Absalom Station Size

So Absalom Station is supposed to be 5 miles in diameter and house 2 million people? Is this a typo or something cause that's physically impossible. Mechanically medium creatures seem to be a 5'by5'by5' cube, so without squeezing the majority of Absalom Station's citizens take up said space.

Now going back to the 5 mile diameter; Absalom Station is supposed to be a dome. This means that the volume of Absalom Station, i.e. total space within it, is equal to half the volume of of of a sphere of equal diameter. Therefore, the volume of Absalom Station is equal (4*pi*2.5^3)/6, or 32.725 miles cubed. Now since there are 5280 feet in a mile, multiplying the cubic miles by 5280 will give us the cubic feet of 172,788.

Returning to my previous point about the space most citizens take up without squeezing; this is 172,788 ft^3 that can be divided amongst the citizens and visitors of Absalom. So, since the most citizens are medium, we can simply divide the cubic feet by 5 to determine the MAXIMUM number of medium creatures that can be in Absalom Station: 34,557.

This is assuming that there's next to nothing except people in Absalom Station. At most this could also include walkways to account for the part where this number has people onto of people. However there would always be someone next to someone else, privacy wouldn't actually exist, etc.

So will this be corrected at any point? Cause the inaccurate world building is really kinda irritating. I'll even make it easy for y'all! 2 million people in the station? So that's 2 million 5'by5'by5' cubes to make math simple. multiple by 5 for cubic feet, that's 10 million cubic feet. Then you divide by 5280 for the cubic miles, 1893.9;round down to 1893. That's the MINIMUM possible volume. Now multiple by 6 and divide by 4*pi for the radius cubed, 903.8; round down to 903. The cubic root of 903 is 9.66 so the diameter of Absalom Station had to be at least 20 miles for it to CONTAIN 2 million medium creatures.

Let's add infrastructure, privacy, space for visitors, businesses, etc. Let's be really really conservative and only triple the space we want. 5679 cubic miles, so a diameter of at least 28 miles. And honestly, I'm probably massively underestimating how much more space you'd need.

You have a math error in your conversion from cubic miles to cubic feet. There are 5280 feet in a *linear* mile, but 5280 x 5280 x 5280 cubic feet in a cubic mile.

A 5-mile-diameter dome contains around 4.8 trillion cubic feet, not 172,000.

If there are 2 million people in Absalom station, then each of them would have roughly 2.5 million cubic feet to stretch out in. I think they're fine.

That's a lot of room to hide nefarious goings-on. You might be hard-pressed to actually run into another living being in the deep places of the station.

This sounds a lot like Babylon 5...

Babylon 5 was a hollow cylinder and got its gravity by centrifugal force. Absalom Station might have a bunch of underground levels and could have a much higher population density.

The Idari gets its artificial gravity the low-tech way like Babylon 5, but we don't know how big it is.

Do all those tremendous towers and horizontal gantries and the huge down spire count as part of the diameter?

Well diameter is a straight line through a circle, so no

Absalom Station is basically Manhattan in space so I'd use any TV show, movie, book, comic or radio show based in Manhattan as a reference for any story you're trying to tell.

There's lots of people, they come from all over, and anything can happen there.

So Absalom Station is supposed to be 5 miles in diameter and house 2 million people?

Math error aside, Manhattan has 1.645 million people in ~23 square miles, and commuter estimates put daytime influx at 3.9 million. With a slightly larger square mileage (25), and a whole third dimension to work with, Absalom actually seems underpopulated.

Absalom is actually pretty damn similar to the city in Dark City. It's got the huge city with towers and parks in the dome, and the artificial gravity and machines that run everything are down in the bottom of the spike.

I agree, it bothered me reading the CRB and it said 5 miles. It is a pretty underwhelming size for such an important focus for the system. My imagination had this thing much larger.

I agree, it bothered me reading the CRB and it said 5 miles. It is a pretty underwhelming size for such an important focus for the system. My imagination had this thing much larger.

5 mile diameter is only one dimension when folks usually think about it. Its also 5 miles up and down. It's basically the Death Star. People have been pretty impressed with the Death Star when it pops up around the place.

Also, volume if a sphere is
4/3 x Pi x (Radius cubed)

In this case radius is 10560 feet.

Final volume is
4932650716017.7 Feet cubed.

That's a great many people to live inside a space station.

Absalom Station, imho

a) should be bigger physically
b) should have more people in it

that being said, like all fantasy / sci-fi world building, it's as big and as populated as you want it to be.

L4ughingm4n wrote:

I agree, it bothered me reading the CRB and it said 5 miles. It is a pretty underwhelming size for such an important focus for the system. My imagination had this thing much larger.

5 mile diameter is only one dimension when folks usually think about it. Its also 5 miles up and down. It's basically the Death Star. People have been pretty impressed with the Death Star when it pops up around the place.

It's minuscule compared to the Death Stars. They were about 75 and 100 miles in diameter.

L4ughingm4n wrote:

I agree, it bothered me reading the CRB and it said 5 miles. It is a pretty underwhelming size for such an important focus for the system. My imagination had this thing much larger.

5 mile diameter is only one dimension when folks usually think about it. Its also 5 miles up and down. It's basically the Death Star. People have been pretty impressed with the Death Star when it pops up around the place.

The accompanying art disagrees with you, actually. Absalom is roughly a cone. More a disk with a protruding lower spire.

But it still works comfortably with a population slightly more than Manhattan's residents and a living area slightly more than Manhattan's, with plenty of give for station functions, docks and other outer space related requirements.

I assumed that part of that 2 million population also included the armada

I like the idea that 2 million is the number of registered citizens or otherwise accounted for persons. I haven't read too much supplemental material on the station yet, but perhaps with all the travelers coming and going, as well as undocumented individuals, we can add virtually another million or so to that number.

well, it's ten miles in diameter (assuming a radius of only 5 miles). That should be able to hold 2 million inhabitants. Maybe.

well, it's ten miles in diameter (assuming a radius of only 5 miles). That should be able to hold 2 million inhabitants. Maybe.

No, it's 5 miles in diameter, because it says 'Diameter: 5 miles.'

Even if it were an earth-bound city, it's completely fine, as that's bigger than Manhattan, which is has 1.5 million residents plus about 2 million commuters every day.

With the additional spire below the major ring, there is plenty of room for a population of 2 million. It might actually be a bit on the empty side.

EltonJ wrote:

well, it's ten miles in diameter (assuming a radius of only 5 miles). That should be able to hold 2 million inhabitants. Maybe.

No, it's 5 miles in diameter, because it says 'Diameter: 5 miles.'

Even if it were an earth-bound city, it's completely fine, as that's bigger than Manhattan, which is has 1.5 million residents plus about 2 million commuters every day.

With the additional spire below the major ring, there is plenty of room for a population of 2 million. It might actually be a bit on the empty side.

Manhattan used to have something like 6 million people living there a century ago.

Manhattan used to have something like 6 million people living there a century ago.

In the past 120 years, the highest population was 2.3 mil. I really don't see it getting as high as 6 mil.

So Absalom Station is supposed to be 5 miles in diameter and house 2 million people? Is this a typo or something cause that's physically impossible. Mechanically medium creatures seem to be a 5'by5'by5' cube, so without squeezing the majority of Absalom Station's citizens take up said space.

Now going back to the 5 mile diameter; Absalom Station is supposed to be a dome. This means that the volume of Absalom Station, i.e. total space within it, is equal to half the volume of of of a sphere of equal diameter. Therefore, the volume of Absalom Station is equal (4*pi*2.5^3)/6, or 32.725 miles cubed. Now since there are 5280 feet in a mile, multiplying the cubic miles by 5280 will give us the cubic feet of 172,788.

Returning to my previous point about the space most citizens take up without squeezing; this is 172,788 ft^3 that can be divided amongst the citizens and visitors of Absalom. So, since the most citizens are medium, we can simply divide the cubic feet by 5 to determine the MAXIMUM number of medium creatures that can be in Absalom Station: 34,557.

This is assuming that there's next to nothing except people in Absalom Station. At most this could also include walkways to account for the part where this number has people onto of people. However there would always be someone next to someone else, privacy wouldn't actually exist, etc.

So will this be corrected at any point? Cause the inaccurate world building is really kinda irritating. I'll even make it easy for y'all! 2 million people in the station? So that's 2 million 5'by5'by5' cubes to make math simple. multiple by 5 for cubic feet, that's 10 million cubic feet. Then you divide by 5280 for the cubic miles, 1893.9;round down to 1893. That's the MINIMUM possible volume. Now multiple by 6 and divide by 4*pi for the radius cubed, 903.8; round down to 903. The cubic root of 903 is 9.66 so the diameter of Absalom Station had to be at least 20 miles for it to CONTAIN 2 million medium creatures.

Let's add infrastructure, privacy, space for...

A d of 5 miles = a r of 2.5 miles providing a c of 82938 feet resulting in a volume of 9,634,083,429,722 cu ft when divided by 5 that's 1,926,816,685,944.4. Even if you divide this by 5 and again by 5 You still end up with 77,072,667,437 which is plenty of room and closer to the accompanying art. Dividing by 5 2 more times would still be 3,082,906,697.51104

The earth has a diameter of 7926 miles which is an r of 3963 making it a c of 131473391 and a volume of Volume
38,376,255,235,736,725,032,534 cu ft

I used this Calculator https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/sphere-volume

epicmusic42 wrote:

So Absalom Station is supposed to be 5 miles in diameter and house 2 million people? Is this a typo or something cause that's physically impossible. Mechanically medium creatures seem to be a 5'by5'by5' cube, so without squeezing the majority of Absalom Station's citizens take up said space.

Now going back to the 5 mile diameter; Absalom Station is supposed to be a dome. This means that the volume of Absalom Station, i.e. total space within it, is equal to half the volume of of of a sphere of equal diameter. Therefore, the volume of Absalom Station is equal (4*pi*2.5^3)/6, or 32.725 miles cubed. Now since there are 5280 feet in a mile, multiplying the cubic miles by 5280 will give us the cubic feet of 172,788.

Returning to my previous point about the space most citizens take up without squeezing; this is 172,788 ft^3 that can be divided amongst the citizens and visitors of Absalom. So, since the most citizens are medium, we can simply divide the cubic feet by 5 to determine the MAXIMUM number of medium creatures that can be in Absalom Station: 34,557.

This is assuming that there's next to nothing except people in Absalom Station. At most this could also include walkways to account for the part where this number has people onto of people. However there would always be someone next to someone else, privacy wouldn't actually exist, etc.

So will this be corrected at any point? Cause the inaccurate world building is really kinda irritating. I'll even make it easy for y'all! 2 million people in the station? So that's 2 million 5'by5'by5' cubes to make math simple. multiple by 5 for cubic feet, that's 10 million cubic feet. Then you divide by 5280 for the cubic miles, 1893.9;round down to 1893. That's the MINIMUM possible volume. Now multiple by 6 and divide by 4*pi for the radius cubed, 903.8; round down to 903. The cubic root of 903 is 9.66 so the diameter of Absalom Station had to be at least 20 miles for it to CONTAIN 2 million medium creatures.

Let's add

...

right as far as it goes, I think? It comes to about 4.8 million cubic feet per person, which is equivalent to a sphere 209 feet in diameter. But of course it wouldn't be laid out that way. The point is, it's quite spacious, with some areas in which there might not normaly be anybody at all.

The comparison to Manhattan above is interesting but misleading. Manhattan is 13 miles long and 2.3 miles wide. We're talking about a roughly spherical station though, that could be as tall as it is wide. Manhattan's maximum height (tallest building) is only a third of a mile tall. Absalom sould be roughly twice as wide, 40% as long, and 15 times as tall as Manhattan.

Possibly one explanation for the low density of Absalom is it could contain large farms, facsimiles of planetary environments and massive industrial infrastructure.

In Pact Worlds terms it has outsize cultural relevance compared to its size and population.

An interesting thing I was thinking about is all human population on Earth has to live between -1408 feet (elevation of the Dead Sea) and a little over 16000 feet (La Riconada Peru). Living at lower pressure would stretch human biology. Lower equivalent elevation (higher pressure) seems to be an option. If the station had artificial gravity equal to Earth's, that would mean there wouldn't be any open-air environments where humans could live that were 5 miles high. But they could be 2.5 miles from a center. But also I would think that the amount of artificial gravity in different parts of the station would be set to the preferences of many different kinds of people, largely non-human, and the air would be segmented to mimic multiple different planetary atmospheres so people from there could be comfortable.

One other consideration to take into account: with the (much) more advanced technology (and the presence of magic) the amount of living space per resident could be substantially lower than expected by some people today. For example, Manilla has the highest population density in the world of 119,600 persons per square mile or 46,178 persons per square kilometer, nearly twice the density of Manhattan ("As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Manhattan (New York County) was home to 74,870.7 inhabitants per square mile (28,907.7/km2)").

Yeah. I think my overall take is that in terms of people per unit volume, it's low compared to many real-life cities. Which is fine. Maybe it was planned for up to 50 million, but never reached that. Or used to have that before something happened.

One other consideration to take into account: with the (much) more advanced technology (and the presence of magic) the amount of living space per resident could be substantially lower than expected by some people today. For example, Manilla has the highest population density in the world of 119,600 persons per square mile or 46,178 persons per square kilometer, nearly twice the density of Manhattan ("As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Manhattan (New York County) was home to 74,870.7 inhabitants per square mile (28,907.7/km2)").

Before it was torn down in 1994 Kowloon Walled City had the highest population density I have heard of. The city had 33,000 residents on only 6.5 acres which is the equivariant of 1,255,000 inhabitants per square kilometre.

Kowloon Walled City.

Fun fact, while waiting for demolition, Jacky Chan filled part of the movie Crime Story at Kowloon Walled City. The buildings being blown up are actually being blown up.

Yeah. I think my overall take is that in terms of people per unit volume, it's low compared to many real-life cities. Which is fine. Maybe it was planned for up to 50 million, but never reached that. Or used to have that before something happened.

The problem with comparing sci-fi space stations to real-life cities is that current real cities are not built very well for sustainability. Also in a setting like Starfinder where getting to other star systems and planets is relatively accessible populations can more easily spread out when they get overpopulated, currently on earth we are stuck here.

The cost of shipping materials is still kind of high compared to shipping them on Earth, isn't it? Which would mean that Absalom and other space stations would have to pay more for the materials they're made out of than Earth cities do.

Which you could model as a game dynamic that there's a steady market on all non-planetary stations for basic materials, including dirt and air. Also a decent price to be fetched for anything on station when you're, for example remodeling.

And a black market in stolen basic materials.

on a station, even sewage is a resource.

on a station, even sewage is a resource.

As much as I like the Catania feel of Starfinder I think it's ok if we skip a playable species that eats sewage, at least for social encounters, especially ones involving eating. I don't have the dietary habits of all the playable species memorized so I wouldn't be surprised if some pointed out we already have one.

.... for fertilizer and water extraction and the like.

Blackmarket space goblin bio rocket fuel

The bigger issue with Absalom Station ( and also the Idari ) isn't whether they can fit their claimed population. Its how they can possible possess their alleged setting importance with such a tiny population. In both cases I would add an extra zero to their population, minimum. They are big enough to have room for it, and in both cases they desperately need it.