It can’t be said that any particular model of space-faring vessel is common across the Milky Way. But there is a wave that is both fairly well recognized, and has been passing through the local region for thousands of years.
It’s been suggested that such Ouinhed Cylinders, bearing a passing similarity to the proposed O’Neill cylinder design, may have been launched over a million years ago, in the tens of thousands, over a span of more than a thousand years.
There is no reason to believe two Cylinders are the same, both due to the span of time they were produced, and due to the varying requirements of maintenance required during their long periods of isolation. But some general statements are possible, at least of those that still survive.
The length of a Cylinder may be 40,000 meters long. the edge diameter, 10,000 meters. Toward the central point, this diameter increases to perhaps 13,000 meters. Braced against this bulge are ridiculously oversized rocket cones; if these cones are still intact, they are found to be merely the outer layer of a complex system for protecting from and vectoring the matter/antimatter reaction that was used as second stage acceleration; they were designed to survive multiple beeches, leaving passengers unaffected; the were designed for a extremely prolonged duration of acceleration while not significantly effecting the sensation of gravity inside.
Approximately 2500 square kilometers internal space is split between two levels, which rotate in opposite directions along the same axis. The “upper” level, that is, the one closer to the rotational axis, is mostly taken up with agriculture – a large number of surviving species produce vines, though there are some cereal grains. This land is relatively flat, save for continuous lighting that is raised a relatively short distance from walking level.
Looking up from the upper level, the view to the other side of the Cylinder is retarded, but not obscured, by a heavy water vapor haze. There is no illusion of a colored sky, nor of a “sun” to light things. The largest structures identifiable are the massive railgun-like magnetic acceleration and deceleration system, which reaches miles towards the rotational axis.
At the leading end of the Cylinder, is “The Maw” – a multistage airlock, which when fully open can accommodate objects 800m in diameter. Between the Maw and the Deceleration system, asteroids can be captured with no deceleration of the Cylinder, and then harvested for materials in microgravity conditions. Vessels can also be ejected – launched – by reversing the system – both the infamous scout and landing parties.
The lower level has a significant variance in available “airspace” – between 800m in the center and 50m toward the ends. The center, though, is dominated by spin-up infrastructure; Mountainous spans of asteroid-crete that house the engines that maintain power and counterspin of the two levels. Originally, this was engineered to maintain 1.2g of force via centrifuge, each level making an apparent circuit in 1 minute and a full rotation in 2; over time this has been intentionally slowed to a circuit in 1.5 minutes and a full rotation in 3, reducing the gravity to 0.6g over many, many generations.
Habitation and industry on this level, given the availability of asteroid-crete, tends to resemble Brutalist architecture in both appearance and density – which is to say, these are massively overcrowded for the standards of most species, despite the amount of room available. A big reason of this is that all industry has to share the same lower level, which includes reclamation for everything the population produces and consumes.
It’s believed a Cylinder might support a population of 1.5 million – roughly the same population density of Bangladesh.
Which of course comes to the point of Ouinhed Cylinders: they are resettlement ships. In anticipation of their native planet becoming uninhabitable, they became a plague to the galaxy at large – even morso as the ship is impossible to stop at a destination.
Ouinhed scouts are launched at possibly habitable worlds, from a ship going 1/10 light speed. If they land, survive, and report back, a landing ship is launched with half the Cylinder’s population on it, and not nearly enough supplies, to make a minimally powered landing – of which the survival rate is abysmal. Yet it’s still hundreds of thousands, which overwhelms whatever the natural state of a planet was.
Glactic rumor has it that the landing ship always launches – scouts reporting back or not. There has to be some reason landing ships are launched straight into a star.
Preceding the cylinder be a significant distance is a small cloud of unmanned solar sail craft. These are positioned via lasers adjacent to the maw. They precede the by many lengths – 100km being extremely close.
The one working ship in the constellation is a slightly more distant point to confirm triangulations, and clear interstellar haze magnetically. Failure is a generational issue. Upon failure, the old ship is gently pushed aside for a replacement.
The only point where these ships return the main cylinder is when an incoming object – most usually a small asteroid – is intentionally crashed into it. The additional metal mass gives the railgun mechanism slightly more to work with.
The working one
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