What kind of jobs could there be in an O'Neill colony?

[Number Theoretic]

Hello, SD.net!

I was thinking about an introductory setting for a story of mine where the protagonist, who lives in an O'Neill colony is looking for work. Which, of course, begged the question: What kind of jobs could there be in an O'Neill colony, roughly a thousand years into the future?

Some basic information about my universe: Interstellar travel happens at high relativistic STL speeds and therefore is far from "casual", no aliens, computer technology is very advanced (memory and computational power issues are virtually nonexistent) and AI entities are around but mind uploading is as hard for them as it is for humans: It can't be done in seconds or milliseconds but rather takes months.

The timeframe is perhaps big enough to also allow other economic systems to exist, apart from the usual capitalistic model, especially in a civilization which can do casual interplanetary travel and build O'Neill colonies. But on the other hand, trade based "capitalistic" economic systems have more or less always been around. So it is easiest to assume this kind of system to be in place on my O'Neill colony.
But i am reluctant to just transfering contemporary jobs like financial analyst or computer engineer "into spaaaaaaace" because this can perhaps get campy. Maintenance jobs for the colony's enegry and life support systems can be an option but the aforementioned high level of computer technology implies a high level of automation which makes maintenance jobs rare and requiring very specialized high skills.
Jobs requiring people skills are very likely to stay around, like waiter, barkeeper or hair stylist, same thing for military or security related jobs although they would look very different than today.

So, what do you think?

[Zixinus]

Janitor. No, not a SPAAAACEEEE janitor, just a janitor with a regular mop and bucket (or broom and pan). Where there are people, there are messes and where there are messes, there is a call for a janitor.

More seriously, there is about as many jobs as in any other place in the big city. How are buildings built? If they are built, someone builds them. Someone runs the electricity trough them, bills the people using the electricity, etc.

Does the O'Neil cylinder process ores incoming from astredoid mining? There is a whole slew of industries that could feed, even assuming some level of automation.

How is food made? Is it grown? If so, then there are people that work with that.

Really, you are better off asking "what jobs would be O'Neill cylinder-specific?" than anything else.

As for that, you have people that regularly check environment conditions (make sure there isn't a leak), do odd repairs, make sure that the automated systems do what they should, etc.
Then there is stuff like spacecraft control, watching spacecraft move about and for ones that have a vector in their direction. Control who comes in, how, when, etc. That means people that man the IR telescopes that do the scanning, people that analyze the resulting data, sort trough available information (again, automation and computerization will help, but it will not totally eliminate their number), send messages, etc.

Really, you'd just have to think about it.

[Shroom Man 777]

Lifeguard. Watching over the marathon runner jogging around at the outer surface of the cylinder's hull.

Community service organizers. For the volunteer water purification system workers. And raising community awareness on the conservation of resources.

Recyclo-artists who fashion novelty arts and unique souvenirs reflecting the culture of the cylinder, out of inorganic waste materials incompatible with the reprocessors that would otherwise be disposed.

Bio-integrity customs agents, to ensure unsanctioned organisms and lifeforms from the other habitats don't invade the cylinder. This can be from genetically engineered plant strains used by the other habitats' agriculturists that might otherwise be hostile to the cylinder's own native gene-mod plants, to invasive animal species that could threaten the one-of-a-kind vanity organisms bred in the cylinder, to rogue nano-life that might hitch a ride on shipments from the outside, to old fashioned rats. And germs!

[Shroom Man 777]

Beat poet black spartacus heart attack machine jazz and blues people-entertainers.

Communications might be regimented in the cylinder. It might take lots of power or time to communicate to outside habitats in the same solar system, much longer and harder for interstellar distances. Depending on how big the cylinder is, things might get stale, if everyone knows everyone, if it's all the same thing everyday, if it's like a small town or small island where it's all slow and boring and repetitive and quiet and not much stuff happens aside from the usual everyday going ons.

People might start going crazy or bored or depressed or sleepy or just plain cranky after knowing the same buncha guys and talking about the same buncha things and doing the same stuff over and over and over again. If input from the outside universe is minimal, their culture is gonna stagnate.

So they rely on a select few quirky weirdo guys, maybe people who've seen the outside universe, or who get some short period of time to hijack or borrow the comms and listen to the radiowaves in the interstellar jazz stations, and like not everyone can do this, but these few who do are relied on to spread the word and tell stories or make plays or movies or jokes or shows or stand up sessions over at the cylinder's weekend when the townsfolk or cylindersfolk go over hopping to the bars and the rollerblade discotheques and comedy bars to listen to these career entertainers rattle and roll and shoot shit and make jokes and generally tell them in humorous ways what's happening in the outside universe.



So, my cylinderpeeps. Y'all heard about news from Earth, how them Earth Directorate folks finally made contact with the Koprulu guys? No? Well, I guess you haven't, cause the cylinder's comms antenna is as bent as Magistrate Higgins' dick! How can we get any news around here, man? It's like we're living in a cave! *does voice* What's down there? Only what you take with you.

*laugh track*

So last night, I was taking a walk on the hull, when I saw this guy trying to disengage the magnetic locks on his boots. So I says to him, hey mang, you can't do that, cause if you turn your maglocks off, you'll fly off the hull and float off into space. Then this other guy comes in and tells me that it's okay, cause even if the first guy offs his maglocks and jumps, he can't float off that far because he'll end up getting stuck on the LaGrange point. He says that the LaGrange point is like a miniature gravity well.

You know what I says to him?

What?

I says, "Stop being a troll, Destructionator!" Then the other joggers all disengaged their maglocks and jumped all over him screaming! The only thing missing from that dogpile was Laika the space dog!

*crowd looks around confusedly, they don't get it, but one guy chuckles*

I knew you'd get that one, Batman. You strange creepy creature of darkness.

*more laughs*

Anyone heard about the Brownshirt rebellion over at the Alliance systems? No? Cause the comms antenna is as bent as Magistrate Higgins' dick! Come on, Higgins you bent-dicked bozo, get the cylinder's antenna fixed already! Everyone's heard about living under a rock, but over here at Cylinder One we're all living under your fat ass! Goddamn!

*crowd really laughs*

Thank you, thank you. Well, that's all for tonight folks. Catch me at next morning's broadwave transmission... oh wait, you won't, cause the antenna's still broke and they still haven't sent anyone to fix it, those lazy fat fucks! Write them a letter folks, cause at this rate we won't be sending anything through the comms till we freeze to death first.

*comedian bows and walks off stage*

Afterwards, a live spaceharmonica band plays the latest tunes from Earth, which no one else has gotten to hear yet.

[Zixinus]

Shroom (in his usual awesome, if a bit confusing way) has a point: a regular, stable supply of entertainers would be needed, especially if the cylinder gets low traffic. Entertainers doing whole circuits with O'Neill cylinders or other space habitats would make some sense.

Though, I think Shroom is thinking a bit old-fashioned, with regular people and all. Why bother brining those meatbag entertainers all the way trough if you just want their show?

I can easily imagine relays, a network and whatnot for handling the light-speed lag and internet information. I'm not just thinking cats playing with boxes, but more regular and official stuff like movies, music, recorded newsfeeds, etc. Buy your porn from the local Playboy distributor! Want something special? Subscribe to the exclusive feed, if you can afford it.

But that too can mean jobs: people that specilise in getting online information for you. Say, you'd like to get your subscription's worth of an obscure magazine? But the access and whatnot is mired in a lot of data that you'd have to waste a lot of bandwidth, and thus a lot of money on? Or you would like to check your e-mail, but would rather avoid wasting precious bandwidth on spam?

1. You go to the OIRS (Online Information Retrival Specialist), who'll email his counterpart on Earth and s/he corresponds with with his/her Earth-residing counterpart.
2. That counterpart will dig himself/herself trough junk data or whatever until you get the information you need.
3. Information is beamed back to the cylinder. You pay the nice OIRS man/woman/cyborg/whatever and get your data, free of junk information.

[VF5SS]

Insurance salesman for all those Mobile Suit attacks.

[VarrusTheEthical]

The way I see it, the jobs available on any large space colony would be similar to those found in any planet-side city. Businessmen, lawyers, doctors, bankers, shop owners, and farmers would not be out of place in an O'Neil Cylinder.

One thing that you should keep in mind that individual O'Neil stations would be unique in the same way that individual cities are. I imagine that some stations would serve as financial centers, cultural centers, manufacturing centers, or agriculture centers. Also, some could be in the middle of an economic boom while others are in a depression.

I would suggest keeping these things in mind when you thinking about what jobs could be available to your cosmic job-seeker.

[Rabid]

How big are these O'Neill cylinders/archipels (archipel = more than one cylinder) supposed to be ? 50,000 peoples ? 500,000 ? 5,000,000 ? More ?

[Number Theoretic]

Thanks for all the input! Some very interesting ideas among it, especially Shrooms thoughts about the situation in an isolated backwater colony.

Speaking of colony sizes:

How big are these O'Neill cylinders/archipels (archipel = more than one cylinder) supposed to be ? 50,000 peoples ? 500,000 ? 5,000,000 ? More ?

It depends a little on the total population of the star system, which i don't know yet. Intuitively, i was thinking about 500.000 to 5 million per colony, where the number of colonies in the current system is another unknown to me at the moment. But i disgress.
On the topic: Even in a world where computers are extremely advanced, there might still be a need for programmers and engineers. Artists also crossed my mind, especially if food production is so cheap and easy that the average person wouldn't even need a job to survive, but strives for one because humans need a sense of purpose and of course cheap food doesn't rid the colony from the need for maintenance, entertainment and trade. And scientifc progress also needs capable people, even if there is competition from AIs

[Terralthra]

The Island 3, as designed, has about 500 square miles of habitable space split between the cylinders. Farming food is done on the outer agricultural ring, so that's all living space. 5-7 million people could easily inhabit each pair without getting cramped or crowded.

[Shroom Man 777]

Though, I think Shroom is thinking a bit old-fashioned, with regular people and all. Why bother brining those meatbag entertainers all the way trough if you just want their show?

I can easily imagine relays, a network and whatnot for handling the light-speed lag and internet information.

I didn't mean that the meatbag entertainers would be on LOVEFIST INTERGALACTIC CYLINDERS CONCERT TOUR GANYMEDE TO OMICRON PERSEI VIII 2567 A.E..

I meant that the entertainers would be some savier folks who might've, in their earlier lives, gone outside the cylinder or have at least seen more of the outer universe than the rest of the cylinderfolks and have had cultural exposure to outside foreign stuff, so their jokes and songs and stories can be all spicy and new and unusual to the homogenous isolated small town space people in the cylinder.

If communications is more difficult through interstellar distances, it might not be as easy as merely internetting new songs on tachyonic torrents. If they're isolated, it'll be like Moon with Sam Rockwell trying to entertain himself with all sorts of things, like ping pong and building cute model matchstick houses, but on a broad entire societal level.

It might mean that cylinder people with hobbies and talents, independently producing their own works of art (music, plays, stories, space toilet humors) to amuse themselves and others in the course of their lives would be more important to the sanity and well being and welfare and happiness of the society.

And think of the enclosedness of a cylinder, think of the acoustics and the resonance. Sound waves would be carried differently than it would planetside. Music would bounce off like as if you were singing in a shower. It would be like how musicians practice in subways, which I saw in Hong Kong since we don't have any subways in my goddamn country.

A cylinder might end up evolving its own unique sub-genres of musics. Its own styles. If it is separate from the "mainland" of culture and musics. Like Galapagos Islands of art.



If everyone knows everyone in the cylinder community, or at least if all they have is each other (communications is slow, travel to the outside world is expensive and not everyone can afford it), this might also make community activities and group activities all the more important. Sunday churches, monthly festivals, the season's ball, drive-by theaters (either with movies or live stage performances), clubs and groups and such.

Sports teams! Cylinder hockey. A prized sport whose champions get the chance to bring honor to the colony when the inter-cylinder games happens every year, and where the colony's team gets sent out to face teams from the other habitats and planets! Everyone in the cylinder will be united as they watch their boys bash in the teeth of those planetary yokels. There'll be parades, parties, riots, revelry in the streets of the cylinder once victory is had!



I was also thinking.

What if the cylinder had a central food processing plant that sends reprocessed liquid food-base substance through a network of pipes to the food distribution centers throughout the cylinder. This vast network akin to a sewage system, but with prefabricated edible gruel being pumped through its pulsating metallic arteries.

People can connect to these pipes with Food Adapters Unit, machines that suck out the flowing gruel and spew it out so that people can eat it. But the basic food slime is yucky and tasteless. So the Food Adapter Units come with Post Processor Flavorizers that can solidify the liquid gunk into hardened not-meat and flavor it to taste like chocolate starfish or something.

It takes a lot of skill to wield these devices, and robots with no sense of taste just make horrible dishes, just like Bender from Futurama. So you've got guys manning these Food Adapters, basically they're just like Food Stalls In Space.

Anyway, in a story maybe our protagonist is a Brade Runna eating fake not-sushi at one of these Food Stalls when he is attacked by Replicunts, and to escape his pursuers, our DICK FUCKARD has to rip open the pipe that the Food Adapter is connected to, and then he'll jump into the food pipe and escape his enemies, carried by a current of raw unflavored lukewarm liquefied generic lime gelatin.

Maybe his enemies can also jump inside the pipe and go after him. There'll be an epic chase scene! Underwater gelatin! Shades of Thunderball and a videogame sewer level!

[Terralthra]

If communications is more difficult through interstellar distances, it might not be as easy as merely internetting new songs on tachyonic torrents. If they're isolated, it'll be like Moon with Sam Rockwell trying to entertain himself with all sorts of things, like ping pong and building cute model matchstick houses, but on a broad entire societal level.

Why would they be isolated? The best place to put them would be near each other, and even if they're not near each other, the it makes the most sense to put them coorbital with Earth, or at worst, the orbit of Mars or the Asteroid Belt. That makes colony to colony transmission time no more than 20 minutes, max. That may rule out synchronous communication, but it doesn't rule out sending messages back and forth with ease.

And think of the enclosedness of a cylinder, think of the acoustics and the resonance. Sound waves would be carried differently than it would planetside. Music would bounce off like as if you were singing in a shower. It would be like how musicians practice in subways, which I saw in Hong Kong since we don't have any subways in my goddamn country.

O'Neill Cylinders have a diameter of 5 miles. I don't think the acoustics will be very different from planetside.

If everyone knows everyone in the cylinder community, or at least if all they have is each other (communications is slow, travel to the outside world is expensive and not everyone can afford it), this might also make community activities and group activities all the more important. Sunday churches, monthly festivals, the season's ball, drive-by theaters (either with movies or live stage performances), clubs and groups and such.

Travel back and forth from one cylinder to the other pair is as simple as going through an airlock to the outer surface and letting go at the right moment. Travel from one pair to another at LaGrange points could be accomplished with a can of compressed air and a calculator (seriously).

I was also thinking.

What if the cylinder had a central food processing plant that sends reprocessed liquid food-base substance through a network of pipes to the food distribution centers throughout the cylinder. This vast network akin to a sewage system, but with prefabricated edible gruel being pumped through its pulsating metallic arteries.

People can connect to these pipes with Food Adapters Unit, machines that suck out the flowing gruel and spew it out so that people can eat it. But the basic food slime is yucky and tasteless. So the Food Adapter Units come with Post Processor Flavorizers that can solidify the liquid gunk into hardened not-meat and flavor it to taste like chocolate starfish or something.

It takes a lot of skill to wield these devices, and robots with no sense of taste just make horrible dishes, just like Bender from Futurama. So you've got guys manning these Food Adapters, basically they're just like Food Stalls In Space.

There are huge pods devoted to cultivating foods, each climate-controlled to simulate different growing conditions. A system to distribute this food is far easier, logistically, than a similar system on Earth. You would never ever need this "food paste distribution," and it's creating a lot of extra work (processing grown vegetables, fruits, meat, etc. into nutritionally-balanced paste and then turning it back into palatable food is an extra step, compared to just turning foodstuffs into food).

[Shroom Man 777]

It looks like I got carried away by my own imagination. I was under the assumption that there were no neighboring cylinders, and in my brain I had this idea of an isolated cylinder on the ninth vector of the universe, its inhabitants toiling in solitude under the dark side of a frostbitten ice moon or something. And I had in mind a smaller space station.

Anyway,

So, if they're near a vibrant community of other cylinders, I guess this means they'll really have to step up their game of zero-gravity Space Hockey so they can kick in the teeth of those other colonists and show them what's what.

They'll also need more bio-integrity customs agents because if traffic is high between the nearby colonies, it runs the risk of contamination by foreign organisms, be they from the other cylinders or from planetside. From gene-mod organisms, to viruses, rogue nanolife, and even basic Earth rats and parasites.

Maybe to amuse themselves these cylinder guys construct their own unique gene-modded organisms and pitch them against the frankenstinian creations of other guys, in some kind of mutant genetic cockfights. The winner gets to challenge the creations of guys from other colonies. There'd be strict oversight from the customs agents, so none of their organisms break loose and kill folks or scurry into the vents and screw around and die in the wiring and stink up the place for weeks.

You could have guys whose jobs it is is to design graffiti on the various internal walls and bulkheads of the cylinder. Maybe it's determined that colonists like it if their walls have wild artistic drawings on them, instead of just dull gray paint. Instead of spraypaint, the graffiti artist could have a tablet computor thing and he'd draw and scribble shit on the screen, press a button, and the nano-paints on the bulkhead would reconfigure to match the drawing he made on his computor. Maybe he changes the painting of the walls every other week.

There could be guys whose job it is is just to beautify the place. Or they just do it in their spare time. This graffiti artist actually operates a loadlifter mechanoid in his work hours.


PS.

The nutrition food slime I had in mind wasn't made by grinding up meats and vegetables. It was reprocessed from poos! The food pipes are directly linked to the sewage system!

[madd0ct0r]

it's nice to see stuff on SDN a few months ago come back 'reprocessed'

I think we've also discovered that Shroomy really really wants to be a beat poet.

You basically have a city.
What sort of jobs do people in cities do?

Well, there's the entire third sector tat provides services - so chefs, hairdressers, doctors, lawyers, cleaners, tailors, psychotherapists, mechanics, singers, actors ect.
Likewise I'd assume you'll need some organizer types - city engineers, urban planners, social monitors, teachers, bureaucrats ect

in the 2nd sector of manufacturing - well, there's the internal market of the cylinder. This is stuff thats too cheap* to bother importing/exporting (or impossible) but people still have a need for. Painters, furniture makers, basic clothes ect
There's also stuff produced for export aswell as in local market. Basically anyhting that can be made in a facory is possible.
*Depends on labour costs and relative competitive advantages between cylinders

The primary sector - well asteroid mining, junk reprocessing, aquaculture ect.

There's bound to be a few big, capital / space hungry industries that don't have a big enough market for more then one city/cylinder to do them. eg Nuclear fuel rod reprocessing so I'd expect a degree of specialization. Likewie, once people's needs have been met they start doing stuff for fun or for the hell of it, so you'll get little cafes, music ect springing up even if it's people doing it in their spare time.

[Shroom Man 777]

There you have it. Aquaculture vats. With manatees. Manatee shepherd.

[Sinanju]

Farming might be kind of interesting. The classic O'Neill cylinder has a separate ring for farming (I believe it's the ring made of cylinders you see in a lot of art) that rotates at a different speed. So you could probably mine that for a lot of interesting introspective stuff; you know, being as far away from the colony as it's possible to be while still being 'on' the colony, etc. etc.

[jollyreaper]

With strong AI humans are pretty much curiosities. If they're on the ship like in the Culture they're basically pets. Same goes for giant habitats and orbitals.

Orion's Arm faces the same problem. We are basic humans and can't really comprehend a story from an archilect AI god's perspective.

The rationale they have for the relevance of humans is comparing it to biology on earth. Just because we have higher life forms doesn't mean lower ones are obsolete. There's room for humans and mice and trees and yeast.

The ai's see themselves as one answer for higher sophonce but see lower beings as a kind of genetic reserve where new ones can form in the future.

Plausible hard sf is tough.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'd probably ignore the "Strong AI" stuff as well for storytelling purposes. It's still speculative at this point anyways, and even a strong AI doesn't have magical space construction powers.