SATURNINE

Building a world around the concept of a future colonized solar system by envisioning the graphics that might inhabit it. A sporadic personal project by Jack Grimes.

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Images captured by the UAA Tallahassee that show, from Saturn orbit, the unexplained destruction of Keystone Station. The reactor failure that destroyed the communications relay, inhabited by one employee of Algonquin Metals & Ores, LLC at the time, is under investigation by both Algonquin and the STSA.

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Shoulder patch issued to the crew of the Starling (UAA2602B), an independent high-speed transport vessel typically contracted by wealthy tourists. For nearly 40 years (circa 2284-2320) the Starling ran a regular course between Earth, Luna and the outer planets intended to offer people with the means to pay an “express sightseeing tour” with minimal stops. In 2322, captain Marisa Garvey left the Starling to pursue a consultancy job with Versk Orbital Dynamics, handing command to Alexei Karpov. Since then the ship has added a number of stops to its regular route, frequently transporting passengers part of the route for lower fare.

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Alberion is a manufacturing firm that specializes in magnetronic equipment for Gauss shielding. Their main facility is a part of Luna’s Farside industrial complex, where it provides Gauss generators for the UAA shipyards.

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Label (circa 2306) on a package of soy-protein sandwich patties produced by Taste of Space. Taste of Space is a leading provider of g-stable and calorie-dense foods for space travel, with a production facility on Luna where local soybeans and other lunar produce are processed into a diverse line of products.

Early missions were forced to prioritize weight and nutrition over all other factors, and space workers up through the 2120s subsisted almost entirely on freeze-dried provisions. However, developments in fuel efficiency and power management now afford most long-range ships the luxury of an onboard freezer and microwave oven for the preparation of hydrated food. Some private vessels even have galleys with a stovetop, although traditional cooking in space is still rendered extremely difficult by factors such as the low-pressure atmosphere and high risk of fire.

The physical demands of spaceflight and relatively high cost of Earthmade ingredients are not especially friendly to the pursuit of gourmet foodstuffs. Taste of Space’s selection of vegetable-synthesized meals and snacks is widely regarded as palatable but mediocre by freighters and other long-haul crew who eat it regularly.

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Interface displayed on the main command terminal of the UAA San Clemente during a landing approach on Titan, 2291. This style of negative-color display is used widely in space to both conserve energy and keep vital information clearly readable.

The San Clemente, deployed in 2283, is a short-range Saturn-area shuttle used by UAA to deliver personnel and supplies to the area’s stations. Running on electrical atmospheric systems, its subsequent lack of fragile algae cells makes it one of a special class of ships capable of both unassisted surface landing and trans-orbital travel.

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Tristar Transportation is a United Americas-based personnel transport fleet that operates several dozen regular routes between most major ports.

Tristar began in 2191 with the acquisition of two decommissioned cargo ships by metal-mining pioneer Alexei Rubin. Rubin had the ships sealed and refitted to safely carry passengers without some of the more expensive amenities offered by other transit lines. Popular with contract workers and Terran vacationers, Tristar is considered an affordable (if somewhat undignified) way to travel the system.

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Sirius Allied is a propulsion technology firm that provides fusion drives to a number of major clients, including most UAA ships built at Point Norfolk, near Sirius’ main manufacturing facility in Richmond.

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A) Images of a promotional shirt given to employees of Loadstar Interplanetary Freight Lines to celebrate the company’s 50th year of operation.

B) Logo of Loadstar Interplanetary Freight Lines.

Established in 2175, Loadstar is a worker-owned cargo company that serves the lunar, Earth-Mars and trans-Jupiter shipping lanes. With nearly 6000 full-time ships and roughly 14,000 staff working in piloting, customer relations, and logistics, it's one of the largest worker-owned companies in the system.

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Galileo is the name of a regional Jupiter-based communications relay system. (Many people will claim that the name is an acronym; almost none can agree on what it stands for.) The system consists of a dynamic network of several hundred relay nodes strategically arranged to work around the complicated rhythm of radio interruptions created by the Jovian moons’ different orbital periods. Most of the nodes are built into existing hardware. While transmissions sent using Galileo are difficult to ensure the security of given the unpredictable number of waypoints a message might pass through, no better option exists for bridging the hours-long radio shadows caused by the gas giant.

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Poiesis (Greek for “origin”) is a chemical research company specializing in the setup and maintenance of contained ecological support systems. This includes both atmospheric regulation systems for crewed ships and larger-scale ecological control systems for stations and colonies; places where the tiny size of a biological system compared to Earth makes the balance between people and plants both incredibly important and extremely delicate.

Poiesis operates exclusive contracts with nearly every permanent station in the system, providing hydroponics equipment, plant-related chemicals, atmospheric monitoring equipment, diagnostic systems, and science consuntants.

Versk has owned a controlling stake in Poiesis since 2234.

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Sentinel Lunar is an Earth-Luna freight line specializing in delicate and expensive cargo for wealthy clients living on Luna. Many kinds of desirable freight, such as agricultural products and furniture, are sensitive to the forces involved in spaceflight and are therefore highly rare off-Earth. Sentinel’s high-fuel liftships are capable of lower-g transit at the cost of more fuel consumption.

Residents of Earth and Luna have accused Sentinel of accepting and transporting packages from third parties containing illegal items--including, famously, a number of pieces of ancient Greek pottery designated “unexportable” by the NEU which nonetheless surfaced in the New Milwaukee mansion of Percival executive Felix Innes in 2311.

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Pavonis Systems is a Versk subsidiary that handles security and facilities maintenance at the Lagrange shipyards.

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Perk is a proprietary cryptocurrency and net-based payment app. Introduced in 2289, it rapidly ousted traditional bank institutions for its ease of use, security, and unprecedented ability to convert company scrip--the only payment offered by many mining and shipping jobs--into regular money.

Percival Investments Group, Inc. (PIG for short, to the dismay of its proprietors) is the firm behind Perk. Founded in the then-United States in the late 2030s with a significant influx of Silicon Valley venture capital, Percival became the go-to name in capital management for many of Earth’s largest corporations, including Versk, UML & Aztech. Despite repeated allegations of tax avoidance and fraud, Percival posted a gross profit of nearly $3.4 billion in 2350. They are headquartered in Brisbane, Southern Federated States, Australia.

Both Perk and its parent company have been criticized widely for what is perceived as an attempt to build a monopoly, as well as accusations that their scrip conversion rates are deeply influenced by the issuing company to try and dissuade employees from cashing their wages out elsewhere. Percival is referred to with some contempt as “Pig” among much of the working class, and subsequently Perk is often colloquialized “Pork”; i.e., “What kind of pork is a ship like that worth?”.

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Front and back of a commemorative T-shirt given to employees of Columbia Gas to celebrate the company’s 50th year of operation. Columbia is one of a few employee-operated companies in the system, and runs lucrative fuel & oxygen contracts with several major shipping companies.

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Guide to airlock operation posted in all Versk ships using third-generation twin-seal airlocks. Airlock design hasn’t changed much since the 2250s beyond faster pumps and better seal material.

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General Neutronics is an Earth-based startup exploring the prospect of quantum computation. While no working model has been demonstrated to date, a moderately sized chondrite asteroid- SR211B24, nicknamed ‘Bernhardt’- has been towed into Earth orbit and partially transformed into a zero-g lab, the ideal environment for the incredibly delicate work involved in magnetic particle confinement (MPC). Most engineers who have studied the problem agree that a quantum computer could only operate in permanent zero-g.

A theoretical quantum computer would be able to work exponentially faster than current silicon systems, and could occupy an unmanned station, accepting instructions and returning data wirelessly. General Neutronics’ end-phase goal is to construct a masive free-orbiting data center between Earth and Mars that doubles as a water processing center- ice brought to the computer would temporarily act as a heatsink and could be filtered and purified onboard.

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Nordicon Systems merged with Versk in 2130, bringing engineering and electronics knowledge to the small aerospace research firm. Most analysts consider the new collaboration between “theoreticians and engineers” the step that took Versk to deep space after years of low-orbital tests.