Island One, Two and Three

From: asaatvik [mailto:asaatvik@...]

> Island Two is shaped like a cold capsule, with sunlight entering
> through 3 windows running the length of the cylinder. 1.8 km
> (>1 mi.) in diameter, it would house 140,000.
>
> - contradicts the Wikipedia entry

Obviously I'll side with the Combs FAQ ;) but to the best of my
knowledge, the Wikipedia is mistaken in referring to the Stanford Torus
as Island 2. The Stanford Torus came out of the NASA-Ames/Stanford
study, and I'm pretty sure you can go through the entire report they
published without seeing any reference to "Island 2". They felt that
they were designing for the first permanent space habitat, not the
second generation. O'Neill, on the other hand, thought that a sphere
was a better choice for 1st generation space habitats. The Stanford
Torus population (10,000) compares to that of the Bernal Sphere, which
I'm pretty sure O'Neill, at least at a later point, referred to as
Island One.

> A scaled-up version, Island Three, would be a cylinder 6.4 km
> (4 mi.) in diameter and 32 km (20 mi.) long.
>
> - doesn't really say what shape the structure it is,

This has the same shape as the previously-mentioned structure i.e. a
cylinder with rounded end caps and three windows.

> is this an o'neill cylinder???

Yes, you can consider "O'Neill Cylinder" and "Island 3" to be
synonymous.

Regards,

Mike Combs