GalacticStalker: Chapter 24, The Faerie King
Cover art design by Yev Gray, Unsplash
In 2067, Silas, a counterintelligence officer in the Abwehr lives in a six by eight foot cubicle in an asylum orbiting around the red Oberon moon of at a distance of about 364,000 Miles from Uranus.
He is nevertheless at the nexus of a rapidly growing economic and military expansion. He represents a technological center and a node in the power network behind the new biopolitics which are heating up another of many cold wars.
For Silas war, his war, represents a philosophical departure from the types of engagement where the material causes have shaped historical events and political transformations on epic scales.
Here is a more personal and subjective engagement, where more significant and longer lasting changes can be achieved by the mind when it acts as a multiplier of the Real.
Silas, and the barge are in a tidally locked low orbit around the outermost and second-largest of the five major moons of Uranus, named after the mythical king of the fairies.
The remote location of the mostly red moon makes the prison barge a highly secure facility.
The logistical difficulty of escaping from a moon orbiting Uranus adds an additional layer of security.
Cover by Y. Gray, Pixabay
Observing from approximately 700 kilometers above Oberon’s surface, the barge has a clear view of the moon’s large impact craters, icy plains, and signs of cryovolcanic activity, revealing insights into its geological history. The barge is always harvesting atmospheric gasses for propulsion and consumption while this close to the red moon.
For more intensive fuel harvesting over Oberon, once a day the barge drops to an altitude of about 500 kilometers above the surface to capitalize on limited local resources. However, for substantial extraction of hydrogen and other gasses, the barge would need to drop closer to Uranus, where the atmosphere is denser and richer in these essential fuels. This approach allows the barge to maximize efficiency by utilizing Oberon’s sparse atmospheric offerings while relying on the more abundant atmospheric reserves of Uranus for larger-scale fuel needs.
After executing a Hohmann transfer orbit — a fuel-efficient method for traveling between two orbits — optimizes these trips, one to extend the orbit to reach Uranus, the orbiter unfolds is huge scoop to gather the gasses. Then it executes another transfer to return to Oberon.
The duration of each leg of the journey usually depends on the alignment of the two celestial bodies but the red Oberon and blue-green Uranus are in synchronous orbits. This method minimizes the fuel required for such maneuvers, making it an economically viable option for the barge’s operations.
Uranus’s blue atmosphere, rich in hydrogen, helium, and methane, provides an excellent source for fuel. By periodically lowering the barge’s orbit to come closer to Uranus, these gasses can be siphoned and processed for use as propulsion fuel and for generating energy. Hydrogen and methane are particularly valuable as they can be used both as rocket fuel and for energy production aboard the barge.
Methane, which reflects blue light, is abundant in Uranus’s atmosphere. Methane is converted through steam reforming into hydrogen, which in turn is used for fuel cells to generate electricity. This provides a continuous and self-sustaining energy supply for the prison, reducing operational costs and dependence on external energy sources.
To optimize gas collection for the orbiter around Uranus, targeting specific altitudes above the cloud tops can yield the highest concentrations of each primary atmospheric gas in the shortest possible time:
Hydrogen and Helium: These gasses are most abundant in the upper atmosphere. For maximum extraction efficiency, the orbiter should focus on an altitude range from the cloud tops up to about 20,000 kilometers.
Methane: Methane concentration peaks closer to the planet, within the first 2,000 to 3,000 kilometers above the cloud tops. Targeting this altitude range allows the orbiter to capture significant quantities of methane, which absorbs red light and contributes to Uranus’s blue-green hue.
Water and Ammonia: Water and ammonia are found in deeper atmospheric layers. To access higher concentrations of these gasses, the orbiter should descend to altitudes below 10,000 kilometers from the cloud tops, approaching the denser regions of the atmosphere where these heavier compounds are more prevalent.
Oberon, discovered in 1787, by William Herschel, and known for being the second-most massive of the Uranian moons and the tenth-most massive moon in the Solar System, serves as a backdrop for Silas’s activities.
Here, far from ordinary realities of Earthbound civilization yet deeply involved in the existential tensions that have plagued the evolving cybereconomy, Silas leverages his surroundings to maximize the impact of the “e-protocol”, developed to assist the Vanguard in managing a new Cold War crisis.
While the doors are open during the day for 6 hours and locked at night to allow some degree of freedom, this freedom is also full of dangers. Reality here, beyond the boredom, childish but extremely dangerous games, the ecology of power and its consequences, is first perceived as material and substantial as any object of consciousness can be.
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