This is an artwork depicting the exterior of a type of large-scale space colony called an O'Neill Cylinder, made popular by American Physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in his book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space (1976). The interpretation in this view differs from O'Neill's original idea, in which the inner surface had transparent strips running its length, and mirrors outside those sections to bounce sunlight inside. The cylinders here measures 9.2km (5.6 miles) in diameter and 36km (20 miles) long. Rotation about the long axis. at a rate of 210 m/s at the surface, provides artificial 1g of artificial gravity by means of centripetal force. Two of them are bound together to stabilise their rotation.