Most Efficient Use of Housing in a DeathStar like station

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ho'kay.

So lets say you are race with SW equivalent tech and building something 'roughly' the size of the DS2 isn't that big a deal.
So then lets so, instead of building such a thing as a massive hurt Ball to crush out opposition, you have instead a use for it that is more civil, say housing a significant population as a sort of "Arc Ship" for long term travel or inter galactic colonization. Now then, in terms of maximizing use of space, obviously the single most efficient means is the traditional "Decked" approach, IE:


but that is, well, rather bland, And I can just imagine generations of people getting bored, or lost, in endless twisting metal cities deep inside.
Well given just how much space there is inside such a station.. And after being inspired by some "Rama" fan art:

I figured making Immense large openings inside the station would give a more "comforting" to a several million population. But.. if we deiced to go such a route, what would be the most efficient use of space?
initial I thought of putting in several "Rama Cylinders". Since we are using SW tech, we don't really have to worry about things like Inertia or Gravity. SO I came up with the first concept:

Looking at it there is a lot of unused space, so I came up with another version using Rama "Rings" that go around the inside of the Station which seem to have a much greater usage of surface area:

Finally I wondered, in terms of maximizing space, while still having vast open green areas, if splitting the Rings into "spheres" would provide even more use out of the interior:


Of course all of these are just "sketches" on my part. As someone who is lacking in both Math and basic engineering, I am remiss in thinking if there are yet even better ways to utilize an immense interior space. Smaller more compact rings? open areas? The full purpose of this is housing a population of tens of millions, not just having them "live" but live comfortable in large open natural areas. Sure inside there will be vast endless cities for manufacturing, power, support, defense, all of that tech stuff. but I want to have as much space inside as possible for such natural living without it being "wasteful". Given the tech level I am working with, I am curious what ides others may have?

[Alan Bolte]

It's not like this thing is anywhere near the size of a planet. You'll get all kind of weirdness from having curved floors. Yes, it can be dealt with, but there's no point if you can have horizontal decks with arbitrary gravity anyway.

Start there and add more decks if you want.

[Starglider]

Massive open spaces are a waste of volume and hence structure*. If you have decent 3D displays then you just need enough height for the buildings, then program the walls to simulate a planetary sky and horizon.

* Possible exception : species with biological flight might legitimately need the volume for psychological and/or health reasons.

[Simon_Jester]

We should consider the sheer size of population you could house on something like the DS2. The entire land surface area of the Earth is about 150 million square kilometers; we have 380 million cubic kilometers inside the base. Assuming that decks are spaced roughly 100 meters apart, we could occupy about 3.8 billion square kilometers of territory, giving us plenty of room to support a population in the tens or hundreds of billions without really excessive overcrowding.

[PainRack]

On the other hand, the Death Star is a mobile space station. Minus the superweapon, it would still require large amount of internal space for fuel, power supplies/generators, environmental controls and the engines.

It might even be prudent to leave some areas "undeveloped" or a virgin forest just for asethetic purposes, or for future generations to expand into

[Sriad]

On the other hand, the Death Star is a mobile space station. Minus the superweapon, it would still require large amount of internal space for fuel, power supplies/generators, environmental controls and the engines.

It might even be prudent to leave some areas "undeveloped" or a virgin forest just for asethetic purposes, or for future generations to expand into

Even giving up 75% of the volume for functional needs you've got 95 million cubic kilometers of living space. If we're transporting merely tens of millions of people they've got a minimum of .95 cubic kilometers to hang out in. You're looking at conditions very much like a Culture Orbital folded up on itself, where teams of artists can sculpt mountains, even with many times more people. If every ceiling is 500 meters high you'd need almost a billion people to reach the population density of CANADA.

For full planetary luxery I'd say industrial and farm areas should be tightly packed, and large (relatively flat) natural spaces distributed around the ship. The largest could individually house fairly substantial mountain ranges in chambers several kilometers high and dozens across, canyons, small seas... On a design cutaway like you have they would look like long small crescents; even a chamber 20-freaking-km high would only take up about a 40th the circle's thickness.

One concern is transportation; you presumably don't want elevator tubes sticking through your vast scenic chambers. In that case you'd want to stack the largest chambers so you don't need to detour supplies/transportation/whatever every dozen kilometers. The other big one is structural integrity. You need either hella-strong material or absolutely reliable anti-gravity to make sure the ceiling of a place like that stays a ceiling.

[Darth Tedious]

Thinking about this, the question repeatedly pops into my mind: How high would the ceilings need to be in the open areas in order to feel 'open'?
Even without having a fake sky projected/hologrammed/painted on it, having the ceiling a kilometer or more above your head would feel fucking huge!
If you were to be stingy with space (and assuming there is a fake sky), how much could you lower the ceiling while still maintaining the illusion?

[erik_t]

To a large extent it would depend on the thickness of clouds you were attempting to simulate (and their altitude), and how fast people were moving underneath. Unless the surface is covered in knobby pixel-blocks that can project different colors in different directions (which might well be reasonably possible), everyone is going to see the same picture, even if it means their thunderhead is upside-down.

[Ahriman238]

Massive open spaces are a waste of volume and hence structure*. If you have decent 3D displays then you just need enough height for the buildings, then program the walls to simulate a planetary sky and horizon.

* Possible exception : species with biological flight might legitimately need the volume for psychological and/or health reasons.

You have space to burn, and preventing claustrophobia is a real concern. Even in modern navies, there are people who eventually just snap on sub duty, the unchanging lights, the cramped spaces and the stress of knowing there's a deadly enviroment right outside just gets to them over time. People could spend years, possibly their entire lives on this thing, so it makes sense to at least spring for a couple of park decks.

You'll also probably want to grow your own food, rather than be solely dependent on external supplies.

A thought occurs, in Animorphs the Andalites were all claustrophobic, to help counter this they grew grass on the decks everywhere, in their quarters and in the corridors, and had holograms of sky projected on every ceiling. That could be nice.

Or, even within SW, you had the Chu'uthor, the traveling Jedi Academy. They had very tall and wide hallways, and many, many, windows and domed rooms.

[Crossroads Inc.]

On the other hand, the Death Star is a mobile space station. Minus the superweapon, it would still require large amount of internal space for fuel, power supplies/generators, environmental controls and the engines.

It might even be prudent to leave some areas "undeveloped" or a virgin forest just for asethetic purposes, or for future generations to expand into

Even giving up 75% of the volume for functional needs you've got 95 million cubic kilometers of living space. If we're transporting merely tens of millions of people they've got a minimum of .95 cubic kilometers to hang out in. You're looking at conditions very much like a Culture Orbital folded up on itself, where teams of artists can sculpt mountains, even with many times more people. If every ceiling is 500 meters high you'd need almost a billion people to reach the population density of CANADA.

For full planetary luxery I'd say industrial and farm areas should be tightly packed, and large (relatively flat) natural spaces distributed around the ship. The largest could individually house fairly substantial mountain ranges in chambers several kilometers high and dozens across, canyons, small seas... On a design cutaway like you have they would look like long small crescents; even a chamber 20-freaking-km high would only take up about a 40th the circle's thickness.

One concern is transportation; you presumably don't want elevator tubes sticking through your vast scenic chambers. In that case you'd want to stack the largest chambers so you don't need to detour supplies/transportation/whatever every dozen kilometers. The other big one is structural integrity. You need either hella-strong material or absolutely reliable anti-gravity to make sure the ceiling of a place like that stays a ceiling.

Yeah I was talking to a friend, and if we used a Station that was "Only" half the size of the DS2, at still 450km, the cubic volume is enough for well over a few billion to live VERY comfortably. The space could easily accommodate all the large cities in the world rebuilt on the inside if you wanted to. The spaces I had originally envisioned were massively oversized for what would be needed. My friend estimated you could easily replicate the feel of full open air with just a km over head at max at around 800 meters in other places.

Right now we are toying with the idea of a few 'really' big open spaces like the original plan, each one housing a different biome with artificial mountain ranges, forests, lakes, etc. Sketching a few ideas on how transportation would work. For moving large distance even super high speed trains won;t be enough and we are looking at the feasibility of "jet plans/trains" utilizing large transit tubes. Really I need to look a bit int the speed limits of just how fast you could push something using magnetics since burning fuel for conventional jets seems a bit wasteful.

Food production should not be an issue, I need to dig up the study, but I remember reading that, utilizing hydroponics and growing "Up" instead out out, the space of an average sky scraper could easily feed a good sized town. So expanding that to blocks say a km square will feed millions. Recycling virtually everything available will also keep materials going.
After all the purpose of this exercise isn't just a big oversized habitat, but an ongoing 'renewable' civilization in a bottle as it were designed to sustain itself for as long as possible. ,

Also found a good cutaway of the original death star on wookipiedia which helps a lot getting a feel for the size.
HERE

Looking at it, you get a sense for how huge it is, once you junk the main weapon systems with this monster, you really have space to burn.

[Darth Wong]

I think you guys are missing a rather important point: you're assuming that housing was actually a design priority. When people design machines, they prioritize the pieces and parts of the machine, and their geometrical arrangement, based on their respective utility with respect to the machine's design goals.

In other words, they start with the really important stuff, then they work their way down to the small potatoes. Now in the case of the Death Star, its primary purpose is (obviously) to be a self-propelled planet-destroying superweapon which is capable of defending itself. Its designers will lay out its interior with those priorities in mind first. Honestly, housing for its crew is going to be an afterthought.

The enormous majority of the interior of the Death Star is probably consumed with equipment. It is most likely that any livable space is designed much like the windshield washer bottle in a modern car: clumsily wedged into whatever empty spaces remain after everything else has been designed already. It's probably just a bunch of little cube-shaped structures scattered throughout the vessel's interior, in whatever unused spaces are convenient.

[Ahriman238]

I think you guys are missing a rather important point: you're assuming that housing was actually a design priority. When people design machines, they prioritize the pieces and parts of the machine, and their geometrical arrangement, based on their respective utility with respect to the machine's design goals.

In other words, they start with the really important stuff, then they work their way down to the small potatoes. Now in the case of the Death Star, its primary purpose is (obviously) to be a self-propelled planet-destroying superweapon which is capable of defending itself. Its designers will lay out its interior with those priorities in mind first. Honestly, housing for its crew is going to be an afterthought.

The enormous majority of the interior of the Death Star is probably consumed with equipment. It is most likely that any livable space is designed much like the windshield washer bottle in a modern car: clumsily wedged into whatever empty spaces remain after everything else has been designed already. It's probably just a bunch of little cube-shaped structures scattered throughout the vessel's interior, in whatever unused spaces are convenient.

It looks to me like a bit less than third, in Crossroad's diagram. Even if we generously assume fifty percent of the volume is taken up by power, engines, life-support etc. that still leaves us with a massive amount of space to use. Space equivalent to or greater than the liveable surface of the earth since a.) the vast majority of earth is covered with uninhabited sea and b.) we live on the surface, and cannot exploit the great volume of the earth.

Actually, I've been thinking, surely there must be something in between 'grass beneath your feet, holographic sky' and 'miles and miles of featureless grey corridors completly indistinguishable from any others.'

[Darth Wong]

It looks to me like a bit less than third, in Crossroad's diagram. Even if we generously assume fifty percent of the volume is taken up by power, engines, life-support etc. that still leaves us with a massive amount of space to use. Space equivalent to or greater than the liveable surface of the earth since a.) the vast majority of earth is covered with uninhabited sea and b.) we live on the surface, and cannot exploit the great volume of the earth.

Actually, I've been thinking, surely there must be something in between 'grass beneath your feet, holographic sky' and 'miles and miles of featureless grey corridors completly indistinguishable from any others.'

Well that's the thing; why would anyone make such a vessel? It's been pointed out repeatedly that if the proportions are accurate, the thing would have vastly more living space than entire interstellar empires. It begs the question of why one would pack so much population into one place (read: target).

The Death Star made sense because its vast size was required for its primary weapon. Making a "Death Star-like" station which is mostly just living space seems like a bizarre act. Why would someone pack thousands of star systems worth of population into a single vessel?

If you were going to make worldships, and you had such a huge population to move, it would make more sense to build large numbers of small ones, with a more reasonable ratio of living space to machinery.

[Ahriman238]

It looks to me like a bit less than third, in Crossroad's diagram. Even if we generously assume fifty percent of the volume is taken up by power, engines, life-support etc. that still leaves us with a massive amount of space to use. Space equivalent to or greater than the liveable surface of the earth since a.) the vast majority of earth is covered with uninhabited sea and b.) we live on the surface, and cannot exploit the great volume of the earth.

Actually, I've been thinking, surely there must be something in between 'grass beneath your feet, holographic sky' and 'miles and miles of featureless grey corridors completly indistinguishable from any others.'

Well that's the thing; why would anyone make such a vessel? It's been pointed out repeatedly that if the proportions are accurate, the thing would have vastly more living space than entire interstellar empires. It begs the question of why one would pack so much population into one place (read: target).

The Death Star made sense because its vast size was required for its primary weapon. Making a "Death Star-like" station which is mostly just living space seems like a bizarre act. Why would someone pack thousands of star systems worth of population into a single vessel?

If you were going to make worldships, and you had such a huge population to move, it would make more sense to build large numbers of small ones, with a more reasonable ratio of living space to machinery.

Does it really? The DS prototype and the Darksaber (which, admittedly didn't really work) were considerably smaller, the Eclipse bore a less powerful version of the same weapon. The Death Star is the size of a celestial body because the Emperor didn't just want a mobile planet destroying cannon, he wanted it to be invincible, with heavy armor, swarms of fighters, and an entire army to defend it. And if its vast size and overpowered reactor meant it could fire faster, that was a nice bonus.

The most obvious reason for wanting a spacebound self-suffcient worldship is if you want a sizeable number of your population to live independant of planets and even stars. In which case either you're the Culture, or you have a powerful enemy who can afford to check every star for your people and you want a large number to disappear maybe as a last resort, maybe just in case.

[Darth Wong]

I'm aware of those examples of horrible EU writing. I'm just pointing out that no one in his right mind would actually design it that way. It's the EU which declared that most of the Death Star's mass was unnecessary. Even adding all those defense forces doesn't excuse such an incredible waste of space. You could fit huge forces in a tiny fraction of the station's bulk, without creating a station with a huge target profile and unnecessary inertia which is apparently mostly ballast.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Massive open spaces are a waste of volume and hence structure*. If you have decent 3D displays then you just need enough height for the buildings, then program the walls to simulate a planetary sky and horizon.

* Possible exception : species with biological flight might legitimately need the volume for psychological and/or health reasons.

You have space to burn, and preventing claustrophobia is a real concern. Even in modern navies, there are people who eventually just snap on sub duty, the unchanging lights, the cramped spaces and the stress of knowing there's a deadly enviroment right outside just gets to them over time. People could spend years, possibly their entire lives on this thing, so it makes sense to at least spring for a couple of park decks.

You'll also probably want to grow your own food, rather than be solely dependent on external supplies.

A thought occurs, in Animorphs the Andalites were all claustrophobic, to help counter this they grew grass on the decks everywhere, in their quarters and in the corridors, and had holograms of sky projected on every ceiling. That could be nice.

Or, even within SW, you had the Chu'uthor, the traveling Jedi Academy. They had very tall and wide hallways, and many, many, windows and domed rooms.

There's also the Kdatlyno of Known Space, who "see" by sonar and go insane in confined spaces. They'd definitely want a high roof.

[Stormin]

There's also the Kdatlyno of Known Space, who "see" by sonar and go insane in confined spaces. They'd definitely want a high roof.

Wouldn't it be easier to put sound absorbent coating on walls and ceiling in their case? Unless they go just as crazy from infinite emptiness too.

[Eternal_Freedom]

As a thought on a different arrangement, what if you built it like a series of Dyson spheres, on iside the other?

As in, you have the surface of the station, and then a few KM in you have the inside surface of a massive sphere to live on. Then, perhaps five km up to allow room, you have another sphere with machinery and such, and then another living area, and so on and so on.

How would that compare to other ideas for living area?

[Crossroads Inc.]

It looks to me like a bit less than third, in Crossroad's diagram. Even if we generously assume fifty percent of the volume is taken up by power, engines, life-support etc. that still leaves us with a massive amount of space to use. Space equivalent to or greater than the liveable surface of the earth since a.) the vast majority of earth is covered with uninhabited sea and b.) we live on the surface, and cannot exploit the great volume of the earth.

Actually, I've been thinking, surely there must be something in between 'grass beneath your feet, holographic sky' and 'miles and miles of featureless grey corridors completly indistinguishable from any others.'

Well that's the thing; why would anyone make such a vessel? It's been pointed out repeatedly that if the proportions are accurate, the thing would have vastly more living space than entire interstellar empires. It begs the question of why one would pack so much population into one place (read: target).

The Death Star made sense because its vast size was required for its primary weapon. Making a "Death Star-like" station which is mostly just living space seems like a bizarre act. Why would someone pack thousands of star systems worth of population into a single vessel?

If you were going to make worldships, and you had such a huge population to move, it would make more sense to build large numbers of small ones, with a more reasonable ratio of living space to machinery.

Ok see this is the sort of feedback I was looking for. After all like I said, I'm not an engineer on this.
So to go into a bit more detail about what prompted this...

We have a high end civilization that is looking at a long term view of things, IE not just the next 100 or 1000 years, but ensuring its survival then next 10,000 and beyond years. So moving not just to another planet but to other galaxies is considered. My Friend and I initially went for "Death Star-like" station as, well, its the death star. It is large, imposing, well armored, well protected and big enough to carry a massive population. In terms of population we weren't really sure. We thought something like 100 to 500 million, but people are tossing around numbers like 10's of billions.
Of course reading Wongs statement suddenly reminds me of the phrase "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

Splitting the journey into several ships I guess would make more sense, you have backups in case of some sort of catastrophic failure and smaller size makes more sense in terms of maintenance and manufacturing. I guess the real question is, if you were planning on making large "world ships" what is the optimal size ratio? Something 120km? 100? 50? You don't really NEED a population of billions to make such a crossing or start up a new civilization (hence why we initially were looking out 100 to 500 million). Ships with just one million would be ok depending on what else was put on the ship for the crossing.

[Isolder74]

The Darksaber ended up not working because of shoddy manufacturing. The main problem with it was the workforce that the Hutt used to build it with in the first place. However that's a different problem.

One of the reasons that the overall design of the Darksaber wasn't very good for anything intended to be a terror weapon was it's lack of defenses. All it could do was destroy a planet and had no way to defend itself beyond it's main weapon. It was only useful to anyone as long as no one know where you've parked it until you want to use it against someone. Even in the book itself even a small battle fleet was capable of taking it out of action even if it worked as advertised. Sure you can destroy one vessel quickly but that leaves the rest to blast you at will until the gun recharges.

That is a different topic.

Moving on to the subject of a massive world ship build for housing as a primary goal, a large cylinder might actually be a better. You get the benefits of the open space and can place engines and vital systems away from areas that will be used for housing. You can then even use rotation of the interior or the ship itself for part of the gravitation saving power if you want to. The bigger you build anything the more difficult it will be to move it no matter what tech base you have. Even building a bunch of smaller vessels resembling the habitation zones in the other designs might be better.

If the goal is to save a dying civilization them having multiple ships heading to multiple potential new planets is a good idea. Only one huge vessel would just mean that you are screwed if the new place doesn't pan out unless you can try someplace else. A smaller vessel would also be easier to refuel and try to move on to a new potential target location the a much larger ship's supply requirements would be.

[Darth Wong]

Ok see this is the sort of feedback I was looking for. After all like I said, I'm not an engineer on this.
So to go into a bit more detail about what prompted this...

We have a high end civilization that is looking at a long term view of things, IE not just the next 100 or 1000 years, but ensuring its survival then next 10,000 and beyond years. So moving not just to another planet but to other galaxies is considered. My Friend and I initially went for "Death Star-like" station as, well, its the death star. It is large, imposing, well armored, well protected and big enough to carry a massive population. In terms of population we weren't really sure. We thought something like 100 to 500 million, but people are tossing around numbers like 10's of billions.
Of course reading Wongs statement suddenly reminds me of the phrase "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

Yes, that was the idea I was trying to convey

Splitting the journey into several ships I guess would make more sense, you have backups in case of some sort of catastrophic failure and smaller size makes more sense in terms of maintenance and manufacturing. I guess the real question is, if you were planning on making large "world ships" what is the optimal size ratio? Something 120km? 100? 50? You don't really NEED a population of billions to make such a crossing or start up a new civilization (hence why we initially were looking out 100 to 500 million). Ships with just one million would be ok depending on what else was put on the ship for the crossing.

It all depends on how big the machinery needs to be. For worldships, you would need propulsion, defenses, and life support, but for such extended voyages with no support base, you would also want sufficient onboard resources to do things like manufacturing replacement parts from scratch, refining mineral ores in order to acquire new raw materials, etc. Creating a self-sufficient mobile "society in a bottle" would put certain lower limits on the size of the vessel. After that, I'd imagine your upper limit is dictated by how much you want to disperse your population, how many destinations you want to explore at once, etc.

Of course, a lot of it depends on the nature of your machinery. In real-life, our limited technology means that our spacecraft are mostly fuel. Making the ships bigger would only force us to add even more fuel. Sci-fi vessels which have only a tiny proportion of their interior space devoted to fuel and machinery must have enormously inflated fuel energy densities. There's a lot of background information on your hypothetical sci-fi civilization which would be necessary to figure this sort of thing out.

Just keep in mind that you can't take a warship from your universe, throw a huge sphere around it full of people, and assume it will work. All that mass will severely impact the vessel's ability to function. And of course, you need some idea of how artificial gravity works, because that would have a major impact on the way you'd want to lay out this vessel.

[Ahriman238]

It looks to me like a bit less than third, in Crossroad's diagram. Even if we generously assume fifty percent of the volume is taken up by power, engines, life-support etc. that still leaves us with a massive amount of space to use. Space equivalent to or greater than the liveable surface of the earth since a.) the vast majority of earth is covered with uninhabited sea and b.) we live on the surface, and cannot exploit the great volume of the earth.

Actually, I've been thinking, surely there must be something in between 'grass beneath your feet, holographic sky' and 'miles and miles of featureless grey corridors completly indistinguishable from any others.'

Well that's the thing; why would anyone make such a vessel? It's been pointed out repeatedly that if the proportions are accurate, the thing would have vastly more living space than entire interstellar empires. It begs the question of why one would pack so much population into one place (read: target).

The Death Star made sense because its vast size was required for its primary weapon. Making a "Death Star-like" station which is mostly just living space seems like a bizarre act. Why would someone pack thousands of star systems worth of population into a single vessel?

If you were going to make worldships, and you had such a huge population to move, it would make more sense to build large numbers of small ones, with a more reasonable ratio of living space to machinery.

Or, if feasible, build large numbers of the Death Star-like worldships. Hell, maybe Crossroad's singular one is the proof-of-concept?

If you want something a bit more canonical, we could discuss all the bottomless chasms that pop up in the strangest places...

[Darth Wong]

You could actually make a case for those bottomless pits, as maintenance access tunnels. In a station as vast as a Death Star, it would make more sense to rocket down access tunnels with anti-grav packs or jetpacks than to walk around hallways or take elevators, especially if you are bringing large maintenance equipment or structures with you.

There is an assumption throughout sci-fi that no starship maintenance will ever require anything bigger than one man and a small toolkit (hence the famous "Jeffries tubes" in Star Trek), but that seems stupid and ignorant to me. It's as if the Star Trek writers thought that starship maintenance was like computer maintenance; nothing ever needs to be done other than adjusting something with a fancy electronic tuning fork.

[Serafina]

There is an assumption throughout sci-fi that no starship maintenance will ever require anything bigger than one man and a small toolkit (hence the famous "Jeffries tubes" in Star Trek), but that seems stupid and ignorant to me. It's as if the Star Trek writers thought that starship maintenance was like computer maintenance; nothing ever needs to be done other than adjusting something with a fancy electronic tuning fork.

I bet that most sci-fi writers have never done any maintenance that required more than that - switching a lightbulb, perhaps some minor plumbing, other stuff you can do around your house.
But if you have ever taken your car to a repair shop for a proper checkup, you'll already see that you will need heavy machinery and good access to repair it. Of course, that might not be a feasible solution on a spaceship outside of a spacedock - possibly yet another reason for the size of the Death Star, enough free space to allow proper access to all parts of the station. Seems like a desirable trait for an independent weapon platform to me.

[Darth Tedious]

Although it comes from the EU, I figure the space arrangement in the DS makes sense. Being that its main purpose is as a superweapon, it seems fitting that most of the space is reserved for the reactor and weapon systems. IIRC, only the outer 2km was inhabitable...
It also makes sense that if a DS-sized structure was built for worldship purposes, it would be mostly dedicated to living space.

As a thought on a different arrangement, what if you built it like a series of Dyson spheres, on iside the other?

As in, you have the surface of the station, and then a few KM in you have the inside surface of a massive sphere to live on. Then, perhaps five km up to allow room, you have another sphere with machinery and such, and then another living area, and so on and so on.

How would that compare to other ideas for living area?

I always thought Dyson spheres had their problems. Personally, I lean towards the idea of the Niven ring. It makes less use of space, but doesn't require artificial gravity,
Which makes me wonder, could you use rings within rings, and could you use the inner rings as a substitute for shadow squares for the outer rings?