by M. D. Cooper
Luminescent Society – The formal name of the aristocratic ruling class of the Sirius system. Members of the Luminescent Society are referred to as Luminescents or Lumins.
Maglev – A shorthand term for magnetic levitation. First used commercially in 1984, most modern public transportation uses maglev to move vehicles without the friction caused by axles, rails and wheels. The magnetic field is used to both support the vehicle and accelerate it. The acceleration and braking is provided by linear induction motors which act on the magnetic field provided by the maglev ‘rail’. Maglev trains can achieve speeds of over one thousand kilometers per hour with very smooth and even acceleration.
MarSec (MSF) – The Marsian Security Force is a quasi-military organization that has its own small space force as well as ground forces and police-type security. They also make up the federal police force for the Mars Protectorate.
MBH – Miniature Black Holes are used to power artificial gravity systems. The black holes are spun to increase their mass which creates gravitational waves (not to be confused with gravity waves). GE is the main manufacturer of MBH’s.
On the Intrepid MBHs are used in areas where the gravitational field of the main particle accelerator does not create artificial gravity. MBHs have the advantage of being able to be “spun down” so that their mass does not have to be taken into account when accelerating.
MDC (molecular decoupler) – These devices are uses to break molecules bonds to one another. This technology was first discovered in the early nineteenth century—by running electric current through water, William Nicholson was able to break water into its hydrogen and oxygen components. Over the following centuries this process was used to discover new elements such as potassium and sodium. When mankind began to terraform planets the technology behind electrostatic projectors was used to perform a type of electrolysis on the crust of a planet. The result was a device that could break apart solid objects. MDC’s are massive, most over a hundred kilometers long and require tremendous energy to operate.
Mj – Refers to the mass of the planet Jupiter as of the year 2103. If something is said to have 9MJ that means it has nine times the mass of Jupiter.
MOS Sec – The MOS Security organization handles internal and external security around the MOS.
Nano, (nanoprobes, nanobots, etc…) – Refers to very small technology or robots. Something that is nanoscopic in size is one thousand times smaller than something that is microscopic in size.
Noctus – The name given for the lower caste of the Sirius system. The Noctus operate the mining platforms and refineries surrounding Sirius (Sirius A).
Pico, (picotech, picobots, etc…) – Refers to technology on a pico-scale—one thousand times smaller than nanotech.
After a series of accidents that nearly consumed an entire dwarf world, picotech research was banned in the Sol system.
Platoon – A military unit consisting of roughly 30 soldiers. In the TSF a standard Marine platoon has three squads, a staff sergeant (often a gunnery sergeant if it is a weapons platoon) and a second lieutenant as the platoon commander.
Railgun – Railguns fire physical rounds, usually small pellets at speeds up to 10 kilometers per second by pushing the round through the barrel via a magnetic field. The concept is similar to that of a maglev train, but to move a smaller object much faster. Railguns were first conceived of in 1918 and the first actual magnetic particle accelerator was built in 1950. Originally railguns were massive, sometimes kilometers in size. By the twenty-second century reliable versions as small as a conventional rifle had been created.
Ramscoop – A type of starship fuel collection system and engine. They are sometimes also referred to as Bussard ramscoops or ramjets. Ramscoops were considered impractical due to the scarcity of interstellar hydrogen until electrostatic scoops were created that can capture atoms at a much more distant range and funnel them into a starship’s engine.
Scattered Disc – Beyond a star system’s EK Belt lies a region filled with comets, asteroids, and dwarf worlds. In the Sol System this region begins roughly 50 AU from Sol and extends to the edge of the Oort cloud. While it contains the least mass of a system, a system’s scattered disc typically contains hundreds of dwarf planets and fills an area nearly half a cubic light year.
Shorts – Because the Noctus live in lower gravity, they are quite tall. In contrast, the Lumins are a more standard human height (averaging just under two meters). As a result, the Noctus derogatively refer to them as Shorts.
SOC (Security Operations Center) – This is both the command organization for security on the Intrepid as well as the physical location on the ship where the offices of the SOC are located. The command organization has over two hundred humans and AI working in the organization to oversee the security of the ship. Physical security departments, both internal and dockside do not operate directly out of the SOC, but have their own divisional locations within the ship.
Solar mass – A solar mass is an object with the mass of the Sol Star (Earth’s sun) as of the year 2103.
SolGov – An abbreviation for Solar Government, SolGov was originally analogous to the early Earth U.N. It was a guiding governing body for the Sol system and interfaced with all of the many local governments across multiple worlds.
After the creation of the Sol Space Federation and the dissolution of the Solar Government, the term was still used to refer to the current government.
Sol Space Federation (SSF) – Formed in 3301, the Sol Space Federation became a true federal government for the entire Sol system. Unlike SolGov it has full legal authority over its constituent regional powers. The primary member states of the SSF are: The Terran Hegemony, The Mars Protectorate, The Jovian Combine, and The Scattered Worlds.
Squad – In the TSF Marines a squad consists of three fireteams. It is headed up by a sergeant, making the squad consist of 13 soldiers. Each squad in a platoon has a number, and each fireteam has a number. Thus, one/one refers to the first fireteam in the first squad in the platoon.
Stasis – Early stasis systems were invented in the year 2541 as a method of ‘cryogenically’ freezing organic matter without using extreme cold (or lack of energy) to do so. The effect is similar in that all atomic motion is ceased, but not by a removal of energy by gradual cooling, but by removing the ability of the surrounding space to accept that energy and motion. There are varying degrees of effectiveness of stasis systems, the FGT and other groups having the ability to put entire planets in stasis, while other groups only have the technology to put small items, such as people into stasis. Personal stasis is often still referred to as cryostasis, though there is no cryogenic process involved.
T3 (Tritium) – T3 (3H) is an isotope of hydrogen where the nucleus of the atom is made up of one proton and two neutrons as opposed to a single proton in regular hydrogen (protium). T3 is radioactive and has a half-life of 12.32 years. It decays into Helium-3 by this reaction.
TSF – The Terran Space Force was originally the space force of the Terran Hegemony, but after the formation of the Sol Space Federation, the Terran Hegemony used its position of pre-eminence to make its military the federal military. Over the years elements of different national and regional militaries merged into the TSF, bringing new elements and a mix of organizational structures to the military.
The space force is a mix of naval and army disciplines. It consists of sailors, Marines, pilots, and the regular army.
v – Represented as a lower case v in italics, this symbol stands for velocity. If a ship is increasing its speed it will be said that it is increasing v.
Van Allen belts – A radiation belt of energetic charged particles that is held in place around a magnetized planet, such as the Earth, by the planet's magnetic field. The Earth has two such belts and sometimes others may be temporarily created. The discovery of the belts is credited to James Van Allen, and as a result the Earth's belts are known as the Van Allen belts.
Vector – Vectors used are spatial vectors. V
ector refers to both direction and rate of travel (speed or magnitude). Vector can be changed (direction) and increased (speed or magnitude).
PLACES
Alpha Centauri – A 3-star system, Alpha Centauri contains two yellow stars (originally known as simply A and B, but named Prima and Yogi after colonization) and a red dwarf known as Proxima which is the closet star to Sol.
Albion – The third planet in the Kapteyn’s Star system, Albion is a terrestrial world that masses over that of seven Earths. It completes its orbit of Kapteyn’s Star once every 121.5 days at an average orbital distance of 0.31AU. It has an orbital eccentricity of 0.23, which sometimes makes it the second planet in the Kapteyn’s Star system.
The world spends much of its time outside the Kapteyn’s Star system’s habitable zone and does not have liquid water on its surface. Also, due to its mass, it is a high-g world with an average surface gravity of 2.1g.
Albion is orbited by twelve moons.
Anne – The solitary moon of Victoria. Anne is a carbon and silicate moon with no atmosphere or liquids. It is tidally locked to Victoria.
Aurora – The seventh planet in the Bollam’s World System used to be two separate planets (the 7th and 8th), but was combined into one world in the late 89th century. The mass of the planet is 12Mj, which places it above the limit for sustained nuclear fusion. This is stopped by the use of massive antigravity fields around the world which hold it apart.
Ayrea (41 Arae 2) – An independent system centered a pair of binary stars, both cool dwarf stars with a well populated, stable stellar population. The stars lie only 28 light-years from Sol, but have managed to avoid being forced into the AST as of the 90th century.
Bollam’s World – Bollam’s World is the name of the fourth planet from 82 Eridani, in the Bollam’s World System.
Bollam’s World System (58 Eridani) – Independent system known as “Bollam’s World”. The system was settled in 5123 by the colonists of the GSS Yewing which left Sirius in the year 3814.
Brilliance Station – Orbital station over Incandus, the capital of the Sirius system.
Callisto – This moon is the 2nd largest orbiting Jupiter and is the third largest moon in the Sol system (following Ganymede and Triton). Its circumference is over 15,000 kilometers, compared to Luna’s (Earth’s moon) circumference of just under 11,000 kilometers, although before both moons were terraformed it was only half as dense as Luna.
In 3122 construction of the Callisto Orbital Habitat began around Callisto, a project which turned Callisto into the home of 3 trillion humans over the following millennia. By the year 3718 the mass of the orbital habitat greatly outweighed the mass of Callisto itself and the moon was anchored to the Cho. Because of this the Cho is now often referred to as a semi-orbital habitat.
As the rings of the Cho were constructed they eventually reached a point where nearly all view of space was blocked from the surface of Callisto due to the rings not all wrapping around the moon’s equator. Ultimately the surface of the moon was reduced from a terraformed world to little more than waste processing systems for the orbital habitat and is no longer considered a habitable world and no humans live there.
Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho) – The Cho (sometimes called the Callisto Semi-Orbital Habitat or the Callisto Concentric Ring System) had its first four rings completed in the year 3245 and is considered ‘semi-orbital’ because R1 (ring 1) is directly attached to Jupiter’s moon, Callisto, and does not technically orbit. While Europa is the capital of the Jovian Combine, Callisto is the socio-economic hub of both the region and all humanity. With a population of over three trillion, nearly half of all humans in existence live on the Callisto Orbital Habitat. New rings are constantly being added to the Cho and by the year 4123, 151 rings surround Callisto.
Ceres – Once considered the largest object in the main asteroid belt, Ceres was eventually classified a ‘dwarf planet’. It is over 1500 kilometers in diameter and is a smooth round object with a subterranean ocean. After humans landed on the dwarf planet in 2119 it became a staging ground for exploration of the outer Sol system. Ceres proved more useful in this respect because of its lower mass (making breakaway velocity require less fuel), more readily available water for fuel creation as well as its position further from Sol.
Coburn Station – Located above Trio in the Trio System of the Silstrand Alliance, this system is connected to its host world by the system’s only space elevator.
Cruithne (3735 Cruithne) – This asteroid, named after an early people of Ireland, was discovered in 1986. It is a very unique asteroid in that t is in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Earth. This means, that with rare exception it is always on the same side of Sol as Earth and is spends half its time accelerating toward Earth, and the other half of its time accelerating away from earth.
From an earth-bound perspective that makes Cruithne appear as though it is orbiting Earth, and when it was first discovered it was briefly thought to be a second moon of the Earth.
Originally a 5 kilometer asteroid, Cruithne quickly became a significant trading hub because of its ability to function as a useful cargo slingshot platform to OuterSol. Cruithne is not a part of any planetary government, nor does it fall under the jurisdiction of the Terran Hegemony. It is, however, subject to the Sol Space Federation.
Fierra – The seventh moon of the planet Kithari in the Bollam’s World System. Fierra is in the late stages of terraforming when the Intrepid arrives intending to trade their tech for the world.
Ganymede – This moon is the third of the Galilean moons from Jupiter and is the largest and most dense moon in the Sol system. Because of the tidal stresses caused by being so close to Jupiter the moon also has a molten core.
In 2633 the orbit of Ganymede was altered to move it out of contact with Jupiter’s magnetic fields and in 2639 terraforming of the moon began. Ganymede’s surface is an ice/rock layer 200km thick. Beneath that is a water ocean that fills much of the moon’s interior. By using the mass of Kuiper belt objects an earthen surface was created and an orbital ring was built to funnel energy to heat.
Gedri – A system on the core-ward fringe of the Silstrand Alliance. The Gedri System is the most corrupt and lawless of the worlds in the alliance and is rife with pirates and smugglers.
High Terra – As the second planetary ring ever created (completed in 2519), High Terra is more elegant than the M1R, though Earth’s planetary ring has slightly less habitable space than its Marsian counterpart. The ring also houses the city of Raleigh which is the capital of both Earth and the Terran hegemony.
High Victoria – The station at the top of Victoria’s space elevator is named High Victoria after Earth’s ring. The initial station was completed only eleven years after the Hyperion accords.
Ignitus – Name of the innermost planet orbiting Sirius (Sirius A). This world was originally named Vishnu, but after the Luminescent Society gained control of the Sirius system, it was renamed.
InnerSol – This is the common name for the both the region of the inner solar system as well as the political groups that comprise that region. The boundary for InnerSol is nominally the main asteroid belt, but this is somewhat nebulous because some worlds within the belt are considered part of InnerSol (such as Ceres) while other sections, such as the Trojan asteroids are part of the Jovian Combine and thus in OuterSol.
Jovian Combine – The JC encapsulates all worlds in OuterSol—most notably Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and all their satellites. After the construction of the Cho, Jovian space began an upward rise toward not only housing the majority of all the humans in the galaxy, but also becoming the center or commerce and culture. In the year 4123 InnerSol and the Terran dominated SolGov was facing a regional government that was effectively more powerful than the federal government.
Jupiter – In 2644 a process of heating up Jupiter was initiated. Targeted impacts of KBOs (Kuiper belt objects) were made to cause pressure waves in hydrogen clouds. These waves were used to trigger fusion of deu
terium rich layers of Jupiter. This process has been refined over the years and now the system is regulated by accumulating and igniting pools of Helium3 within Jupiter.
This process has not made Jupiter a brown dwarf, or a star of any kind, it is just a much hotter planet, providing energy for the worlds nearby.