Ring City

Recently, Ring City was designated as the most popular subject of discussion in 22 solar systems by the Commissioners (out of the other 2 systems in the Concord; one is used as a giant laboratory for dangerous experiments and projects while the other had just gone through a surprisingly violent coronal mass ejection that had caused significant damage to infastructure). The Ring City project is by far the biggest megaengineering project that the Affiliated Habitats has ever undertaken; it will consume huge amounts of energy and raw materials, taking centuries to complete. Billions of people have already voiced their support of the project and Ring City (even though construction has only just started) has even been given its own QC Commissioner and Zambarau Overseer, so, politically, the Ring City project is designated as a solar system (though it is not included in the official demographic number of solar systems).

Ring City will be an enormous version of the interstellar habitats. It will be a giant ring 38 million kilometres in diameter and 50,000 kilometres thick, dwarfing most rocky planets; there is no material known to Concord science that could support a structure this big, so the largest, most sophicticated DCMs in the history of the Zambarau Concord will be employed to support the structure. There will be 100 kilometre-high synthetic diamond walls to hold the atmosphere in and the whole habitat will only need to rotate once a day to provide the intended gravity. The total area will exceed the current total habitable land area of the whole Zambarau Concord, the completed ring city having an area of 5.97 trillion square kilometres.

There is still much debate over the Ring City, though. Some people think that the Ring City is badly designed; the Affiliated Habitats want to urbanise the whole area of the habitat to allow for a population of over 5 quadrillion, they also want it to be in interstellar space. A lot of people, including many QCs, think that this is a very inefficient idea, pointing out that the population of the Concord is not projected to be anywhere near 5 quadrillion by the time Ring City will be completed (meaning the habitat should be rural, not urban), also saying that it would be inefficient to have Ring City in interstellar space - it would be a lot easier to have the habitat near a star so that it can use natural, instead of artificial, sunlight.

Ring City is not without its supporters, though; the largest contribution so far has been a small planet by the Chondrites (deconstruction of the planet for building materials has already begun). When asked how the Ring City will have a population of 5 quadrillion if there won't even be that many people in the Zambarau Concord upon completion, a Drone replied, "We'll just make the people." Yet again, the Drones have succeeded in mixing up people with physical resources.  

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