Green Sector: Garden

Green Sector: Garden:

A green oasis amid a technological desert, the Garden seems jarringly out of place aboard a station. In fact, the first impression many people have of it is that it is needless ostentation, a monument to excess aboard a station that cost billions of credits to build in the first place. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Straddling both Green Sector and Red Sector, the Garden is a massive hollow cylinder in the middle of the station, and it is a wonder to behold. The Garden runs around the entire 360 degree arc of the station, the rotation of the central carousel providing 0.94g of gravity to the entire surface. A lush landscape of trees, fields, crops and even artificial lakes, one can literally stand in the midst of the Garden and look directly up at the surface of a lake glittering in reflected sunlight nearly half a mile above.

The Gardens run nearly 1.75 miles in length, with a circumference of a little more than 1.5 miles. The sheer vastness of the Gardens never fails to stun a first time viewer who, after seeing little more than cramped corridors and small rooms aboard the station, suddenly catches sight of this immense wilderness around and above him.

Though some have questioned the point, but the Garden is essential to the station’s operation. It contains orchards, crop fields and other, more decorative greenery, all of which serve to convert the carbon dioxide constantly manufactured by the majority of the station’s residents into oxygen, providing enormous augmentation to the life support systems.

Further, the root systems of all these plants serve to help filter the station’s waste water. The Station could certainly exist without the Garden, but its contribution to station life support means the station’s maximum population would be reduced by more than one third.