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The crew of the Blue Moon, the flag ship of the European
Nation Conglomerate’s elite Spectrum Fleet, busied themselves as
they began preparations to enter the weak gravitational field of
the planet Mars. As the tilt and rotation of the Blue Moon’s
magnetic poles were reversed, magnetic rings within the globular
craft’s outer sphere began counter-rotating to offset the 33,000
mph propulsion it had attained from repelling against the
distant magnetosphere of Jupiter.
“Bring her in on the standard Phobos approach pattern, Mister Nelson,” said Colonel Robert Graves to his waiting Chief Petty Officer.
“Aye Aye, sir,” replied CPO Dan Nelson while turning to relay the necessary commands to the navigation section.
Following the dramatic economic decline of the United States of America in the year AD 2011, the European Nation Conglomerate had been forced to emerge as the prominent economic and political power on Earth. But the ENC struggled in its new found role as leader of the First-World nations. They became unavoidably encumbered with the same economic drains which had caused the USA’s demise--the protection and care of the starving, over-populated, Third-World masses.
As a desperate resort, the ENC turned to the exploration of the open space frontier in order to fund its floundering foreign policies. Only the new riches of rare metals and mineral wealth from space, as well as opportunities for colonization and new technologies could prevent its own economic collapse. The diversified European citizens were disgruntled about heavy taxes during those crucial exploratory years, but when new resources began flowing in from the Moon and Apollo Asteroids, and their taxes were lowered again, most full-scale revolutionary factions declined.
The original rocket-propelled, jet-shaped, space transports were abandoned after the early stages of ENC’s space explorations due to the tremendous gravitational fields of the gaseous outer planets. After a series of deep space accidents around Jupiter and Saturn, which involved the loss of a number ships and their entire crews, ENC aeronautical scientists redesigned new globular and disk-shaped vessels which were structurally far superior. The new military transport fleets were then mass produced on the Moon’s busy Shrodinger Space Station.
"Space Settlement"
The SSS orbital tower was the first successfully colonized base beyond the confines of planet Earth, located in geosynchronous orbit above the Moon’s south pole and extending down to the lunar surface within the ice-rich Schrodinger crater. The natural lunar water reserve had been an extremely important factor in maintaining a populated base of operations on the Moon. The ice deposits within the south pole craters were residuals of ancient comet strikes on the Moon. Because of the fact that the Moon’s south pole lay in perpetual shadow, comet ice had survived dissipation in the comparative safety of the south pole craters.
The costs associated with the production and transportation of rocket fuels proved to be the severest hinderance for ENC’s early missions. Over ninety percent of its total space exploration budget had been spent on rocket fuel alone, even with the ability to catapult globular space craft directly into space from the Moon’s 1/6th earth-gravity. But as more ships were catapulted into deep space from SSS, greater amounts of rocket fuel came into demand than ENC could provide for craft maneuverability and return trips.
The expensive use of molecular nanotechnology to reproduce conventional rocket fuels from other elements found on the Moon and Earth-crossing Apollo Asteroids had not been sufficient even for minimal military needs. The costs associated with building remote fuel depots in deep space capable of producing and dispensing rocket fuels were far more than the European community could bear. So eventually, ENC officials came to the sober realization that a new propulsion technology was desperately needed.
In AD 2021, the world’s most prominent aerospace engineers were assembled in Paris to invent and develop a cheaper propulsion system. Their somewhat mysterious five-year experiments resulted in a major technological break-through in magneto-field propulsion. This new startling technology enabled space craft to use the natural magnetic energy which kept planets in orbit around the sun, and gave them the ability to jump from planet orbits much like electrons change molecular orbits.
Magneto-field propulsion, and it’s related off-shoot sciences, sparked a “space age” revolution that out-distanced even the 20th century’s computer age. By the end of the decade, the combination of globular space-craft technology and magneto-field propulsion literally opened the flood gates to Solar System exploratory opportunities.
The Blue Moon was a silver-gray globular transport with a radius of one-kilometer. The ship began to wobble almost imperceptibly as it entered its final approach to the planet Mars from the Asteroid Belt. It’s thick magnetic core of nichol-iron spun to precisely counter-balance the Red Planet’s degree of inclination as the craft neared the invisible orbital boundary of the last of the four solid inner planets. Moments later, ringed sections of the craft’s outer epidermis spun as well, amd the massive globular vessel began to slow its momentum as it entered an orbit which would cause it to intercept Phobos--the largest of Mars’ two potato-shaped moons.
J-2 Space
Orbiting a mere eight-kilometers above the Martian surface and circling the rusty globe a phenomenal three times a day, the cratered, ateroid moon of Phobos had been a tactical “nightmare” for the first inexperienced Martian miners and colonists. In AD 2031, the Navajo Space Port was finally
completed by military personnel with great difficulty along the cliffs of Stickney Crater. The ten-kilometer-wide Stickney Crater dominated one end of the 28 kilometer long by 20 kilometer wide moon.
The first Martian biosphere, Lewis One, was later constructed by civilian engineers inside the same crater and completed late in the year AD 2038. The presence of the protective biosphere had allowed eager civilian mining enterprises to begin penetrating deep within the moon in search of possible rare platinum metals such as iridium, osmium, palladium, rhenium and rubidium. Huge dark building stones of carbon-rich rock were laser-carved from Phobos’ depths for further surface construction purposes. Aqua-engineers were also brought in to tap the natural reservoirs of ice which saturated the moon’s interior. Many of the emptied ice caverns and mining shafts drilled under the biosphere were then air-sealed to become living quarters for even more ENC personnel.
Within twenty years, Phobos’ chaotic end-over-end orbit had been stabilized through the use of internally constructed magno-generators which essentially gave the asteroid-like moon a controllable mobility. Then the opposite end of the moon was repositioned as the moon’s permanent leading edge in orbit to maximize the growing space port’s protection and accessibility. The magno-genarators were finally programmed to make Phobos spin clock-wise along its end-to-end axis in order to create a pseudo-gravity for its growing human population.
The pre-planned, mine systems inside the moon itself were slowly transformed into a city-maze of protective habitats which could house a population of over five thousand personnel. The Enc military presence on Phobos comprised over forty percent of the total population--with low-security penal colonies making up most of the labor force. The highly specialized penalists had signed on as desperate citizens who were either political prisoners or religious fanatics seeking to escape ENC’s stringent treatment on Earth.
Completely shielded from the danger of space radiation and incoming space debris, the interior of Phobos had been essentially transformed into a natural orbiting space station itself. The power source of the Navajo Space Port and the Lewis One Biosphere was primarily solar energy gathered from dark-acres of solar “scales” which symmetrically dotted Phobos’ surface and the surface of it’s sister-moon, Deimos. Towering wind-turbines and geothermal energy plants had been assembled on the Martian surface along the orbit of Phobos to supply secondary power reserves. The power plants were so successful that surplus energy was shipped out to the Asteroid Belt, as well as back to the Moon and Earth on microwave beams.
The severe winter temperatures of approximately -140 degrees Centigrade on the planet surface below had made it near impossible to habitat for any extended amounts of time. But the controlled, protective environments deep under the Lewis One Biosphere complexes had given ENC miners and potentail colonists a stable foothold on the Martian frontier--much the same as SSS had given the first “Lunies” a safe home on the Moon.
The massive cargo of metal ingots within the Blue Moon’s holds had been both a help and a hindrance during its long shuttle run from the Asteroid Belt. The tremendous mass of twenty megatons of refined iron-nickel globules had aided the ship’s magno-generators in escaping the treacherous gravitational pull of Jupiter. But the same heavy mass had been a hindrance in that it was far more difficult to slow the ship’s inertia given the much weaker gravity of tiny Mars. Only the counter-balance of the mining ship’s thick core and titanium-alloy epidermis had been able to break their Jupiter-borrowed thrust by essentially pushing against the distant magnetosphere of the sun.
The beginning stages of terraforming, or regeneration of the dead Martian planet, had not earnestly begun until the year AD 2051. A decade of floundering attempts at surface colonization had accomplished little, despite ENC’s dramatic goals to alleviate Earth’s most critical problems of crime, starvation, and over-population. The first experimental biosphere farms to invade the surface had failed miserably in their attempts to support any of the starving Third-World cities of Earth with supplies of much needed grain and industrial metals. In fact, almost all of Lewis One’s oxygen-producing crops of lettuce, potatoes, and wheat were needed just to sustain the ever growing number of involuntary pioneers being transported to the Martian frontier.
Then late in AD 2062, the second stage of the regeneration plan was set into motion. Phase two of the surface operation had been the brain-storm of elite ENC magno-engineers, who actually believed that the future of Red Planet would not be confined to mere penal colonies and mining opportunities. Rather, they envisioned that the dead world could actually become a future prototype and colony of Earth.
Political proponents of the Regeneration Theory had used ancient history to support their expensive demands for the colonization of Mars. They had cited Great Britain’s colonization of Australia and America--and their eventual contributions to world society--as evidence that Mars could eventually evolve into something far more significant than a mere prison or way station to the outer solar system.
The long-range project would begin with the monumental goal of attempting to fire up the red planet’s long dead inner core. Only a living molten core of heavy iron-nickel would give Mars the increased gravity it would need to hold a new atmosphere of hydrogen, nitrogen, helium and oxygen, as well as a protective ozone--all chemically released through nanotechnology from its frozen, highly oxidized crust. The most serious hindrance to the plan had been the fact that the nearest potential core material lay deep in the unpredictable confines of Asteroid Belt.
In AD 2073, a giant mining facility was constructed on Ceres--the largest planetoid of the Asteroid Belt. With a circumference of approximately 1000-kilometers, the round minor-planet provided ENC with an ideal location in which to gather all the refined metals and minerals it would need for the Martian regeneration project.
(SEPO) Galileo Gaspra Images
Stray asteroids rich in core metals were then “herded” into its inferno ovens by the Spectrum Fleet, enabling the stockpiling of refined metal globules to be routinely transported down to the Martian surface. Great ingots of rare metals were also being stock-piled and then systematically catapulted into intercepting Earth orbits through ENC magno-cannons. The ingots being down-loaded to Mars would eventually be lowered into its dark depths through the volcanic caverns of Olympus Mons--the largest cone volcano in the solar system.
Higher than Mt. Everest, the tip of Olympus Mons jutted beyond the confines of the small planet’s thin atmosphere. The massive volcanic systems of Mars’ Tharsis Region bore mute testimony to the apocalyptic death of the Martian planet millions of years before. Some of the original core engineers were still somewhat skeptical as to the stability of the dead planet--fearing that man’s experimental attempts at regeneration might spark a planetary disaster great enough to domino throughout the solar system. But Euronation representatives systematically weeded out the most vocal engineers until no one dared raise any opposition to their plans.
The busy crew of the Blue Moon methodically moved about their vessel in the adjusted Martian one-third Earth gravity preparing their cargo for unloading. The exiled Earth convicts that comprised the Blue Moon’s labor crew were eager to finish their tour of duty and enjoy a few weeks of rest and relaxation in the luxurious hot tubs of the Lewis One Biosphere. Each megaton globule had been prior loaded upon remote controlled magnosleds, which were flat circular cargo bays that could be hovered to the planet surface, somewhat like a train, without actually landing the mother craft.
The labor crew’s latest payload of iron-nickel had taken them six months of hard work smelting asteroid ore in deep space. But it had netted them a tidy profit. This was in spite of the imposed 40% Euronation surcharge docked from each labor member’s salary--to help pay off their substantial debt to society. After 11 years of hard labor in Euronation’s asteroid mine fields, each prisoner/crew member would be given a political reprieve along with 1000 acres of Martian land with which to make themselves a new beginning as Martian colonists.
Joe Tucciarone's Space Art (all rights reserved)
But things were not all glitter in Mudville--the nickname they had given to the Ceres ore factory. There was a massive dust cloud growing within the orbit of the Asteroid Belt which was the direct result of the intensely busy ore refinery. The dark cloud was a byproduct of separating metals from asteroid rock. There seemed to be no easy solution as to what should be done with the waste debris--so it had been blatantly piped back into open space for years.
Space conservationists back on Earth had blasted their media trumpets about upsetting the natural balance of the Solar System. Ignored for the most part, these disorganized citizens had vainly attempted to warn the European Nation Conglomerate that disruption of the natural orbit of the Asteroid Belt could have disastrous consequences throughout the Solar System.
Some of the more radical “dusters” had even gone as far as to publish conservation demands citing that the transference of great masses of ore would somehow readjust the orbits of Apollo Asteroids. These dangerous, wandering asteroids all had random orbits that occasionally intersected with Earth’s orbit. Although all the most dangerous Apollo Asteroid orbits had been mapped since the early 21st century, no one yet knew for certain how the growing black cloud--and the transference of so much mass to Mars would effect them.
The ENC military commander of the Blue Moon, Colonel Robert Graves, would be returning to Earth with his parole crew for reassignment after the delivery of this final payload on their three-year contract. The civilian crew “prisoners” of the vessel--fifty-nine men and women taken from various over-populated prisons on Earth eleven years before--were all that was left of the original 100 laborers on the prison ship’s “guest” list.
Disease, fatal accidents, and punishment transferals had taken their toll on them over the years. But now those who had worked hard and kept their noses clean would finally get their chances to redeem themselves. There was also the distinct possibility that some of the prisoners aboard Lewis One’s over populated biosphere might fill their depleted ranks, in order to give them the best possible chances at a sustained surface community. Times would be harder than ever on the frigid, dusty planet, but at least they would be free of their eleven-year debts to Earth society at long last.
The Blue Moon, and the six other identical globular craft which comprised the Spectrum Fleet, fell into a matched orbit behind Phobos and closed in to dock at the Navajo Space Port. Only one ENC transport the size of the Blue Moon could be accommodated at one time, and that was always by means of a magnetic tether.
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