From the Pages of G20 Magazine
On the Day the Colony Fell
Chronicles of Space Colony Construction
Story by Tadashi Nagase
The old man was dreaming.
In his dream, he was a boy again, standing alone in a wasteland filled with rubble and trash. The low-hanging smoke, skimming the ground, was the result of spontaneous fires ignited by the garbage.
Beyond him, a hill. And beyond that, a sky smeared with the dark red hues of a chemically induced sunset. Like coagulated blood, the sun seemed poised to sink behind the hill. He needed to scavenge through the trash and find scraps of metal he could sell for a few coins. He had to earn his meal for the night, yet the boy could not tear his eyes away from the dying sun.
Suddenly, from beyond the hill, a flash streaked towards the heavens, the sunset’s glow at its back. Following closely was a column of pure white, stretching upwards to the sky. The column was shining from within. It was fire. The column of white flame was being emitted from the source of the flash, a dark silhouette. The roar of it reached the boy’s ears moments later.
The shadowy form was conical. It was a third-generation HLV shuttle, a heavy-lift vehicle.
He had to go for reasons he didn’t understand, and before he knew it, he had arrived at the hill’s steep slope. The boy scrabbled up the incline, his hands digging into the Earth. Other street children about his age were around. He had to outrun them, be the first one, or he would never reach it.
Reach where? Beyond the ridge, which he had to crane his neck to see, rockets were lifting off one after the other, accompanied by an escalating roar.
Towards space.
Startled by his own cry, the old man awoke.
He was in a medical facility on Side 2, the colony he lived in, on the hillside opposite the harbor, near the microgravity area around the central axis. In his room, one that overlooked the entire internal span of the colony all the way to the distant harbor, he had dozed off in his wheelchair. A cool breeze blew in through the fully opened window, and under the light of a sunset-colored sun, the curtains swayed gently.
The shape of the third phase Island 3 type colony was nearly identical in any region of the Earth-Moon system.
A hollow cylinder 6.4 kilometers in diameter and 2 kilometers long, filled with atmosphere, and set to rotate. The rotation, once every 2 minutes, generated a centrifugal force on its inner wall that was almost identical to the gravity on Earth. The gaps in the skeletal structure made from lunar regolith were filled with slag from the refined soil as a shield against cosmic rays. Soil, artificially created using bacteria from the lunar regolith, was laid down, and plants were planted. Artificial rivers, lakes, and hills were placed, and there it was – a utopian countryside embracing nature, identical to Earth’s, apart from the upside-down landscape. The height to the weightless central axis was nearly 3200 meters, close to the summit of Mount Fuji. There were even clouds and naturally occurring rain. Despite having a population of 5 million, a pastoral landscape reminiscent of Eden spread across this place.
Though their shape was almost uniform, the Island 3-sized colonies could be classified into two types based on how they provided the light necessary for life.
In the classic and most common open type, like the one where the old man lived, the inner wall was divided into six sections, alternating between three residential sections and three windows. Transparent glass, made by melting the silicon content of the lunar surface, was strung between the aluminum frame of the windows in multiple layers. Beyond the windows were enormous mirrors, jutting out at a 45-degree angle from the cylinder, adjusted so that the sun was always positioned along the direction of the cylinder’s axis. The light reflected at a right angle from there, pouring straight down from the zenith of the opposite residential space through the window under the mirror.
On the other hand, in the colony airspace near the Moon, which follows a complex pseudo-orbit, complicated controls were needed to always point the colony in the direction of the sun. Therefore, in these linear solution zones of Lagrange, particularly in the Zeon zone in the shadow of the moon, at the two gravitational/centrifugal balance points (Lagrange Points 2) on the opposite side of the moon from the Earth, closed-type colonies were often used. The efficiency was poor because solar light was converted into electricity by solar panels and then sent to artificial sunlight, but there was also the advantage of being able to accommodate twice the population of the same size.
Yes, in the open type Island 3, where the old man lives, it was necessary to always point the colony axis in the direction of the sun.
But now, an eerie twilight and night had come to this colony.
In front of the old man, near the port, the sun ran from mirror to mirror, peeking out from the window, rotating. The color was a blood-like red. It crossed the mirror in about 10 seconds, disappeared, and then jumped to the next mirror, and the shadows of the window and mirror busily stretched and shrank on the colony’s interior wall dyed dark red in response to the dizzying movement.
He knew the cause. The colony had changed its orientation, and the sun was shining from its side. “This island is dying,” the old man murmured without uttering a sound.
But what was this level of calamity now? Hundreds of millions of lives must have already been lost on this side alone. With that thought, the old man waited in the secret passage of this colony to share his fate with the island as all the residents were sent to the internment camps.
But what was this level of calamity now? Hundreds of millions of lives must have already been lost on this side alone. With that thought, the old man waited in the secret passage of this colony to share his fate with the island as all the residents were sent to the internment camps.
Under the compulsion of the occupying army, the old man, along with a few surviving personnel, had been made to program the installation position of the braking system by nuclear fusion bombs, so he knew exactly what the consequences of that action meant.
The blue hemisphere that appeared and disappeared beyond the window in the direction of the harbor was a half-eaten Earth.
The figure of the Earth is large. From the position of this colony, it should be much larger than the moon, as seen from the ground. That’s only natural. The old man glanced at his multifunctional wristwatch. The current orbital altitude was probably less than 30,000 kilometers. That’s less than a tenth of the original altitude.
There should have been less than 30 minutes until the Earth was hit. Instead, a pale blue light characteristic of a fusion engine ran outside the window of the harbor. It’s the light of a mobile suit.
To eliminate the last resistance of the Federation, the latest weapons of the Zeon Forces are hitting the surroundings to defend this death colony.
This colony, due to countless nuclear fusion bombs, had lost its orbital speed over the course of a day and was now falling to bring an unprecedented disaster to the Earth at the bottom of the gravity well.
It’s a completely unsuitable, bottomless malicious tactic for those space colonists. Humans have advanced into space and reached a new stage of evolution. To the rulers of the Earth Federation, who self-appoint as elites without realizing this truth, a nuclear fire! The old man remembered the cold, clear eyes of a man named Gihren Zabi, whom he had seen only once a week before the invasion of Side 2.
Yes, he had seen eyes like that only once before.
That was 50 years ago. The old man was trying to remove the rocket system attached to the outer wall of the Stanford Ring Colony of Island 1 when his team leader grabbed his shoulder.
He was yelling with his helmet pressed to his face, “It’s over the limit. Evacuate!”
Looking up, his comrades had already begun to evacuate, accelerating so much that the flames from the nozzles of their propulsion suits were visible. He let go, letting it spurt out all at once. The view of the colony, like a straight highway, rapidly increased in curvature, and as it shifted slightly to the side, he could see the entire ring. A round residential area connected at the central axis of the spokes, like a bicycle tire. Through the gaps, a huge blue sphere peeked out.
It was Earth.
Pillars of light stretched up from the outside of the torus all at once. A light lit up in the corner of the heads-up display in his goggles, and a man with a scruffy beard appeared.
“We have won. The era of returning to Earth has finally begun.”
His eyes, like glass, were bloodshot.
“Death to space colonization!”
The path to space colonization was first opened by the first large permanent space station, which began operation at the end of the 20th century. When the venture-oriented second-generation shuttle, the VentureStar, began regular operation following the International Space Station, space finally became a legitimate place for industry and commerce.
However, another big step was needed for it to become a place to live.
In 1974, an American physicist, G.K. O’Neill, proposed a space colonization concept that was refined into a more detailed plan with the cooperation of NASA, the American Astronautical Society, and many private citizens.
There were two main points to O’Neill’s initial proposal.
One was that he placed the human living space in space, not on the surface of planets or satellites, but in the vacuum of space itself. While secondary facilities on the lunar surface or asteroid orbit were necessary for material collection, O’Neill’s plan called for the vast majority of the billions of humans who migrated to space to live in massive space structures built at two equidistant points from Earth and the Moon, the Lagrange 4 and 5 points.
The size of these structures, with a diameter of 6.4 kilometers, far surpassed previous space station concepts in terms of scale, which were limited to a maximum of 20,000 to 30,000 people.
Another feature was that almost all building materials and necessities of life were procured from the lunar surface or asteroid belt, not from Earth.
Another feature was that almost all building materials and necessities of life were procured from the lunar surface or asteroid belt, not from Earth.
From the ground level, it wasn’t profitable enough to be a mine, but excluding carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and water containing hydrogen, almost all materials could be refined from lunar sand and deep layers of the Earth using inexhaustible solar energy.
Materials such as unrefined soil (regolith), construction aggregates of aluminum, and glass made by burning silicon components, such as moon concrete (mooncrete), were launched by solar-powered linear catapults and transported to the straight solution points of Lagrange 1 and 2, which are on the opposite side of the moon from Earth. From these relay points, they were to be transported by tugboat to the construction areas at points 4 and 5.
The asteroid belt was supposed to provide resources, such as carbon, which could not be obtained on the moon’s surface. These resources would be transported over a long period, in some cases, even entire asteroids. Initially, O’Neill thought about the problems of population and resources as the motivation to start such a plan. However, the problem of what the initial space colonists would do for work was resolved by merging with a plan proposed by P. Glaser, another American, in 1974.
The plan was to install giant solar panels, 5 kilometers wide and 20 kilometers long, in a geostationary orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, and to solve the energy shortage by capturing microwave power transmitted to the ground with a huge receiving antenna (rectenna). In this case, the power generation capacity in space would be 16 gigawatts (1 gigawatt = 1 billion watts = 1,000 megawatts), and 9 gigawatts of power could be used on the ground. Why not have the inhabitants of the initial colony, with a population of about 10,000 per unit, make the operation of this massive power station their first job? Although it was a splendid idea, O’Neill and Glaser’s plans were simply too ahead of their time.
However, by the mid-21st century, smaller Space Power Satellites (SPS) began to be installed in relatively low orbits, and O’Neill’s plan was finally revisited. There were two types of these small SPS, one of which was more accurately referred to as a power wave relay satellite, not an SPS.
A “joint venture” executed a plan to place power generation panels in an orbit 1,000 to 2,000 kilometers above the Earth and adopted a system where multiple SPSs in the same path would send energy waves to a specific point in turn. On the other hand, the “public corporation” first built solar power plants on the ground in arid highland areas of East Africa and Central American countries and used the power generated to send to the mid-latitude regions using the relay satellite’s power reflection in the sky. Unlike solar panels, a reflector antenna (reflectenna) can function with just a fine wire mesh. This system, with a reflectenna placed at an altitude of 4,000 kilometers, could be operated much cheaper than small SPSs.
And that’s where I was. Yes, the old man murmured. I bought education with stolen money, outwitted those scumsucking bastards, and aimed for space. Even though it was a ground job, it was the best workplace for someone who had climbed out of the trash. Both the public corporation and the joint venture’s markets expanded. The tragedies of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were never forgotten, there was no room for nuclear power plants on this Earth anymore, and the prospects for realizing dreamy, pollution-free nuclear fusion power generation were still not in sight.
The expansion of the sales routes led to competition, and finally, the public corporation pushed for the installation of the reflectenna in geostationary orbit. The old man volunteered for the work that took half a year, and in exchange for exposure to 30 times the acceptable dose of radiation, which involved sterilization advice and some artificial organ replacements, he gained a huge fortune and the title of lifelong space worker.
And this became the breakthrough. In response to this, the joint venture finally started a plan to use lunar resources, and forces outside the public corporation followed suit. After another 10 years, the old man was present at the construction of the first-generation space colony city of the public corporation at the Lagrange point. The public corporation adopted the Bernal Sphere, initially proposed by O’Neill, as the design for the first-generation Island 1. The diameter of this spherical living space was about 510 meters. If viewed as a globe, the poles would have windows. Sunlight was directed to symmetrical points on the inner wall from a thin mirror connected to the sphere by wires. Adjacent to the sphere were thin loop-shaped zero/low gravity agricultural sections (plant factories), and at the ends of the axis were zero gravity areas and spaceports.
Indeed, the Island 1 design, which was based on a population of 10,000 people, had several variations aside from the Bernal Sphere. In the MIT proposal, which was shaped like a silkworm cocoon, a conical mirror was placed at one end of the main body, and sunlight was poured into the entire interior from the polar axis. There was also the Sunflower proposal, which had a similar shape but surrounded the main body with a truncated cone-shaped mirror. The windows were placed in the equatorial region. There was also a plan that paired with a plant factory section called “Crystal Palace,” forming a shape similar to a top hat.
However, all these variations of O’Neill’s plan had one drawback. If done at a fast pace, the centrifugal rotation to create artificial gravity would cause a phenomenon called the Coriolis force, resulting in a kind of space sickness or rotation sickness. The tolerable limit is about one rotation per minute; ideally, it would be around one rotation every two minutes. O’Neill’s interim goal of one rotation every two minutes for his Island 3 design was completely within acceptable limits, but to generate the same artificial gravity as on Earth in his Island 1 design, he would need to rotate it once every 30 seconds.
If one lives in a weightless state for a long time, the calcium in the bones dissolves into the blood, and the muscles also weaken. Some form of artificial gravity was absolutely necessary. Because of these considerations, in O’Neill’s Island 1 design, the rotation rate was reduced to once per minute (1/4 G/G=1 Earth gravity) to once every 1.5 minutes (1/6 G) to prevent Coriolis sickness. However, with such weak gravity, rehabilitation would be necessary upon returning to Earth.
Therefore, attention was once again focused on a structure that extended the distance from the central axis and supported the dead space in between with spokes. According to this plan, the full diameter of the donut, composed of a tube with a diameter of 120 meters, was 1.6 kilometers, and it generated nearly the same artificial gravity as the Earth by rotating once a minute.
The old man witnessed a man with eyes similar to Gihren’s when the construction of the first product of the late model Island 1, based on this plan examined by the Stanford University team, was completed. The newly built colony, still with minor adjustments and fittings left, embarked on its journey to the delivery location, the Lagrange 3 point lunar orbit, a gravity/centrifugal balance point on the opposite side of the moon sandwiching the Earth.
With several small rocket engines firing around the unrotated Stanford torus, the colony was initially transitioned into an elliptical orbit around the Earth. However, just before the closest point to Earth, the rockets started to run wild. No, it wasn’t a malfunction. Through meticulously planned hacking, control of the entire colony had been seized by terrorists.
The terrorists demanded the return of humanity from space. The old man was not unaware of the existence of such semi-religious movements, collectively referred to as the “Return Movement”. As more colonies of 10,000 people were built, space also saw an increase in young people who were poor and lacked professional skills. The old man understood the resentment building up among them towards the elites on Earth, as they were overwhelmed by the rights of space citizens that they had not earned with their own hands, unlike him. They had come here because they were desperate. But why did they have to direct their energy towards a “return to the holy green star” and “a halt to all space development”? These questions weighed heavily on the old man’s mind.
The old man was contemplating who the real enemy was. As he gazed at the face of the terrorist reflected in the inside of his goggles, he muttered the same thing. “Is it the children in the garbage dump at the bottom of the atmosphere who you should be killing?”
Despite the efforts of the old man and other technical executives, the Stanford torus fell onto the desert city of Polisario in North Africa. The impact, equivalent to dozens of hydrogen bombs, killed more than 54,000 people.
The terrorist’s face, covered with a beard and drenched in sweat, was completely different from the clean features of Gihren, but the old man thought their gaze was similar. Those eyes, possessed by the demon called ideals, were like glass… Now, the tragedy of Polisario was about to unfold on a scale tens of thousands of times larger.
“Ah, someone, anyone, must say no to this repeating tragedy,” the old man thought, steadying his trembling right hand with his left. “If only I wasn’t in this body if only I wasn’t a 79-year-old geezer…”
Just then, against the backdrop of the Earth that now covered more than half of the zenith, a flash ran again, and one after another, fireballs from nuclear fusion reactor explosions swelled up. After a few moments, the window sections of the inner wall below shattered, and small mobile suits, like beans, rose through the white mist caused by the rapid depressurization, chased by a swarm of green mobile suits.
The altitude to the center was more than 3 kilometers, and the vernier pack for outer space couldn’t withstand a long-time 1G acceleration. No matter how much initial speed it had, that red one would fall if it continued like this.
But wait, a battle between mobile suits? The Federation Forces haven’t yet made practical use of humanoid general-purpose weapons. Is it a new weapon or a split within the Zeon Forces?
While gaining altitude, the red mobile suit readied the cannon it carried on its back, slowly aimed, and fired repeatedly. With each shot, the large body, which should be close to 20 meters though it looked small, bounced upwards. After downing three mobile suits and reaching a weightless area with a large vernier blast from a high-mobility pack, it discarded the cannon and pack, changed direction, and, using the vernier of the main body, came straight towards the old man.
As if it knew where he was.
The mono-eye of the red Zaku’s head occupied the window, and a muffled voice came through the loudspeaker. “I presume you’re Technical Officer Simon Chiapas. I am Lieutenant Quattro Bajeena of the Volunteer Army of the Republic of Zeon. Could you tell me the location of the junction point of the nuclear fusion pulse engine?”
The Republic of Zeon? Is this guy a Republican partisan?
“I’m sorry to say, we don’t have enough time to stop the fall, let alone divert the course. I need your answer,” the Zaku rose slightly, revealing its chest. The hatch opened, and the face of the man sitting in the seat was turned this way. Behind the swaying curtain and the open window, the man shouted, “There must still be worth in saving both humanity and Earth. Don’t you think so?”
“I’m sorry to say, we don’t have enough time to stop the fall, let alone divert the course. I need your answer,” the Zaku rose slightly, revealing its chest. The hatch opened, and the face of the man sitting in the seat was turned this way. Behind the swaying curtain and the open window, the man shouted, “There must still be worth in saving both humanity and Earth. Don’t you think so?”
The old man smiled and raised his right hand in salute.
It was no longer trembling.
