[Spaceships] Anyone have any O'Neill Colony or Stanford Torus stats?

[Phantasm]

As part of my space opera setting, I've got a number of space stations, many of which date back to the mid to late 21st Century during the Second Space Race, sitting in a number of Lagrange points all over the place. Most of the older stations would be Stanford Toruses (Tori? Toruns?) like the station from 2001: A Space Odyssey, O'Neill colonies ala the title station from Babylon 5, or a series of Stanfords linked together; these would have been built before the development of artificial gravity.

Other stations outside the Sol system itself would probably be built along the lines of Deep Space Nine or something similar, having been built after artigrav was developed, so there'd be a distinct "up" and "down" to the station.

Probably nothing as large (or menacing) as the Death Star's "a small moon", though I can see a number of hollowed-out asteroids being used as other stations (legal and otherwise); the setting has a pirate station in Epsilon Indi's outer asteroid belt built out of an asteroid.

How large would such an O'Neill colony or Stanford Torus probably be, and has anyone developed any stats I could use?

[RogerBW]

The Stanford Torus design from 1975 was a 1.8km-diameter ring rotating once per minute for ~0.9-1g at the rim. Total mass is around 10,000,000 tons which puts it around SM+16 (it's bigger but pretty dispersed). Images and numbers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus .

O'Neill's 1976 "Island Three" design was for a pair of counter-rotating cylinders, each five miles wide and up 20 long. More images at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder . I haven't seen much by way of mass estimates, but somewhere around 3×10⁹ tons seems plausible, implying about SM+21 (again, full of empty space).

[robkelk]

There are, of course, also the intermediate "Island One" and "Island Two" designs, as described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere

As for the Stanford Torus, the original design study is available at http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75Sum...Contents1.html - that goes into much more detail than Wikipedia does.

(Game stats? Sorry, I don't have those either... but I'd like some for Gernsback-2, so maybe I'll crack open the Spaceships ebooks if I have time over the holidays.)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

How large would such an O'Neill colony or Stanford Torus probably be, and has anyone developed any stats I could use?

This covered briefly in UT on p.71. Especially the largest possible (hard science) Super O'Neill colony.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This covered briefly in UT on p.71. Especially the largest possible (hard science) Super O'Neill colony.

Yeah, I saw those, but a paragraph each with only the vaguest details isn't much to go on.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

The Stanford Torus design from 1975 was a 1.8km-diameter ring rotating once per minute for ~0.9-1g at the rim. Total mass is around 10,000,000 tons which puts it around SM+16 (it's bigger but pretty dispersed). Images and numbers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus .

O'Neill's 1976 "Island Three" design was for a pair of counter-rotating cylinders, each five miles wide and up 20 long. More images at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder . I haven't seen much by way of mass estimates, but somewhere around 3×10⁹ tons seems plausible, implying about SM+21 (again, full of empty space).

Those stats are useful, thanks. I think I can cook something up using them.

Part of me wants to combine the two, putting several Stanfords in an interconnected row at least 20 long....

[Phantasm]

I believe I have something suitable....

Ishtar Station
TL: 9
dST/HP: 1,000,000
Hnd/SR: -5/5
HT: 13
Move: 0
LWt: 3,000,000,000
Load: ?
SM: +21
Occ: ? ASV
dDR: 1,000
Range: N/A
Cost: $362.24T
Streamlined: No

Front:
[1] Armor, Light Alloy; dDR 1,000, $1.5T
[2-3] Habitat; 40M cabins, 600K workspaces, $6T
[4] Hangar Bay; 100Mt capacity, launch rate 5Mt/min, 300K workspaces, $300B
[5] Open Space; 4M areas, 600K techs, $40B
[6] Control Room; C14 computer, Comm/Sensor TL+10, 600 control stations, 300K workspaces, $6T

Middle:
[1] Armor, Light Alloy; dDR 1,000, $1.5T
[2-3] Habitat; 40M cabins, 600K workspaces, $6T
[4!] Ten SM +19 Tertiary Weapons Batteries; 300K workspaces, $15T
[5-6, core] Open Space; 6M areas, 900K techs, $60B

Rear:
[1] Armor, Light Alloy; dDR 1,000, $1.5T
[2] Habitat; 20M cabins, 300K workspaces, $3T
[3] Robo-Factory; $300B/hr, 15M lbs/hr, 300K workspaces, $300T
[4] Chemical Refinery; 50Mt/hr, 300K workspaces, $3T
[5] Solar Panel Array; 1 PP, $15T
[6, core] Open Space; 4M areas, 600K techs, $40B

Design Features:
High Automation; $3T
Spin Gravity; max 15G, $300B

Design Switches:
Exposed Radiators


Basically, we have an O'Neill Colony which I have placed in the L4 Lagrange Point of Venus's orbit, leading about 60° ahead of the planet in its orbit. A sister station, Ereshkigal Station, in the L5 Lagrange point, is almost identical in design.

I really don't want to hammer out the habitat breakdown for such a large station, though o/`

[Prince Charon]

One thing to remember about O'Neill colonies (and some other rotating stations) is that they were designed to be placed in ballistically-coupled, counter-rotating pairs, so the petal-mirrors could be kept facing the sun.

[Flyndaran]

Ishtar and Erishkigal? Mixing Sumerian and Babylonian goddesses sounds almost rude.

What's the chemical refinery for so far away from any minable bodies?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Ishtar and Erishkigal? Mixing Sumerian and Babylonian goddesses sounds almost rude.

From what I could tell from her wikipedia entry, Erishkigal was a Sumerian goddess whose worship persisted into the later Akkadian and Babylonian eras, as she is known by that name in the later retellings of Innana's/Ishtar's "Descent Into the Underworld".

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What's the chemical refinery for so far away from any minable bodies?

Hmm... I think I had the idea that the refinery was standard for almost all stations placed in Trojan orbits, as asteroids and other bodies migrate there. I do know there are asteroids that have been spotted in Venus's Lagrange points that could be mined for chemicals.

The other idea I had was that it can be used for turning waste products into useful crude oil, which could then be made into plastics.

[RyanW]

The biggest stations are probably best treated as geography, rather than vehicles. Use Spaceships to keep everything in line, but the stat block from City Stats might be more useful.