space station

With Care

Posted by

2

From Gateway Station Operations to all within, greeting.

As you may be aware, Gateway Station is a low-orbit station, which consequently suffers from a minuscule degree of drag from Eliéra’s outer atmosphere, necessitating periodic corrections in our orbit. The day after tomorrow (Yrnaes 21st) is the scheduled date for this annual orbital maintenance.

To minimize undesirable gravity effects, we have elected to make a six-minute prograde burn symmetrical around the moment of apoapsis, Courtly falling 17:22. While this should limit the resultant peak acceleration to well below one one-hundredth of a standard gravity, we nonetheless recommend that all loose and/or fragile objects be secured for the duration of the burn, and plumbing services also will be secured for burn as per standard procedures (please consult your station infrastructure guide if additional details are required).

We anticipate no requirement to undock any vessels berthed here during the burn, although for convenience, docking and undocking during the burn is restricted to emergencies only.

Thank you for your cooperation, and our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Galár Valarian Indoricios

for and on behalf of

Gateway Station Operations

Trope-a-Day: Space Station

Posted by

Space Station: Lots of them, as residence, lab, factory, outpost, city, farm, cageworks, starport, skymall, border station, and just about everything else you can think of by way of uses.  After all, in the modern day, three out of every five Imperial residents lives in space, not planetside.

The gamut runs from the venerable Oculus Station, a by-modern-standards tiny Skylab/ISS style tin-can habitat – large by the launching standards of early space programs, but then, they were using Orion launchers – preserved as a museum, to the Conclave Drift, which at 36 miles long, eight in diameter, and nearly 10 billion tons gross mass is not the largest ever constructed any more, but by population, diversity and reputation (as the seat of the closest approximation to galactic government and an awful lot of its business) is the unchallenged queen of the orbital habitat community.

Trope-a-Day: Land of One City

Posted by

Land of One City: Quite a lot of Imperial constituent nations are city-states – indeed, two of the founding members were the Cestian city-states of Eume and Baryvekar, and the later-joining Veilyns was a confederation of city-states.  In more recent times, a plurality of underwater and sky cities, artificial islands, and space habitats (not counting those organized into clusters) would also qualify.  As would a substantial number of colony worlds in the early stages of their development, and hostile-world outposts.

None of those, of course, are completely sovereign city-states, but given the Empire’s hands-off, laissez-faire approach to local governance, are probably enough so to qualify.  And, of course, there are plenty of independent habitats and starter colonies out there, too.