Source: Page 129 of White Noise Keywords: "permanent," "plausible," "cloud"

From: The StockCar AvengeR <stockcar_avenger@yahoo.com> Subject: Blue-skying a new series named "Eclipse" Date: 18 Nov 2004 Newsgroups: alt.tv.star-trek.enterprise

Al Smith wrote: [snip] > There are three space elevators providing cheap access to low Earth > orbit. One is located in Central America, the other two are in the > Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, on large floating islands made of > reinforced concrete. Rockets continue to be launched, but they are > nuclear and rely on a sealed gas fission reactor that employs clean > hydrogen for reaction mass. Travel around the globe is by means of Mach > 5 scramjet passenger planes. Make these a little faster - didn't they just test a Mach 10 scramjet yesterday? Granted, not a pasenger plane, but still... > The largest orbital hotel is the High Hilton. Hopefully there won't be a Paris Hilton type around... > Space tourists who can't > afford to stay there, but still want luxury, stay at the Ramada or the > Sands, which is renowned for its gambling casino and lavish > entertainment. These hotels are in the shape of giant wheels and rotate > to generate Earth-normal gravity. It was found in previous decades that > tourists did not like throwing up constantly in zero-G hotels And that probably do wonders for their room service business either :) > Also in permanent orbit is a shipyard for the assembly and servicing of > rockets, and at the L5 point, a research facility that has as its > centerpiece a giant telescope capable of resolving Earth-sized planets > at a distance of fifty light years. This is the center for tracking all > objects that might intersect with the orbit of the Earth. An object that might have some political significance too.. especially if some of your belters get it in their head that it is being used to spy on them instead of merely distanct astronomical objects. > On the Moon are several well-established cities beneath the surface. > They rely on heavy industry on the lunar surface to provide employment > for their residents. A large rail gun periodically sends canisters of > metals and machine parts to the Earth. The colonies are able to meet > their water needs -- just barely -- on water mined from the south pole > of the Moon, but it is rigorously recycled. Energy is almost free, since > there is an unlimited supply from the radiation of the Sun, and from > nuclear power facilities. A booming tourist industry offers outside > lunar excursions, lunar mountain climbing, low lunar-G spas, and lunar > spelunking (extensive natural caves formed by expanding hot gasses when > the Moon was young have been discovered beneath the surface). Food? Grown locally with the meager water supply? Sent via th rail gun, rockets, etc? Some stuff like choclate would be pretty rare and valuable I bet. > The colony on Mars is less advanced, and consists of pioneering > residents, who dwell in domes in the bottom of the great Martian rift, > where atmospheric pressure is highest. Remains of a intelligent Martian > race have been discovered, and the numerous ruins are being excavated, > but so far there are no living Martians other than the humans who have > migrated to the red world. The native plantlife is sparse but hardy. For > some reason, Mars has attracted the kooks of Earth, who are eager to > settle there and raise their hydroponics and do their tie-dying beneath > their domes. [snip] Would martian weed be red? > Much of the mining of metals for the industries on the Moon is done in > the asteroid belt by private contractors. This has given rise to a > robust frontier community in the Belt composed of rugged individualists > who could not tolerate the restrictions on freedoms on Earth or the > Moon. A city in the shape of interlinked living cells, some connected > and others free floating, has grown up unplanned to meet the necessities > of the belt miners. There are around 15,000 men, women and children > living in the belt. Only recently has part of the city been spun to > provide artificial gravity. Health problems due to zero-G are common > among belters, since the drugs to combat the problem are only partially > effective. They are better now than they used to be, however. And side effects of course, like "remember when that one drug used to make your hair fall out?" > Nuclear rockets are capable of delivering sustained 1-G thrusts, so > travel around the solar system is relatively quick, and it is > unnecessary to spin the ships to generate artificial gravity. There are > two large passenger liners that carry tourists and more serious > travelers on a circuit of the solar system, passing close inside the > orbit of Mercury for a spectacular look at the Sun, and going out as far > as Saturn to show off the rings. These liners have luxurious passenger > quarters, onboard entertainers, casinos and large transparent view > walls. They never land. Shuttle craft provide access to and from the > liners. Tankers refuel them. They are like space-faring cities, and have > a semi-autonomous government of their own headed by their captains. Of course they would be shaped sort of oddly I would imagine, being flatter than they were long, or at least fairly wide to make for usable "deck" space, since the gravity created by thrust would naturally gpush towards the back of the ship... I do wonder about what they would do when they got to planets though. Would they decelerate (and thus reduce gravity)... they could of course turn around before firing thrusters, but there would be weightlessness for awhile... the liner could also circle around the planet continuing to keep thrust going, of course that would make returning to the liner a bit tricky unless they shuttles could at least match the speed of the liner. Not saying it isnt something you cooudn't work out, in fact could add a lot of flavor to remind people that hey, this isn't artificial gravity generators here. Perhaps magnetics might come into play as well in some role. And you could use gravity problem episodes as filler, sort of like Caves in early Enterprise, or Holodeck in most of the others (except of course TOS) > An exploratory expedition was recently sent to Pluto but was lost > mysteriously. Robot probes found nothing. There is talk of sending > another expedition. Radio transmissions have been picked up from the > surface of Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter. They are clearly human > transmissions, heavily encoded. The view is that a group of belters have > established some sort of base on the surface of Ganymede, but what their > purpose may be is an object of debate. It's something sinister, isn't it? Come on I want to know! > This is the world of John Symonds, 39 years old, security chief of the > solar liner Eclipse, one of the two mammoth nuclear passenger liners > that regularly tour the solar system. His primary job is to keep order > on the liner, but at times he is drawn into the affairs in the belt, > since he is a belter by birth and has family in the belt. Because there > are so many independent small ships in the belt, piracy is a problem. He > is also sometimes hired by the multinational company that owns and > operates the Eclipse to conduct investigations in parts of the system > that are difficult for regular investigators to gain easy access to, > such as the station on Europa. He might also have some background as former intelligence or special ops, after all that is a huge role to be responsible for security for such a large peice of capital.. um I mean ship. That would give him soime former contacts, as well as enemies, including maybe former people he worked with who don't think letting him roam about with the knowledge that he has, or perhaps there was some cloud that was never fully resolved... > He relies on the assistance of Harry Lou, 31 years of age and of Chinese > parentage, a permanent guest on the liner who at other times makes his > living playing cards. Lou has a variety of useful, if not entirely > legal, talents, and is willing to do just about anything provided the > price is adequate. He sounds interesting.. the story on how these two met will be a good one surely.. was it aboard the ship, or might they have run across each other before? > The yacht of the Eclipse is capable of limited travel between planets, > and can carry twenty passengers. Symonds has carte blanche to use it in > his contracted work, such a chasing down identified pirates. Ok, just be careful about the Magnum PI syndrome here... (well ok, i am the one who suggested he be former military or intelligence.. but still, I don't want to hear the captain speak in a british accent and whine "Symonds, what have you done with the fer, er, I mean yacht?" ) It has been > equipped with pulse laser cannons and torpedo tubes, and can generally > out-fly anything else in the system, apart from a few hot-rod belter > ships. The belters have a knack for putting old engines and ship system > parts together in novel and potentially explosive ways. They go fast, > but aren't exactly reliable. The weapon of choice for belter ships is > the projectile cannon, which fires a rod of steel by means of magnetic > acceleration. Plus maybe some real nasty ones could use harder metals, or even have some "trick" rods that are hollow and filled with stuff to mess with the instruments, etc > Smuggling and drug trafficking are common in the Belt and on Mars. > Recreational drugs are not illegal in themselves, but the multinational > companies that control the trade object to freelancers. Symonds is > sometimes hired to find and put a stop to smugglers and those who sell > particularly dangerous drugs. I see some moral quandries in Mr Symonds future though :) > His sister, Aza Symonds, 28, redheaded, uncommonly tall and athletic, is > a Belt miner who owns her own ship and controls several lucrative mining > claims. I bet she is HAWT too ;) Fans will demand to see more of her character. The black sheep of the family is his father, Uriah, 63, a belter > whose health was damaged by zero-G drugs, who falls on and off the wagon > and who lives with no obvious means of support in the Belt city of > Lookoff. John suspects him of dishonest dealings, but he and his father > are not on friendly terms. John resents the way his father abandoned his > mother Maria some twenty years ago. His mother died three years ago, so > his father and his sister is all the family he has. And yet, blood is thicker than water.. I am sure Dad might need help in the future.. or maybe could even provide some at opportune moments...and given his fathers spotty past, I wonder if Jhohn's records don't list his father as either unknown or deceased... > John is courting, in an irregular way, a doctor on the Eclipse named > Sally Hernandez, age 35, dark of hair and eye, attractive, but not > interested in a permanent relationship with a man. She has been hurt in > the past and doesn't want to risk it happening again. She is happy with > casual sex and fun, but any seriousness on John's part makes her > nervous. Of the three doctors on the Eclipse, she is the most junior and > therefore always gets the worst assignments. There is some friction > between John and the captain of the Eclipse, Leonard Peeler, 54 years > old, steely-gray hair, blue eyes, smoldering temper, impatient of fools. > Len wants Sally for himself, but she avoids him, on the view that it is > bad policy to date your boss. Len is probably backed by one faction of the politics at Pandora Inc, and John another... I wonder if Len would ever sabotage John's work in the future.. maybe it will even come to having fake crew hands trying to take John out.. of course Len having plausible deniability on the whole matter... guess we will find out. > Well, there you have it, roughly speaking. The structure for a science > fiction series set in the plausible future, when the solar system has > been largely explored and is in the process of being settled. Are there > aliens still living on Mars, in the deep caves? Maybe. Do they have any > connection with what happened to the expedition to Pluto? Could be. > Humanity may not be as alone in space as appears on the surface. And > just what are the belters up to on Ganymede? > The primary location -- the home base as it were of the series -- is the > Eclipse. The ship's yacht Serendipity provides passage to any other > place in the solar system where John Symonds needs to travel to do his > assigned jobs. He has others who work with him, of course, a small crew > within the ship's crew that he can rely on for various tasks. He is > distracted by his love life, his family concerns, and his curiosity > about what he discovers concerning the ancient Martian race and its > purposes. There are folk tales in the Belt about strange ships that > appear and disappear; about ghosts who walk through walls; about beams > of light ascending from the surface of Mars to illuminate the two > Martian moons. All this John mulls over in his mind while going about > the tasks he is paid to perform by the faceless multinational company, > Pandora Inc., that controls not only the Eclipse, but so much of the > commerce of the solar system. One of the only problems I see will be to give both theliner and the yacht a realistic sense of motion since in so much of space being empty, and with them not moving so fast that the stars will seem to move. When I first started reading this and you mentioned a cruise ship, I was afraid you had in mind "Love Boat in outer space". Beware of network execs who try and turn it into that. If they start mentioning a black bartender named Isaac, or celebrity guest stars of the week, run like heck :) -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The StockCar AvengeR Founding member of People for NASCAR on PBS.

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