As is standard for the Arcturus Meridian fleet, Tenian has had several deck-mounted guns installed, but this vehicle has also been outfitted with an unusually comprehensive security complement. As ASMC perceives increasing threats to its operations, defensive capability has been held paramount....
Hello to my 2.7 blogulus consumers;
I promise this blog is not dead, guaranteed simply because this project is not at all dead! I have been working on it pretty consistently in my free time, especially as my other major project (the soundtrack for the wonderful story Proxima: A Human Exploration of Mars) winds to a close. I've been consistently generating more ideas, some sketches, and even music for the story, I've just been increasingly busy as the end of the semester rolls around. How on earth do I have less than two full weeks of classes left??
I'd been hoping to smash the October cadence out of the water and we were certainly on track to meet that in the first few weeks of November, but I've definitely fallen behind mainly due to an overwhelming preoccupation with all of everything.
I've also backed myself into something of a corner with regards to plot - I've been trying to structure the blog such that the main plot posts come out fairly regularly, and accompanying content only arrives once the relevant plot segment has already been posted. However, the few of you who are reading this have likely already heard some of my assorted rambles explaining the general story anyway, so it's not really a matter of spoilers if I post somewhat asynchronously. I do want to work through my plot backlog so I can get into a more organic live-posting mode again, but since the main purpose of this blog is to share assorted content and archive the process, I'm going to throw chronology out the window a little bit.
Now, I'm currently out of town visiting family for Thanksgiving, and I need to be physically back on campus for a meeting in less than twelve hours.... I do actually have a quick art sketch and accompanying plot info in the chamber ready to go, but beyond that I have two quizzes, a report, and an exam all due in the same class this upcoming week, plus two design review final presentations. Suffice to say the business isn't going away.
What I may do is try and operate the blog on a schedule - posting once every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday would make for a pretty solid cadence, and would probably be healthy in general as an exercise in time management and making room for the stuff that matters (which is a skill I would do well to internalize for other important things in my life).
I'm very sleepy now, so I'll go ahead and set that as an operational target. Keep your peepers peeled for updates!
Hopefully I can get to more regular updates soon - until then, here's an older bit of prose I've written in which Noira makes a friend...
~ ~ ~
The long nights still troubled Noira. Her own thoughts would bind her as the workshift came to a close, her feet pulled down along the circuitous halls, her eyes following the tangled, blooming patterns in the carpet, weaving through each other like so many gilded vines. Ornate chandeliers dangled overhead, saturating the corridors with warm auburn hues. She would circle back to rooms she’d seen before, under the pretense of exploration, or a fancy for any one office in particular; she would fascinate herself with the homogenous styling of the building, repelled by the stairwells that would take her down to the lobby, down and out the front doors, onto the cold stone streets, the streets which wound down and down and down towards her apartment, nestled among lush, towering residences, glittering in the streetlights like empty glassware.
Eventually the chronometer in the foyer below would chime, sometimes an hour since she’d clocked out, and she would force herself to collect her things, draping her thick petra about her shoulders, clutching her satchel tightly as she followed the dreadful stairs to the ground floor. She would bid farewell to the receptionist, clinging to precious seconds of conversation before the biting cold would beckon from beyond the threshold, and she would turn to brave the journey home.
As the chronometer marked an hour and a half since her shift had ended, regret gnawed in her stomach. This was the latest she’d ever stayed, pretending to be engrossed in some older technical documents in one of the records rooms, so captivating as to require a little extra delay — then a little more, and more, until finally the churning knot in her chest, not the chronim, compelled her to return to her desk, possessed by that awful quiet panic that bubbled through her veins. Hurriedly she stuffed her notes and tools into her pack, pushing her arms through the coat and slinging the load over her shoulder as her feet carried her down the hall.
Arriving at the bottom of the stairs, the icy grip on her heart tightened; the receptionist was gone. His shift had ended, or he was on break, or he was receiving at the telegraph; in any case, nothing remained to keep her from tumbling out the magnificent wooden doors, nearly sprinting into the night.
It had been an eternity since Rosa had dipped beneath the horizon; in some part of her mind, Noira knew this was the fourth or fifth round of the night. The midnight air was the icy sea; jagged floes cutting at her ankles and wrists and her cheeks as she stumbled down the street, willing her petra to swallow her whole. Alleys gaped in her peripheral vision, dark maws like the mine, or cast in amber light from streetlamps, flickering like the corridors of Ark Royal, frozen wind howling like the sea rushing beneath her, the crashing of waves against the lifeboat, her footfalls ringing in her ears like cannonfire.
The core of her mind knew what was happening, but those clearer thoughts drowned in the turbulent smoke of panic. A streetlamp filled her vision, and it was not orange like the flame, or red like the blood, or gold like the klaxon; it was white: brilliant, blinding white, the eyes of the Founder piercing her soul, stripping flesh down to bone until she stood bare before it, her heart beating in the open, glowing as the waves closed around her, washing the soot from her skin and freezing her solid.
She sobbed into her gloves, the petra coarsening as it grew damp. Her heart still pounded in her chest as she sat against the icy stone, taking in shuddering breaths as the episode gradually passed, doing her best to quench the fires still singeing her nerves.
“Hey?”
Noira startled, her head jolting up as her eyes swept the alley.
“Oh! Hey, I’m sorry — are you alright? I wasn’t trying to scare you!”
A woman stood hesitantly at the mouth of the alley, peeking around the corner of the tall, stone building. Noira could see long, dark hair, and deep, dark eyes, reflecting the soft light from the street. At once she was aware of her own appearance: curled into a dark street corner, very lost and, until recently, entirely inconsolable. She raised her voice in reply, projecting a poor impression of composure.
“Oh, hi,” she managed, rubbing freezing tears from her cheeks. “I’m okay, I’m just…I’m a bit lost, I think. I…” She searched for words. “I didn’t mean to come down this way.” Her voice still trembled, and she could see the concern in the woman’s eyes.
“Okay, well,” the woman paused, taking in Noira’s condition. “If you want, I can try and help you get back? I don’t know where you live, of course, but…” There was a light, playful melody to her voice, and Noira perceived a hint of laughter in the last few words. She sat upright, idly checking that she still had her bag as she responded.
“I don’t...think I want to go home right now, actually.” She held her satchel near her chest. “Is anything open right now? Maybe a library, or somewhere I could stay for a little while?”
The woman’s eyes lit up. Noira saw, as her eyes adjusted, that she couldn’t have been much older than herself. “I could take you to Mr. Bavari’s shop! I was just leaving, but he keeps it open through most rounds of the night. I can get you something to drink, too, if you want.”
Noira took a deep breath. “Sure,” she managed. “Yeah, that sounds good. You said it’s nearby?”
“Yeah, I just came from there — it’s just a couple of blocks back up the road.”
“Okay.” She rose unsteadily to her feet, the midnight chill once again permeating her clothing. “Thank you, I appreciate it.” She glanced behind her, down the dark alley, before turning back to her new acquaintance. “I’m sorry if I worried you, I…I get anxious at night, sometimes.”
“It’s alright! I just wanted to be sure you weren’t hurt or anything. I bet you'll like Bavari’s place; I’ve always liked spending the night rounds there.”
Noira pulled her coat closer to her body, stepping out of the shadows of the alley to meet the woman in the street. She could see her much better now; she had a long, narrow face, with dark features; her eyes were bold, but had the same playful light as her voice. Long, black hair was tucked away into an ornate shawl that sat in bundles on her shoulders; beneath that, a stylish petra overcoat which seemed much warmer than her own. They studied each other for a moment, before the woman abruptly remembered something.
“Oh! I haven’t even introduced myself — I’m Maliyah.” She held out a gloved hand.
“Noira,” she replied, taking Maliyah’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Same to you!” She cracked a broad smile, glowing in the amber light.
It's been a little while on account of me being busy with school stuff, and a general subsidence of creative energies, but I've recently been working on some artwork to go along with the story.
This one was motivated by a desire to be nice to my characters....my current understanding of the plot involves them going through quite a bit of hardship, so I figured I'd take some time to depict them happy and having a good time. This is also the first time I've depicted them all together like this!
From left to right: Noira Isabel, Maliyah Toran, Clare Prescot
I've got a couple of new doodles today, mainly of two spacecraft as well as the rotovator I alluded to in some earlier posts. Let's look at the two spacecraft up close first!
These are two different vehicles drawn notionally to scale with each other, though they have a lot in common. Above we have the passenger tender, a smaller vehicle designed to ferry people to and from those big artificial gravity spaceliners. Below is a cargo freighter, with a much larger volume for shipping between worlds in the Rosa system.
Both of these spacecraft are powered by chemical rocket engines mounted in the back, with propellant stored fore and aft of a centrally located payload bay. In addition to some reaction control thrusters, both are equipped with some kind of metallic heat shield for atmospheric entry. Both reenter skydive-style, pancaking into the atmosphere, stabilized by four drag flaps (two of which are fixed). Finally, to accommodate the unique terrain and infrastructure available in the Rosa system, both vehicles deploy large inflatable lifting gas envelopes from dorsal compartments, arresting their descent until they become inert aerostats that can be manipulated by other vehicles.
Critically, these weirdos are both air-launched, in a way, although here we see some major operational differences. The passenger tender is air-launched "conventionally" as we might think of it today: carried beneath an aircraft (albeit a large airship rather than a fixed-wing aerodyne), dropped, and powered into space by its own propulsion. The tender must accelerate all the way up to escape velocity during this burn, which is made easier by the relatively small mass of the worlds in this system. As previously described, the tender can then rendezvous and dock with the spaceliners, which will hold them in transit before releasing them to perform atmospheric entry.
The freighters are a bit weirder, being integrated with the skyhook system; I've already talked about this, but due to generally lower g-limits for cargo compared to crew, freighters are well-suited to getting yoinked into space by the enormous sky pinwheel. Doing some preliminary math implies this could easily put them on interworld trajectories, so they could potentially use even more of their volume for cargo, with very little dedicated to propulsion at all - cool! That said, the scaled-up tender version with its vast fuel tanks and engines is still used quite a bit since the skyhook/rotavator/spintowininator (note to self: name it properly) is only available when travelling from Orus to another destination.
Here's some more sketches of these dudes:
Notice the much wider planform of the freighter and its beefier engine section (only present on some models!). At bottom-center is a depiction of the freighter exchange process: three hybrid cargo carrier airships have aligned in formation, each carrying three freighters in a line down its back. Arriving in sync with a rotovator endpoint, all 9 spacecraft are lifted off the decks and begin the long climb to escape...at lower left is an exaggerated depiction of the multi-armed rotovator concept I've been thinking about, with six separate endpoints. At the top of their arc the spacecraft all separate at once, firing RCS in an enormous plume to disperse from each other, the grid formation uniformly expanding as the tether curves away beneath them.
Finally, here's a dramatic angle of the rotovator hub as it orbits languidly above Orus. The center is probably a command station home to a team of traffic controllers, working overtime to keep this mega-infrastructure (infra-megastructure?) running smoothly.
One of these days I want to model both spacecraft, perhaps in Solidworks so I can try for pretty accurate geometry. But that's a project for another time. That's all for today!
The Founder-Processors are only mobile to allow them to adjust as the mine grows ever wider and deeper. They are largely constructed on site, and either deconstructed or abandoned to die when a mine's resources are thoroughly exhausted. After encountering one on her first night voyage aboard Ark Royal, Noira is haunted by nightmares of these great beasts lumbering over the landscape, laying waste to the worlds...
Ark Royal begins its journey, stopping at a number of small logistics centers on its way out to sea, many hours passing as Rosa’s light fades from the empty sky. The most exciting part of their mission is still to come: a visit to one of the most productive open-cast mines still in operation. We learn that the largest and least resource-rich islands on Orus were settled, leaving the innumerable smaller mountains as the prime targets for extraction; however, many of these are beginning to shut down as their resources are exhausted, leaving ASMC in search of new sources and new extraction methods. This particular voyage is carrying tech demos for some of these methods, intended to qualify their use prior to deployment.
Dozens of hours later, as the sky darkens and home grows distant, Noira and the rest of the crew gather on the balconies atop Ark Royal to see the spotlights of the mine appear on the horizon, casting their cold beams into the night air. The anticipation is palpable as Ark Royal approaches, pulling up to the dockside at a servicing platform anchored to the island's steep rocky walls. An enormous chute descends from over the rim of the crater, snaking down the dark mountainside as crews align it with Ark Royal's bulk cargo bays.
While this happens, Noira and other members of the crew not directly associated with mining operations take a service pathway up the mountainside, winding alongside the cargo chute - maybe a light vehicle to make the drive. They're all anxious to get a glimpse inside this historic mine, to see with their own eyes what's only been poorly reproduced in images. Drawing nearer, they can hear the sounds of machinery from within, mingling with a noise Noira can't quite place. As they arrive at the top, they all flock to an overlook platform to see inside...
Robert W. Smith's Inferno is a good representation of what Noira sees.
The mine is an enormous pit - staggeringly high, a vast column bored far below the waterline. The spiralling steps along its walls are themselves vastly high, dwarfing the still-massive mining vehicles trundling along their worn paths. At the floor of the mine lies a terrible colossus, the monstrously large Founder-Processor, breathing laboriously as it rests against the near wall. It's a machine larger than Noira can possibly wrap her head around, its groans and strains echoing nightmarishly up and out of the mine, lost within the dark void above. Those gargantuan mining vehicles are but ants at its feet, bringing their offerings to deposit at its conveyor entrance. Slowly, violently, and eternally, the Founder-Processor melts down and purifies the ores in its dark burning heart, belching waste material down into the sea. It struggles perpetually as it heaves thousands of tons of processed minerals and alloys up the impossibly high pit wall, finally vomiting them over the ridge and down the long chute into Ark Royal's bays. Noira finds herself petrified by the scale; what she sees is horrifying and alien to her.
The whole scene is illuminated by several clusters of spotlights overseeing the operation. Tipped off by one of the visiting officers, a nearby set rotates around to illuminate our crew members, turning night into day as its blinding gaze sweeps over them. Noira feels the spotlights, the eyes of the machine, piercing into her heart; they see into the depths of her soul, into parts of her she herself has not yet discovered. The experience haunts her.
The crew descend down the mountain at their leisure; Noira hurries back to the ship. Others continue to mill about as Ark Royal continues to take on bulk cargo; some old mining equipment and such is also transferred aboard. Noira encounters a few of the crew members she’s gotten familiar with, in particular a woman named Kori. They spend a moment in the night together, mostly making small talk about the voyage and the mine. Kori is looking forward to her return home, her wife and children waiting for her. Noira, by contrast, prefers her life on the ship; she has little at home to go back to. She pretends to relate all the same; Kori is friendly and Noira appreciates the company.
After some time, Ark Royal has taken on all it can from the mine, and its crew board once again for the return journey. They have a few more stops ahead of them, particularly to deploy the experimental equipment they carry, but the crew knows they’re in the home stretch of their voyage. Home is on the horizon, as they enter the deepest, darkest round of the night…
With the wonderful suggestions of some friends, I've developed some additional ideas about interworld travel, with an emphasis on some infrastructure stuff. For context, we know the Rosa system features a number of large interworld spaceliners on cycler orbits, tethered by long cables to slag counterweights so they can be spun up to produce gravity. The size and mass of these liners (I'm imagining up to 500m in length, for the largest) suggests in-space construction - and I mean real in-space construction. Not modules being docked together, but rivets being driven by actual people in space. This further implies the existence of big orbital shipyards where this stuff can be built, as well as additional space infrastructure like tugs and such for moving cargo between orbits.
The big addition to the lore here is going to be a dedicated skyhook (or multiple!) in orbit of Orus. Since the vast majority of the system's heavy metal resources are mined and processed here, it's long been the focus of infrastructure (take a shot) for shipping and handling lots of cargo. The sustained need to hurl huge amounts of mass skyward will spur the construction of this as-of-yet unnamed megastructure.
As a quick recap, a skyhook is sort of like a partial space elevator. Instead of being affixed to the ground, such a structure is placed in a low orbit and only extends partially down into the upper atmosphere, and equally doesn't stretch too much higher - a total length on the order of hundreds of kilometers. The key is that the structure rotates - tumbling end-over-end much like the cyclers do. The idea is that the end swings backwards relative to its own orbit as it approaches the planet's surface, reducing the relative speed. So, you have a skyhook dangling from space and moving relatively slowly, which can be intercepted by a vehicle launched from the ground. As the tether rotates, payloads attached to the end get flung up and out of the atmosphere. Detaching at the highest point will send you into a still-higher elliptical orbit, since you're moving faster and higher than the CG of the tether.
The motion of the skyhook over a planet's surface would look something like this; rotating as it orbits, the endpoint comes nearly to a standstill as it approaches the ground:
Boeing studied a concept like this for Earth, and concluded that, unlike a space elevator,
We don't need magic materials like "Buckminster-fuller-carbon-nanotubes" […] Existing materials will do.
Their concept involved a tether that only skimmed the upper atmosphere and whose endpoint still traveled at Mach 10, but I think I can stretch this with a bit of handwaving.
For Orus, the skyhook(s) would extend nearly to the surface - maybe 10km or lower, accessible by non-rocket means. I would also prefer for their endpoints to move quite slowly at their lowest point, perhaps being able to hook payloads that are stationary (with the help of an intermediate trapeze, at least).
My vision for heavy cargo infrastructure on Orus looks like this: Cargo is loaded into a large spacecraft, similar to the passenger tenders we discussed earlier but substantially bigger. These spacecraft are then airlifted by huge hybrid airships: using bulk lifting gas for enormous lift capacity, but leveraging dynamic lift to extend their altitude range, flying at some significant airspeed to climb to their service ceiling. These carrier airships would likely be double-hulled like a catamaran, with a structural segment in the middle on which the cargo vehicles would be carried. Flying along the ground track of the tether, they'd hit their peak altitude while tracking to the endpoint hook, with a dynamic trapeze to bridge the final gap. Once secured to the tether, the airships would release their payload, and the cargo vehicles would be lifted up and out of the atmosphere. Once in their high transfer orbit, the cargo vehicles would use onboard propulsion to circularize, perform other orbital maneuvers, and even propel themselves on interworld trajectories. Finding no similar tethers at their destinations, they would be equipped to perform reentry and envelope-arrested descent much like the passenger tenders.
The tether(s) could also be used to return inbound interworld cargo to the surface, but this requires vehicles to perform part of the capture themselves - propulsively or aerodynamically - before they can interface with the tether at its highest point in space. Vehicles would also need to be cast off slightly ahead of the tether collecting new cargo at both extremes.
I think a tether like this would be made large enough to carry a significant batch of cargo at once - multiple vehicles in formation, perhaps. Or, it might be interesting to make the tether more of a multi-spoked wheel, With many cargo exchanges per rotation period. That could certainly lend itself to some cool imagery. Also, I figure the g-loading that cargo endures during the tether-flinging process probably amounts to significantly more than is considered suitable for passenger transport, so these vehicles are crewed only by trained personnel....normally.
This actually has some fun implications for plot ideas, which I'm already forming in my brain but would like to keep from publishing here until I've posted more of the plot overview. When we last left off, Noira was preparing for her first night voyage aboard Ark Royal, and we've a long way to go from there already! Continuing the plot overview will likely be one of the next posts here.
Hey so! I colored the doodle of the artificial gravity liner and fleshed out some details, trying to keep a similar design language to the original version.
Important features to carry over were the smooth brown-colored body panels with dark grey accents, plus gilded art deco highlight pinstripes. Additionally, the gold/copper reflective window visors (inspired by astronaut helmets) were a must, especially for that big panoramic gallery amidships. I also wanted to include some truss elements, and I'm pretty proud of the placement along the backbone. That structure would be handling much of the compressive load on the vehicle.
Compare the original design:
Much more of a conventional spaceship, which admittedly lent more freedom; however, I think the new design being function-driven gives it the unique touch I was looking for, and I'm happy with the end result. I do miss that solar fan, though...
