What SVL2 looks like

I've been thinking about what the SVL2 station should look like. There's content here for its own post. Here, just for the shield and the colony immediately behind it. I assume toroidal somewhat on this model.

For half of 2020 I worried that even though the insolation here is 262 Wm^-2 at a Vesta level, which should preserve our volatiles some, we still don't want our maintenance crew gazing at the solar ring. It'll all be shielded anyway because of the ionic wind, with ion drives pushing against the wind. Radiating the internal heat out from human colonies is also an issue although I haven't looked at that so much.

But last August, there was salvation. I could run stations at orthogonal-to-solar orbit, almost polar. In subsequent months I realised that I am along the Venus orbital plane, so I can run such a station up to the full 616000 km apocytheree, avoiding Venus' "real" satellites far below, adjusting its delta-V easily by sail. Thence I can beam solar energy up the 616 x 1014 Mm, 1186000 km Pythagorean. At arctan(616/1014) that is 31°27' radius. Say we round that down to 30° for a polar pericytheree 585563 km, nowhere near the true sats. I'd prefer a circular orbit as high as possible, but I assume life isn't perfect. UPDATE 1/12: ... or we could just use halo.

Industry clusters toward the shield. So do the docks - that's where everyone in the Solar System refuels.

Up on L2 station I have set hereby set a limit on the shield's circle - as the people behind it see it. Behind that, as long as the ring doesn't extend past 30° against Venus line-of-sight, my station gets relayed clean, safe, solar energy. Nobody between where they see 30° shade and the 22 arc-minutes of the Sun out here needs to see the ring o' fire directly... nor to feel its (attenuated) heat. All that hydrogen and oxygen (and other traces) we've collected from statites down umbra can be moved up here to contribute to the shield.

A big, icy shield taking up to 30° radius of sky against Venus and the Sun behind her. I doubt this artificial umbra within Venus' umbra will hit even the lunar night's 120 K, assuming I can divert waste heat from life-support and industry around the cryo. I should even be able to run superconductors.

L2 is metastable but we do have volatiles here for propellant. We might stick a telescope around here but I think there's insufficient room. The astronomers themselves live on L2 and communicate downwell. Also, although there is not a lot of deuterium here, there is a lot of basic hydrogen and of oxygen, which can be held at near-zero K, fit for chemical rocket transport, with minimal delta-V needed to inject into various Hohmanns or (to Saturn) biëlliptic.

Anything still needing the 262 Wm^-2 can hang out on the sunside of the shield or, like those maintaining the ion drives, on its sides. I expect to carpet the sunside with whatever magic we need to collect ions for ice; solar panels will ring it. This also preserves independence of the polar relays; the panels can feed the highest-priority needs, starting with those ion drives.

The station will be arranged around a cone of cold, as Dungeon Masters might put it. Here the shade is greater than 30° and all energy must be imported or generated. Further out, they get energy from the polar stations. Eventually they lose the protection of the shield itself.

Behind the shield, and the colony right behind it, runs a longer umbra, of sun-shielded space which can get that energy beamed to it. Therein lies a tail, as it were.