NationStates Jolt Archive


The Sky is Falling!

Allemande
12-05-2005, 23:10
This is a spinoff from "Ad Astra (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=411882)", a thread documenting Allemande's efforts to become a spacefaring nation. In that thread, Allemande launched a space station (Vesta I) which didn't deploy properly due to electrical systems failure. A crew of astronauts attempted to repair the faulty space station six months later; that didn't work. A second space station was under construction, however (well, actually a second set of modules, designed to be added to the first but also flyable as a backup to the first station, should it fail to reach orbit); this was launched successfully and docked to the first station.

Over the next several months, five crews came and went, gradually stripping the faulty station module of anything useful that could be taken. Finally, the old station was ordered to separate from the new one, preparatory to its controlled destruction through re-entry over empty ocean.

It didn't.

Another crew went up and managed to get the old station undocked. But after moving the hulk to a lower orbit, the attempt to de-orbit it in controlled fashion failed. This left the station in an unstable orbit, one that would gradually decay and bring the hulk down ... somewhere.

As of this moment, the thing is still flying. There's about a 20% chance per day that it will come down, which means that Allemande could still get to it and execute a controlled de-orbit maneuver - but no one should count on that.

So where will it land? Who knows... I've got a random function to determine when, where, and in how many pieces (and even how big those pieces will be). So I'll be as surprised as anybody else...
___________

"Exactly how large is Vesta I?" asked a reporter.

"Upwards of 75,000kg," answered Samantha Arnaud, Secretary of Transportation. "Of course, it will break up into many smaller pieces, and much of it will burn up in the atmosphere, so the total mass of debris reaching the ground will be much, much lower."

"How much lower?" asked another reporter.

Secretary Arnaud hesitated. "That's currently impossible to say."

"Do we know where it will land?" piped up yet another journalist.

"No we do not, and we don't know when, either. It could be this year, or next, or a few years down the road. We just can't say at this point," sighed Ms. Arnaud.

"Any thought of shooting it down?" offered another correspondent.

"No," said the Secretary of Transportation sharply. "That might not help matters any, so no - we're not planning to do that."
The Island of Rose
12-05-2005, 23:42
Space Station One

The Imperial Space Defense Grid, the pinnacle of Rosian space advancement. Keeping the Imperial Union safe, and the command of this large Grid was Space Station One, which looked like this:

http://img169.echo.cx/img169/8866/rspace6es.gif

Whoo, I made my post longer. And surrounding these various wonderful space stations of doom were twenty, yes twenty, Schultarian satellites armed with eight missiles each, capable of down any flying object of apocolyptic doom. Now, I would find a picture, but eh.

Now they found a massive piece of this Allemanden Space Station hurdling towards their Island. And this is what we did.

"Hey, there's a giant thing of doom hurdling towards us."

"Shoot it down."

"K."

And so it was PACKED! IT WAS PACKED! As in, shot down and the Island was happy... blah blah blah. Then a message was sent.

To: Government who Giant Thing of Doom belonged To
From: Space Station One, Imperial Space Defense Grid

WHAT THE HELL!?
Space Station One

(Yes I am bored, I will delete this if it messes with... the MOOD.)
Allemande
13-05-2005, 16:57
Actually, it hasn't come down yet (I expect that it will this weekend - I'm using Liftoff! to game out my space program and I should cover the next five years or so this weekend. Currently, there's an 80% chance per year of re-entry, which means about a 2/3 chance of reentry this weekend.

You can take the biggest piece if you want. I'll TG you and tell you where it's going to land (I'm maintaining the fiction that nobody knows when and where it will land, but obviously I have to know to RP the effects when the day finally comes...)

So we'll figure out what's going to happen...
The Island of Rose
13-05-2005, 20:49
(Yay, okay.)