There appear to be competing ideas on how Asgardia will be set up as a space station. As a result, I am wanting to set up some clarification posts so that people can all have a more clear vision of what is reasonable, desirable, and safe for Asgardians.

This forum post will be dealing with the idea of light.

While in space, light will be available MOST of the time (and, in fact, all of the time if Asgardia is in an appropriate polar orbit). This, however, is about how light will be used.

If we allow too much sunlight into the station, we are also allowing cosmic rays, radiation, and similar 'unseen badness' that we are normally protected from by Earth's atmosphere. There is also the added difficulty of the fact that we will have an overabundance of light (especially in a polar orbit) where we will never have periods of dark. As a native Alaskan, I know how bad it is for some people when the sun never goes down. People who are very photosensitive have trouble sleeping without it being dark, and their biorhythms get all thrown out of whack when there isn't a stable day/night cycle.

Thus, I was considering the idea of using solar energy purely for electrical generation purposes and using 'sun lamps' specifically designed to throw the kinds of light we require at intervals that are consistent with our normal sleep patterns, and allowing trees a similar 'sleep cycle' that they require for normal healthy operations.

So, I ask, how do you like your light?

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The kind of massive windows on stations like those on O'Neill cylinders are serious liabilities. I mean if a lump of space debris hits one of those, its just going to shatter and put the entire station at risk. Plus, the sheer amount of glass needed to make them seems quite impractical.

Rather than "sun lamps" as Phicksur suggested, I had the idea that there would be screens or holograms on the ceiling which would project images of a blue sky. The duration of the projections could also be lengthened or shortened depending on the time of year.

To build upon your idea, Alex, it might be more appropriate to set up the ceiling as a refractory setup. In a manner similar to how 'holograms' works on cheap children's cards where you turn the card and the image changes. Do a similar setup on the 'roof' of the structures so that the appearance of moving clouds would be seen. No power required that way, just a painted/printed background. Light could then be shown upon it to simulate cycles, and the tints and shades varied to indicate time of 'day'.

To Clive: the problem with using reflected light is that the orbit of the station would cause periods of dark when the station would fall behind the Earth from the sun. In fact, the plan I have been working on has a large solar array situated between the Sun and the station such that the station would always be in the shade (helps with power generation and radiation abatement).

PRX

Shielding and reflecting light is major goal of all space ships, satellites and stations. So, having windows isn't a great option. That said, devices that collect sunlight and can filter it then transmit it to anywhere inside the space station via fiber-optics is an option.  Example below. This way we can mitigate generating excess heat, requiring more cooling systems and still augment light during the orbital day.

http://www.himawari-net.co.jp/e_page-index01.html

Use of fiber optics to distribute light might be the most efficient of all, given we have lived in a full sprectrum of white light, although glass does have a property of being somewhat opaque to UV, and apparently, we do need some, but that can be overcome with black lights, etc.  

As most long term cubie dwellers or other office environments can attest, the cool white of todays flourescents, is not all we need for balanced light. Although we might get away with specific frequencies, the majority can be collected from the nearby space outside the station and piped in via the fiber optics, and routed as needed.

In the case of day/night cycles, and the associated circadian rhythms, my idea was to divide a toroid into 4 quadrants of 6 hour offsets of time. This allows for 24x7 operation and each set of people is on a day shift in their quadrant, and allows for the overlap of time for waking, and breakfast before a shift change. This practically eliminates the problems associated with shift work, and especially the dreaded graveyard shift.