To Sail The Solar Storms

A fantasy of hope for tomorrow.

Welcome to the Solar Federation.

A future I am still creating.

This is an introduction to this, universe of Tomorrow.

I just like Jonesy.

“ Roger that, go for burn in 10…”

The first mate counted down.

On 1, a burst of acceleration began.

A one G burn.

The lunar based High Energy LASER, pulsed. Vaporizing single molecule thick layers of polymer epoxy, which created explosive bursts of plasma gas. Those burst, created the thrust that accelerated the transport.

Five burns and the Inertia created had them on their way. On board the fifteen man crew went about their day. Five on watch , five on stand by, and maintenance, five on rest cycle. The ships day was broken up into three watches, eight hours each.

The trip to Midway alpha station would take three days. There were four midway stations, Alpha, Beta Delta, Gamma , two equally positioned, along the ecliptic plane ahead of Earths solar orbit, and Two behind. There were also two stations outside of the ecliptic, one Solar north, one solar south. A light ship could make it all the way around the Earths orbital pass in as little as thirty days without stopping. The Earth took a solar year. Earth to Mars, took from two weeks to four, depending upon orbital positioning.

The small courier- transports did not use the massive golden solar sails of the luxury liners, patrol ships, and long range transports.

There was no need , the trips between lunar orbit and the relay stations were all direct, line of sight. They would ride the direct lasers, to the Midways. These were not independent interplanetary craft. These were short haul high speed transports.

The Interplanetary ships were a wonder. Dubbed Space Angels, due to the enormous area of the gold toned solar sails. The silhouette resembled the classic Christmas tree Angel ornament, with over sized wings.

The patrol craft, had been dubbed Valkyrie, for the same essential reasons. Though, the Valkyrie were faster, heavily armed and not solely dependent upon light sails or hel plasma drives. Having both , along with a nuclear rocket.

Except for military maneuver, the on board reactor served to provide power for the ships weapons. Mass drivers, Masers, Lasers, charged plasma pulse cannons. The massive on board water tanks, provided the fuel for rocket thrust. Dump the water across the hot reactor core, then direct the resulting High pressure steam as thrust.

The late twenty first century had seen rapid expansion from earth.

The advent of laser-plasma drives had made space travel cheap, fast and convenient. Moving heavy industry off planet, mining asteroids, and orbital factory facilities had radically altered the economy.

By producing things in orbit, by mining and processing in space the environmental impact on Earth had become zero.

Transport cost had become near zero as well. Gravity did all the work. Products could be literally dropped to any point on earth.

By all estimates, within fifty years most food production would occur in Giant O’Neill facilities. Orbital solar powered farms. Already, all space based operations were food independent of Earth.

In fact, all space operations were not reliant on earth. All the Earth now provided was Human crews, and a market for goods. It would likely still be a century or two before the inter planetary population would equal the ten billion of Earth.

There were plans for a trip to Alpha Centauri.

Construction of the giant transports had begun.

The plan was to use nuclear rockets for acceleration to cruising speed over eighteen months, then slowing down, decelerating over a like period. Massive cadmium backed sapphire mirrors placed above the solar ecliptic, would push the enormous solar sails to maintain velocity during the trip.

The plan was to set up mirrors around Alpha Centauri, for the return trip. Ten years one way.

The Future was bright.

The only fly in the ointment, was greed.

Space travel had become cheap, easy, available. With the establishment of asteroid mining, and manufacturing facilities, the darker inclinations of humans manifest.

Wars, between nation states over resources had become a thing of the past.

Piracy however had become a thing.

Corporations carried out espionage missions on each other.

Pirates raided mines, factories, transports. Pirate kingdoms arose on various asteroids, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

Thus, the need for patrol ships.

The final frontier, fraught with pirates, space vikings, corporate wars. The only thing missing from bad twentieth century pulp sci Fi sagas was bug eyed monsters.

No, no BEMs, only our oldest enemies, Humans.

Some things never change.

People were, people.

Humans, at our worst were just less hairy murder monkeys scrambling for a banana.

At our best,

Well, look around.

Beethoven, Bach, Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Robert Heinlein, Einstein, Michaelangelo, Davinci, Salk, the list goes on.

Seems for every Genghis Khan we have a Leonardo Da Vinci.

I am not sure what that means but at least there's, a symmetry.