Population of O'Neill cylinder

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of ANTIcarrot.

> I think some typos and general confusion might be at the route of all
this.
>
> A cylinder 6.5km wide and 32km long has a an internal area of
~250miles^2 or
> 650km^2 but not 400km^2 (windows or not) as the Space Settlement FAQ
says.

Although you mention the windows, you don't seem to realize that they
will effectively halve the available land area of the cylindrical
portion of the interior. When I work out the area for a cylinder of the
above dimensions, I get 653.5 sq km. Of that, the land valley strips
would be half, or 326.7 sq km. We could add a good portion of the
interior area of the endcaps to what we might consider usable land area,
so 400 sq km sounds about right. Plus, I got that figure for the FAQ
from "The High Frontier" which is considered the authoritative source on
this subject.

> My book identifies this design as being island 4.

I was wondering where the heck this talk of "Island 4" was coming from.
So what is and where is your book?

> Yonder website calls it an model 3:
http://www.l5news.org/oneillcylinder.htm

As did O'Neill, in both his Physics Today article, and "The High
Frontier".

> Wikipedia makes several contradictory claims as to dimensions.

The problem with a camel built by a committee, I suppose. Some are
updating it based on O'Neill's work, some on what they are sure they
remember correctly from the 1970's, and some on what they found out in a
Japanese cartoon about giant fighting robots.

Regards,

Mike Combs