers and so on would be welcome.

With respect to fire safety, candles, matches, flints, lighters, cigarettes or anything that can be smoked will all be prohibited and searched for before anyone headed for the settlement leaves Earth. As water is not so easy to come by we won't have sprinklers in the buildings, but we will obtain from Earth fire extinguishers, especially for all of the kitchens, but in the residences as well.

Some people may come to the settlement to retire and who would eventually die. Each sub-quad’s church/mosque/synagogue could host the funeral and perform the burial right in that church building. The body would be lowered into the sub-level where it would be an infrastructure person’s job to take that body away. Incineration may be too energy intensive, but launching the body towards the Sun may be an option. A plaque can be created and then affixed in an obvious place within the church building to denote that X person was buried here on Y date. Perhaps at an edge of the industrial cylinder (discussed below) a sling shot exit can be created for the jettisoning of any material, that has enough force as a sling shot to jettison whatever (including the dead person's body) towards the Sun, or at least out of the L4 gravity well. It is likely that sling shot exit would push the entire settlement off course but as a mass comparison it wouldn't be much and over night the exterior thrusters can be fired to move it back on course. Yes, any time the whole settlement needs a positioning adjustment, this would happen overnight when most people are sleeping, so that if there is any jarring motion, however slight, it will disturb as few people as possible.

On the north side of the settlement cylinder will be affixed the farm cylinder that has the same outer cylinder dimension and could be 5km long, or perhaps more, depending on a much more detailed analysis of how much space is needed to grow the food needed by the settlement citizens.

There will be hundreds of separate aquaponic setups; each one with its own fish tank and hydroponic growing system. As an example, there could be twenty four setups for one type of tomato that are growing in such a way that twice a month there are some ready to harvest. Repeat this pattern on four levels covering the entire cylinder for all of the different things that get grown.

The most popular and easy to grow aquaponically are tomatoes, lettuce, watercress, peppers, cucumber, cauliflower, cabbage and strawberries. More challenging, but further possible things to grow aquaponically include Sweet corn, Beets, Dwarf citrus tree, Onions, Radishes, Orchids, Violas, Microgreens, Asparagus, Wheatgrass, Pak, Choi, Swiss Chard, Arugula, Chives, Carrots and Onion. Finally, there are some nutrient hungry plants that can be tried: Beans, Squash, Broccoli, Peas, Flowers, Bananas, Citrus fruits. It would be great if we could find a way to grow durum wheat (or any kind) to see about making bread and pasta. The fish that can be grown include tilapia, carp, trout, perch and catfish. Some of these fish may have more specific water temperature requirements, so those would be paired with crops that can handle that temperature.

One portion of the farm will be set aside to have a 3m depth mix of 2 parts asteroid regolith powder and 1 part Earth soil in order to grow an orchard of apples and pears. The humanure that has been heat-composted and aged and so is safe, would be buried in with the orchard to improve the soil there. With half a million residents the amount of humanure would become excessive, so we would prepare it for export as perhaps other space habitats could use it. It is possible that we could store large packs of humanure outside of the settlement as the amount of space out there is practically infinite.

Another portion will be to have chickens so as to produce eggs.

Another part of the farm will work on self sourcing, for example, how to get the fish eggs to reseed the fish in the aquaponic systems – or in the case of tilapia, they seem to replenish themselves. How to get seeds for the plants growing in the aquaponic systems. It may be economical to place a large seed order from Earth since seeds are small and ship easily. How to create the hydroponic growing medium and how to make fish food. How to get chicks to grow into chickens to replace the ones that die so as to keep up egg production.

Finally, yet another part of the farm will be a food processing plant to process the harvested food into end or interim products to be put into reusable shipping boxes that will go out to the various apartment complexes. Having a passage open between the farm cylinder and the sub-level of the settlement cylinder, a worker using a cargo bike would deliver the reusable box of food to specific apartment complexes who had placed an order for such products. The dining hall’s kitchen will have a way to retrieve the delivered box and to return to the delivery worker the previously used and now empty reusable box. These plastic boxes could presumably be 3D printed from the industrial side of this settlement.

As the food is important for everyone, every citizen will be expected to do a few hours every week at the farm. There would be a farm manager and an algorithm such that when anyone who isn’t a full time farm worker shows up, on their mobile device will appear two or three tasks that in that moment need to happen, and so the person will pick one, it will get removed from the list so on one else gets it, and then they go and do that task. Once the task is done they would flag it as done and then ask to get prompted for another set of tasks to choose from. Additionally, primary and secondary school classes can have once a month a session, scheduled to be one class of students at a time, to go to the farm and learn about doing (and doing) the various tasks that need to take place. A full time farm employee would be tasked with going to the primary school whose class is going, to help, with the teacher, to guide the young students to the farm. For secondary students the farm worker would simply greet them at the farm.

As every citizen will be required to do some and they have to use the app from which they select which task they will do; it will become obvious to the farm manager when she looks at the delinquent report, that the people in that report aren’t doing enough. I do not know what ought to be done about these people, but the settlement committee can make a decision about it. Perhaps it can be three warnings and if still no pickup on the farm labour, deportation.

On the far side of the farm cylinder, the side that is at the end and has empty space on the other side of it, a handful of observatories will be built to allow for citizens to come here for a visit and to look out into space.

So on one side of the settlement cylinder will be the farm cylinder; on the opposite side of the settlement cylinder will be the industry cylinder.

The industry cylinder will have in it various manufacturing and other industries to supply to the settlement, and possibly to other space habitats, any of the things that might be needed. In my head I started from awakening; we may need bed sheets, clothing, pillow cases, towels. Perhaps none of these could be made without Earth’s help, but maybe we can find a way to recycle what gets brought to this settlement. Then if I want to brush my teeth I’ll need a tooth brush and tooth paste; for the former we can get everyone a handle and then import from Earth just the head part in large bulk. For the latter maybe there is a way to make it and put what is made back into an existing emptied tube originally from Earth.

Then there is soap, shampoo, conditioner, skin moisturizer. Apart from the containers these would go in, I suspect that we could find a way to produce these, and refill containers that were brought from Earth when the settlers first arrived. For more specialty products we could place an order from Earth.

Maybe there is a way to produce Impossible Meat or Beyond Beef that can then be added to the food that we farm to provide to the apartment complexes.

I am confident that other people would find many different ideas to make use of the industrial cylinder to make use even of the low gravity if they work closer to the center of the cylinder.

On the far side of the industry cylinder (like at the end of the farm side), the side that is at the end and has empty space on the other side of it, a handful of observatories will be built to allow for citizens to come here for a visit and to look out into space.

The original asteroid processing plant could continue to operate outside of the industrial end, to reach further and further asteroids to bring them in for water, hydrogen, fuel, metals, carbon and so on. If we encounter any rare Earth metals, we could sell them back to Earth through the next ship that goes back to Earth.

In terms of getting to and from Earth, after the initial loads that get sent and after the first 1000 or so settlers have arrived, we as the settlement could build a space ferry that goes from our settlement to a gateway station in Earth orbit. Given our fuel production capacity, we could even sell fuel back to Earth ships on our return there.

Upon further research I discovered that using rocket fuel to exit Earth’s LEO and then using an Ion drive to travel to L4 could take as much as 2.5 years given today’s technology. I would hope that by the time that this station is starting to be built, that we can cut this time in half. Given this we as a settlement would create two ferries, so that every seven months or so one is leaving and one is arriving. Or maybe we create four ferries so that we have a ferry about every three months.

I am not certain if there are any more space chapters that I can add to what I have already added in the last ten days. Maybe I will think of something.