by Simon Coates
Solar Marathon
The second major motorsport in the 23rd century is an event called the Solar Marathon. This is by far the longest spaceship race of all, where specially modified spaceships race from the Earth to the outermost planet Neptune and back, for a total racing distance of six billion miles. This event continues man's insatiable desire to undertake events of extreme endurance; in the 20th century bicycle races such as the Race Across America and the Tour de France were inaugurated, as well as car races like the 24 hours of Le Mans. The Solar Marathon is simply a more modern equivalent of those events.
The event is widely recognised as being the ultimate test of man and machine. The ships used are heavily modified versions of spaceships available to the public, so that they can cope with the immense distance. They feature no autopilot, so have to be flown all the time by a human pilot and have a crew of four people. Each team employ a rota system for each person to fly the ship at specified intervals. The other crew members sleep, eat, exercise or undertake everyday maintenance tasks on the ship.
Travelling to the outermost planet and back is fraught with danger. The main difficulty with the race is that once the ships are past the Jupiter orbital plane, recognised as the outer planet area, signals from the ships take a long time to reach command areas. If a ship has problems, no-one will know about it for a long time. It is noted that ships in difficulty past the orbital plane of Saturn will have to wait many months for rescue. Past this planet, and no rescue craft will travel as it is deemed too risky. This is why it is recognised as a very dangerous race. However, with humans conquering ever more areas of space for human habitation, it is a logical race as an extreme sport in the 23rd century.
The Solar Marathon racing ships are generally ships that start life as a standard public spaceship, as they have certain specifications that a solar marathon ship needs, such as living quarters and areas for the crew to exercise and tend to day to day matters. They are then taken by the teams and modified as necessary. The engines are nuclear powered, as solar power is next to useless when they fly out into the outer planet area, being too far away from the Sun to allow the solar panels to work. The engines produce in excess of 10,000 THz, a lot less than a Formula X racer, but a solar marathon ship engine is tuned to give high power for a long period of time, so maximum power is largely unimportant. Put simply, the spaceships used are a cross between Formula X racers and public ships, utilising ideas from both.
The first event was held in 2284, which saw four teams take to the start line, apprehensive as to what they had got themselves in for. As no one had ever travelled the entire solar system non-stop before, it was seen as a huge adventure, as nobody was even sure if any team would make it back. In an eventful race, which saw the Earth based team Ultimate Cruisers fail to start due to engine failure, it would take the winning team, Team Germany, nearly two years to complete the journey, to huge fanfare on their landing back on Earth. The race wasn’t without tragedy, however, as the Briggate Race team were stranded near the orbital plane of Jupiter. The third team on the race route, Lunar Explorer, stopped to offer help, giving them supplies, but were unable to re-start the engine. They also allowed them to come on board to join them – something the Briggate team did not accept, as they did not want to affect the race chances of Lunar Explorer. A distress transmission was sent to Earth to rescue the stricken team, but by the time it had reached them, it was too late. All the crew had died, as their power supply which cleaned the air inside the ship had failed, thereby leaving the crew breathing noxious gasses. The rescue ship arrived just a couple of days late. The Lunar Explorer team, on hearing the news, were distraught, after reflecting on their offer to allow the Briggate crew to transfer to their ship.
This story has become ingrained in motorsport legend as a powerful anecdote of team spirit, camaraderie, and sadness of people dying in an activity of intense competition.
Four years later, the race was run again, on what has become a traditional time frame for the event. This time, Lunar Explorer were back, along with a number of other teams, including a works factory Fellucia entry. This ship was the first to fail, however, at the orbital plane of Jupiter, but luckily they were rescued after their distress message was picked up by the rescue craft. At the sharp end of the race, it was Lunar Explorer who triumphed, winning by 47 days ahead of Earth-based Ultimus Adventure.
For the next two events, in 2292 and 96, Frontier Enterprise were victorious as the average speeds increased dramatically over the first events, as the team's knowledge of the race improved. In 2296, the Frontier Enterprise team covered the distance in a new record of one year, 6 days and 4 hours, a massive reduction in time from the previous event, which took them 144 days longer to win. Their average speed for the 6 billion miles was 673,000 mph. This is nearly double the speed of the 409,000 mph for Team Germany to win the 2284 event, or close on a full year less!