New Topic/Habitats

I was curious how many people run games in habitats and what they think of
the scenarios they use.  My game world relies on them a great deal because
I assume that once people learn to space-industrialize, they won't go
back.  Thus, the average population of a solar system in my game world
is about four hundred billion.  If people live on planets (terraformed
Earth-like ones, that is), which only happens in about one system in ten,
such a population is about one percent of the total population of the system.

Habitats in my world tend to be clustered around large asteroids (100 km. +)
or the giant moons of gas giants.  Why?  Lots of natural resources close by.
(A 100 km. asteroid has enough material in it to build hundreds or thousands
or habitats, even assuming a low metal/organic/other useful stuff-to-slag
ratio; giant moons give you even more, even if they're mostly ice there will
be organics to make plastics from, etc.)

of
My basic large habitat is a rotating cylinder 15 km. across the base and
60 km. long.  In addition to the landscaped interior, which I call a "dayside"
because it sounds like something people might call such a place, I assume
that the ends of the cylinder are solid complexes.  Actually, they're like
the ring-type space stations you see in 2001, only on a much bigger scale.
Assuming an average ceiling height of 10 m.--the idea is to make these things
non-claustrophobic since a lot of people live on some of the levels--you have
room for about 700 levels.  If the complexes are 100 m. wide the effect
is something like having 700 shopping malls (only most of them are offices,
neighborhoods with townhouses, etc.) stacked on top of each other, and the
two complexes give you about 3600 square km.  Add this to the 1200 square
km. you get from the dayside, and the habitat (which I assume as having a
population of roughly one million) has a total of nearly 5000 square km.
of surface area.  The dayside is used for farms, parks, etc., and the
endwall complexes have apartment levels, business levels, factories,
warehouses, etc.  This leaves us with a population density similar to
that of Great Britain or New England.  Plenty of room for everyone.
(After all, what's the point of technologically advanced if you have
to live packed together like rats in a barrel?)

Running these environments is not hard.  The endwall complexes are just
like city streets, except that they are a lot cleaner, there are no cars,
and the subways (stations every half-kilometer or so) are big elevators
that either stop at every level, every ten levels, or every hundred levels
(I think this is how they run elevators in large buildings like the Trade
Center; at any rate, I'm sure this is a problem anyone with a degree in
city planning could solve in about five minutes, although it might take
longer to work out all the details.)  The daysides are pretty much
outdoor environments, except you cannot use Field Artillery (people take
a VERY dim view of someone blowing a hole in the side of their world).
By the way, I assume the hulls of these things are several meters thick,
both for structural strength and radiation shielding, and about half of
that is good ol' topsoil, so you can have reasonably large trees in
these habitats, and hills (small ones), and lakes, and so on.

Well, I'll stop here...I could easily ramble on about these things for
much longer.  Anyone have any comments?  ideas?  suggestions?

     Mark


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