So I've pretty much proven that food is best grown in space using natural sunlight - NOT artificial lights.

Starship Generations

The next logical step is to determine the orbit where a space station can be placed with optimal access to sunlight, material resources, and supply missions from earth. A simple 365-day orbit around the earth (2.15 million km altitude, or 5.6 lunar distances) is incorrect because it only applies to 2-body systems with orbits that are circular, elliptical, parabolic, or hyperbolic. This problem more closely resembles a 3-body problem (Sun-Earth-Satellite) because of the gravitational pull of the Sun-Earth pair.

Three Body Problem

As such there are only five orbits that would provide a 365-day orbit. Because a spacecraft in these orbits appear to remain stationary w.r.t. the Earth they are said to occupy Lagrange Points.

Any of these positions represents a 365-day orbit around the earth. However L1 is unstable, the Sun is not visible from L2, and L3 is very far away. Therefore only L4, and L5 (referred to as the Trojan Points) provide the conditions we want for a permanent space station: a stable orbit, the sun is never eclipsed, and the earth & moon are not too far away.

L4 and L5 are very easy to calculate. They lie on the orbital path of the earth, with a 60-degree angular displacement in front and behind. In fact an equilateral triangle can be drawn with the Sun, Earth & satellite at each corner. Each object in the 3-body problem are the same distances from one another: exactly 1 AU.