Mars L4 Outpost, #2

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 3rd September 2008. (commentary)

I present to you the second part of another essay from the writings of Leon Winter, our guide for the Trailing Edge stories. The first essay can be found here, and I hope you enjoy.

The incident at Mars L4 didn’t slow the exodus from earth; it did however, speed up the occupation of the moons in the outer system, and it did foreclose the possibility of any long-lasting settlement of any of the L4 or L5 points. Europa first, but ultimately the rest of the Jovian system and Titan.

If the Visa Riots were the spark that started the exodus in earnest, Mars L4 was the fuel that kept it going. I can’t fathom this, I’m sure that had I been there I would have predicted that a tragedy with one of the colonies would have discouraged further colonization.

Clearly that wasn’t the case. Except in the limited form that people were completely unwilling to settle on space outposts like Mars L4. Within five years, all of these habitats had been abandoned, some people even went back to Earth, which was still overcrowded, but most moved on to Mars, the Moon, laid the basis for some of the outer colonies. More than anything thing else the legacy of the Mars L4 disaster was the concentrated development of the OuterColonies.1.

The road that lead humanity to settled on Europa and Titan was difficult and fraught. So many people missed so much: the people that never got to leave Earth, the people lost at Mars L4, the generations of people who never got to see Earth. And yet, for a time, I think Titan and Europa represented the very best of what humanity was capable.

– Leon Winter



Notes:

  1. I am throughly a product of the society of the outer colonies, as I suspect most of the people reading this are as well. The great ships bound for other solar systems bring not the children of Earth but the people of Europa and Titan to the galaxy. Though I still get nostalgic for Earth, it would be thoroughly incorrect to think that any of my relations for the past three–very long generations–had spent any substantial amount of time on the planet. ↩

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Mars L4 Outpost, #1

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 2nd September 2008. (commentary)

I present to you another essay from the writings of Leon Winter, our guide for the Trailing Edge stories. This essay will be posted in two parts, and I hope you enjoy.

Though it is hundreds of years past, the collapse of the Mars L4 Outpost remains a vivid and touchstone for most of us that remain.

Outposts and colonies had failed before; but some how, in the early cases, the collapses happened with enough warning to stage evacuations, or before the colony superstructures had become activated.

Mars L4 was different. There was no warning. And no recourse.

Somehow, disasters in space colonization had always seemed like hurricanes: devastating, huge, but visible on the horizon. Mars L4 was an earthquake by comparison: Dangerous, and a known possibility, and seemingly never predictable in the specific instance.

L4/L5 stations were great joys of the orbital mechanics: stable, easy to maintain, large, but particularly as you got further from the sun they were pretty far flung. Though we still do not know what happened to the station–aside from the fact that the air processing system failed–the tragedy was caused by the distance between the station and help.

What we do know is that one of the station’s central air processing unit–and it’s backup(s)–failed. It was 15 days out from the nearest ship.

Any outpost or settlement is always the most vulnerable when it is new, and this is especially true in space before routines are established, when hardware is newly fabricated, and software is largely untested. These factors probably all combined at Mars L4, but in the final analysis it’s difficult to determine if the station collapsed because of simple hardware error or because of some sort of programing mishap. That detail is lost to us, and the station itself has long since been scrapped.

If such a thing had happened on one of the colony structures on, say Mars–as it surely did in the early days of the colonies–there would have been ships, nearby stations, and other colony structures that would have been able to evacuate the population, fix the malfunction and then re-inhabit the structure when it was safe. What might have been lost to history as a routine maintenance situation, is instead remembered as the only instance where a fully populated space colony was lost with all hands in the entire history of human space occupation.

Though to be fair, the extra-solar colonization project is subject to the same challenges as Mars L4, but it will be generations before the news of those outposts reach us. At any rate I hope that we have learned our lesson from Mars L4, but I fear that we have not.

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Visa Riots #7

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 28th August 2008. (commentary)

“Visa Riots” is a short story from the Trailing Edge project. This story happens several hundred years before the other stories in the project. This is the final installment, of 6 7 parts. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. Enjoy!

“–just to be clear on the story, again: you beat up a maintenance worker, crawled halfway across the London dome, snuck into the transport dock, and hijacked a pod and flew to Marrakesh Dome?” Salimia asked, in disbelief: a grin slipping across her face.

Selimia was one of the city administrators, young, fierce, and commanding despite her slight figure. Their fathers had been colleagues, during dome building, and they had played together as children.

Edwin had expected that Salimia would pay them a visit in holding cell–their bedraggled appearance, and long flight in a London Dome maintenance pod reflected poorly on them as possible immigrants or visitors. Bun insted, without hearing their story, or even seeing them, once she had gotten word of their arrival had managed to advocate favorably for Perr and Edwin

Now–a shower and a change of clothes later–they were just like old friends having lunch at a quaint cafe on the streets of Marrakesh.

As if all the worlds great cities weren’t presently aflame. Marrakesh had avoided riots: it’s residents had more connections to the Corps and the Colonization authority because it was the, It helped that the population was smaller when the dome was built so it avoided the pinch after the baby boom.

“Different order, I think,” Edwin said, laughing.

“And it wasn’t halfway across the dome, we weren’t more than a few miles from the transport dock,” Perr said.

Salimia was dismissive. “Whatever, you’re here now. I think we can get you spots on the next shot to orbit, if you want,” she said.

“I’m not sure that we’re ready to leave, there’s work left to be done on Earth,” Edwin said.

“–someday, I might take you up on the offer,” Perr said. Her enthusiasm was not as rabid.

“Don’t wait too long,” Salimia said. “Marrakesh didn’t fall, and we can learn from this mess, but I’m not convinced that there’s as much time as you’d need.”

Edwin smiled, “We’ll see…”

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Visa Riots #6

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 27th August 2008. (commentary)

“Visa Riots” is a short story from the Trailing Edge project. This story happens several hundred years before the other stories in the project. This is part 6 of 6 7 parts. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. Enjoy!

“What do we do now?” Edwin asked when he was fully awake, still tired, but awake. He was still filthy, but he hadn’t slept well enough to care and there were more pressing concerns.

“I think we need to leave here,” Perr said, from another sofa on the other side of the door. She was still groggy but had been awake for several minutes. “I don’t want to be around when the owners come home and see this,” she said waving her hand over all remnants of their meal the previous night.

The riot had slowed over night, but there were still intermittent sounds from outside the door, as there had been all night. Edwin wasn’t even sure that it was even properly morning.

“Right, sis, but how,” Edwin said.

“Do you think they’ve opened the dome for venting?”

“We’re still hear aren’t we? So probably.”

“Do we know anything that might be useful. I don’t think there’s power here. I don’t have a terminal with me,” Edwin said, sitting up.

“It was coming toward the transport complex. It’s probably about this visa thing, I mean? What else?”

“Right. We still need to get out somehow, we could try and get out of the dome through the venting, but that’s a dead-end, probably.”

“I’m sure it’s safe out there. The Domes are more connivence than necessity at this point,” Perr said.

“Especially when the fucking city is on fire. If we get out of the dome, what’s to say that the next…”

“Right. The transport complex’s closed… didn’t Dad’s company have a little dock port? It’s still there, I’m sure there’s a trans–” Perr said, her voice trailing off. “–from this side, come on.” She jumped up and began to walk down the hallway toward one of the building linkages.

Edwin scooped up a couple of water bottles and a few snacks and followed her. “Wait, Perr, what the hell?”

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Visa Riots #5

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 26th August 2008. (commentary)

“Visa Riots” is a short story from the Trailing Edge project. This story happens several hundred years before the other stories in the project. This is part 5 of 6 7. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. Enjoy!

The there were, it turns out, riots under many of the domes. The previous day the colonial consortium had released the procedures and policies regarding the next–and first mass scale–emigration wave to Mars and the Moon. For years the only colonists have been the scientists, engineers, technician and their families. Other people got to go, but you had to know someone in the contracting firms.

Now everyone got to go.

At least that’s what people had hoped. The truth was slightly different.

There were only so many spots, after all, and the consortium decided, basically, that only certain people who had already filed initial paperwork (more scientists, technicians, and the like) and a subset of people selected by the consortium based on a closed algorithm would be able to emigrate off world.

Thirty years ago the consortia couldn’t pay people enough to recruit them into the Space Corps, not even the engineers could be convinced to move–likely permanently. The domes were going up all over Earth. Domes provided weather control, solved the power generation problem, protected old cities that would have been lost of toxic rain, and kept the encroaching deserts and the oceans out.

The economy boomed: there was no reason to leave. Understandably, a baby boom followed shortly.

The astute reader can see where this is going.

The domes, most of Earth’s population centers became overpopulated, underemployed, and unmanageable over the next 20 years. Domes which were designed to last for centuries, didn’t. The consortium had always argued that in addition to mostly solving the energy problems of most cities, the big domes would “get us all ready to colonize.”

No one expected people to be so ready so soon.

And then the only chance to get off of Earth, was restricted by the same consortium that built the Domes.

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After Earth, Part 5

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 4th August 2008. (commentary)

This is the fifth and final installment in the second sequence of the Trailing Edge story. Read part one, part two, part three, and part four. I once again leave you in the very capable hands of Mr. Leon Winter.

The familiar histories from the time surrounding the riots and the exodus–which I had heretofore been disinclined to question–argue that there had been no major protest about the depopulation of Earth. Furthermore the governments of Earth had all been very pro-depopulation, and wouldn’t have had reason or interest in protesting emigration. This seems like a fair assessment at face value, given that there aren’t many records from that period. After all, the riots left the domes ill equipped to support their populations, emigration was generally popular among the people and the governments of the domes and the nation-consortia that remained backed (and constituted) the colonial effort.

But, if there was an organized anti-colonial institution in Marrakesh. Marrakesh! The central home of the exodus, is hardly the place that I would have expected such a movement to occur, but it’s possible that this is just the only place that has managed to hold on to this memory. In any case, I’m fascinated by the idea that even in spite of global deterioration and widespread economic and societal collapse, that there were people fighting to stay, people who had the prescience to say “this is a dangerous path to walk down, lets reconsider now.“

Right before the extra-solar transports left the system, there was a spate of anti-emigrationism, which in retrospect reflected a general contempt for the unified colonial authority, rather than contempt for extra-solar emigration. The records that I have–news reports and government budgets and the line–seem to indicate that Edwin defiantly had the ear of the government.

While I suppose this doesn’t have much practical import given how long ago these events were, and how depopulated the solar system is these days, but if there was opposition emigration that predated the opposition to the colonial authority, what happened to it? And by proxy what are the implications for our assessment of the colonial authority’s role in the emigrations, both of Earth and of the solar system?

And besides, once I get a grasp of this, I should very much like to send a message about all of this in one of the tight band transmission to the extra-solar transports. But for now, I must wait. Wait to get the information, wait to get back to the outer colonies, wait to read the information. I have nothing but time, and though we aren’t flinging ourselves toward distant star systems, there is still much to discover.

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After Earth, Part 4

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 1st August 2008. (commentary)

This is the fourth installment in the second sequence of the Trailing Edge story. Read part one, part two or part three. I once again leave you in the very capable hands of Mr. Leon Winter.

This time, I had come to Marrakesh for a slightly more oblique reason. In the several years since my last visit I’ve been able to learn a lot about the pace and tone of this particular dome during the exodus period, what the people were doing, what they thought about what was going on around them, how they orchestrated the exodus, and so forth. The Visa Riots left Marrakesh mostly unscathed and in a certain sense the Colonial administration was descended from the governmental structure in the dome, so we learned a lot about Marrakesh growing up on the colonies.

That history, as you might imagine was somewhat whitewashed–this is another topic that I’m sure will evoke a groan or two from former students, as exploring the roots of this history have been a central part of my research program for the last 30 or more years. Why did Marrakesh survive the Visa Riots? Why didn’t the dome’s society eventually collapse? And what happened on the other cities, of which we know even less during that time?

I’ve spent a career trying to answer these questions, and the results have been mixed. Last year I received a general history of the exodus written by someone who was young during the Riots, and then not only lived through the resulting epoch and then wrote about it. As you surely know, the record of the ongoing analysis of contemporary events during the Exodus is fractured, and there were details in this history that even I hadn’t seen elsewhere.

Most notably, I learned about a character, one “Edwin Noam” who lead a short anti-emigration movement right after the Riots. I’ve never seen this name before, but then the surviving histories of the anti-emigration movement are sketchy at best.

Like all of the other pro-Earth movements that proceeded it the anti-emigrationists were very forceful, but ultimately unpopular in their day. If I squint hard enough, I can argue their side–given my ambivalence toward the exodus’ effects on everyone left here–but the general consensus is that they were deluded and sentimental at best, and more typically that they were simple reactionary stalwarts.

There were a series of summits between several European and North African Domes–Rome, Cairo, Marrakesh, Tunis, and some others early on–on the subject of population consolidation. resource management, and structural maintenance of the domes: before the riots there was enough industry and governmental infrastructure to stay on top of all these “bare minimum,” but no one cared enough it seemed. Three years after the Riots, there wasn’t even a mayor or dome Council left in Marrakesh, the “best off.”

The other domes that Edwin Noam apparently tried to organized are–by now–completely abandoned, collapsed, or simply not safe to enter alone–and besides, given that I have a series of engagements around Jupiter and on Titan late next year, I really can’t linger now that my other obligations are fulfilled. Besides, given that my chances of finding anything here is slim at best, I thought it best to avoid fishing expeditions.

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