Los Angeles Station

General Layout: Los Angeles Station is not the largest human station in terms of displacement, but it is by far the largest in terms of actual living area. It is roughly cylindrical, 3 km long by 1.5 km diameter. Instead of being more or less hollow, like O’Neal, it is filled by corridors, rooms and halls. Los Angeles Station started out as a wheel station, like Ellis. After the loss of earth in 2145, it was expanded. The expansion was modular, adding a wheel on each side as each phase of construction was completed. It is best thought of as being like a roll of Lifesavers candies, with only the middle candy having a hole. The station rotates for gravity, of course. The spin gravity varies from 0 to 1.2g.
History: Los Angeles Station was named after the City of Los Angeles, which was fairly well destroyed in the Fusion Plant disaster of 2033 Construction began in 2063. The original purpose of Los Angeles Station was space manufacturing, basically, an orbital factory. After the loss of Earth, refugees were sent to the station after O’Neal filled up. The station used its ample manufacturing resources to continue to add to itself, adding spin disk after spin disk. As more sections were added, more refugees were sent there. Generally, these were the refugees who were not the top of the pick; those were snatched up by the other colonies. Typical LA Station immigrants included the uneducated, the poor, the unskilled, the antisocial and non-English speakers. Eventually, LA Station reached capacity. It was becoming increasingly difficult to expand due to inherent engineering limitations. This didn’t stop the Lunar government from crowding more people in. There was just no other place to put them.
Today the station is a beehive of humanity, mostly of pure eath descent. The social order in the station has broken down do to severe overcrowding and lawlessness is rampant. It is a tough place to grow up. There is almost no privacy; different levels are run by rival gangs and civil authority is sneered at. Huge food shipments arrive all the time, but they are quickly diverted to the strongest and the most powerful. Medical care is difficult to come by and education is a joke. If there is a “Third World” in the Solar System, it is LA Station.

People: (Angelinos, “Vaccbacks”)
The people of LA Station (or as the natives sometimes call it, “the Barrio”, are tough. They have to be in order to survive. Although poor and generally ignorant, they are fiercely proud of their earth ancestry. Angelinos have little respect for privacy or civil rights. Although hopelessly overpopulated, they still breed like rabbits. Most Angelinos belong to some gang or another, based on ethnicity. This intensification along racial lines only heightens the tension in the station. (“A more wretched hive of scum and villainy…”)