spotter
spotter (n.): An ancient spacer’s tool, dating back almost as far as the navigator’s sextant, the engineer’s multi, or the medtech’s hand effector, used for locating and profiling distant objects in space: a boon to anyone who has to manage a docking bay, shift cargo in
trope-a-day
Turbine Blender: Very much averted as anything somebody might want to do. Those turbines are expensive. (And even though they can build much stronger turbine blades with the state-of-the-art in the Worlds’ materials science, that’s because they want to operate them in the new envelope thus opened up – and
Lumenna-Súnáris System
I/6/n. e’Luminarien (“The Belt”) Class: Asteroid belt Orbit: 2.24 au (avg.) Orbit (ecc.): varies, mostly under 0.25 Blackbody temp.: 176 K (avg.) Next up, dividing the inner more-or-less rocky planets from the outer gas giants, and scattered over a much bigger area of space than
trope-a-day
Truce Zone: About as rare as the Neutral Zone, its counterpart trope, in the large, but mention should be given to both the Free Eilish Confederacy on the one hand, which occupies the majority of the Eilish Expanse constellation and whose policies of firm neutrality and not-terribly-restrictive legal system make
worldbuilding
Terence Wynne asks: I wanted to ask about Eldraeic teeth. Okay, so I’ve got to ask… are you a dentist? Or otherwise in the tooth-wrangling professions, whatever others of those there may be? (I ask because this is a very unexpected question, and I’m a little weirded out
trope-a-day
Tron Lines: Averted for most pieces of technology: they are kind of pointless on their own, and inefficiently power-wasteful. (And if a few status displays and such adopt a similar look when there is a purpose for it… well, what of it?) They are, however, a fashion (a data glimmer;
Darkness Within
Z minus four minutes: Damn it. Well, I’ll try, sister. I’ll try hard. Last parts are mounted, the couch from the cutter – right through the forward viewport – and the spare PLSS pack. Software tests clean. The script is ready to shut me down on Gutpunch‘s servers and
trope-a-day
Trigger Phrase: Would you kindly recall that this is extraordinarily easy to reliably do with mnemonetic implants?
code of conduct
(I was reminded the other day of one particular conference that makes a point that it has no detailed “code of conduct” because, well, “It is presumed that those attending the conference are of sufficient moral grounding and intelligence to be well behaved. If we have to explain how you
trope-a-day
Transhumanism: And lots of it, to the point where in advanced polities, anything resembling a baseline is an endangered species at best (at worst… well, there are no examples of baseline Eldrae alathis still around, right? Even the people who were born one and survived the millennia have upgraded several
trope-a-day
(Forgot this last night; sorry, folks.) Tractor Beam: Among the things that vector control will do for you, along with its pushy counterpart, the pressor beam, along with the variant in which it’s not used for towing or grappling, but rather as a structural element, in which all the
mycofibrillin
mycofibrillin was originally a product designed by the space division of Molecular Architecture, ICC, under the Mycofibrillin™ trademark. It was a development of early experiments in creating spaceborne life, such as the regoformer “asteroid lichen”, which sustains itself using solar energy and water extracted from icy regolith. Unlike its predecessors,