Such a spacecraft could hold thousands - perhaps even as many as 100,000 people. (This general idea, first proposed in the 1970s, is known as an O’Neill cylinder). The illustrations of O'Neill cylinders I have come across with so far allow unrestricted view through the whole tube. Some of them are used for agriculture. Imagine a cylinder that's slightly tapered, the narrow end of the cylinder would be like a higher elevation. A McKendree Cylinder is designed much like an O'Neill Cylinder but built with the carbon buckytube technology used in Bishop Rings. A classic O'Neill is a bit small for that though. Each habitat would have an artificial atmosphere, Earth-like gravity and a mix of urban and agricultural space. A possible representation of habitation in space is an O’Neill cylinder. The classic O'Neill design for a cylindrical space colony has a cylinder four miles in diameter and 20 miles long, with three mirrors reflecting sunlight into the colony. It’s a “county” size cylinder spinning on his axis and thus generating gravity. Well a modified O'Neill Cylinder named McKendree Cylinder is possible to build with a radius of 460km and the length of 4600km from carbon nanotubes. Source: National Space Society / Reproduction . NASA ID number AC75–1085 (CREDIT: Rick Guidice NASA Ames Research Center) Bezos described the structures … However, like most off-earth colonies, it couldn’t possibly ever be self-sufficient. The shielding protects the micro-gravity industrial space, too. But over time the habitats became larger, until they reached the maximum possible size for habitats constructed with non-exotic materials. To illuminate the whole colony, each would have to be at a $45^\circ$ angle to the cylinder axis and have a length of $20 \sqrt{2}$ miles. Are there reasons that forbid to close off parts of the tube, lets say, by a wall of mountain? A serious problem is the spinning to create centripetal force enough to … Some are more playful with topography but still, there is a visible end. A pair of O’Neill cylinders. Each of these cylindrical habitats could accommodate upwards of 50,000 people, support an artificial atmosphere and generate an Earth-like gravity through the centrifugal force of its own rotation, Janhunen wrote. To make an "O'Neill cylinder" habitat for a lot of people to live comfortably like they were on Earth, every ounce has to be blasted into high orbit. O'Neill cylinder: "Island Three", an even larger design (3.2 km radius and 32 km long). The central pole can be used as a … This NASA illustration shows what the interior of an O'Neill Cylinder could look like. Lewis One: A cylinder of radius 250 m with a non rotating radiation shielding. The project consists of green areas dedicated to growing crops and trees planted in a 1.5 meter thick layer of soil. That takes a tremendous amount of energy. 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