Reading through the FUQ (frequently unanswered questions) thread on this board, someone posted that there is a space station at the L3 Sun-Earth LaGrange Point. For those of you without degrees in astrophysics, that means that directly opposite of earth and behind the sun, there is a space station. Like so:

L3 - - - -SUN - - - -Earth

My first thought was WTF! It would take about six months to ship anything between the two stations (That means, six months in deep space on a space shuttle, just to get food to people, or spare parts, or whatever.) And it would be a year-round trip for the resupply crew. Sure it is private, but it just seems way to inconvenient.

In Shadowrun, just how many space stations are there and how many are outside of the earth/moon system (in so-called deep space?) The only space station I know about is Zurich Orbital, and a few smaller research stations in geosynchronous orbit. What other space stations am I missing?

Target:Wastelands was full of information about how much junk the megacorps have boosted into orbit. Helios is the AresSpace station at L3, by the way. L1, L2, and L4 are hotly contested chunks of space, and L5 is a junkyard full of space debris that has found the happy galactic equilibrium point and isn't going anywhere.

There are many, many space stations. Many small ones, a few larger ones, moon bases, a mars base - possibly two, even. Discussions about a research station on Titan, even. It's one of those well-kept Shadowrun secrets - there's a LOT of junk in space.

Shouldn't it be approximately 3 month trips (retrograde along earth-orbit)? Six months basically assumes you stay motionless and let the station come to you.

Besides, what crew? You'd need a rigger at undocking (earth station), and at docking (L3), and that's well within transmission ranges for a local rigger. Outside of that the dogbrain would be more than sufficient - there's nothing to run into and you wouldn't need supplies for the cargoship itself.

Only the actual crew-ships, which are probably pretty rare (like once every 2-5 years), would bother having people on them...and even then, it wouldn't suprise me if they were basically in an induced coma for the trip.

searching the board for "LaGrange Point" will actually turn up some cool stuff.

I'd say more like 4, to account for acceleration, deceleration, and "max speed" (yes, there's no max speed in space, but if you're going somewhere you can only accelerate until you're at the half way point or until you have used up 1/4 of your fuel (half of your allotted amount to get there)).

Thinking about it, more like 3-4 months best speed for a VP visit, but probably more like 9-12 months for standard cargo resupply - leaving the ship in approximately Earth's orbit, but slower and allowing the station to catch up would be the least-fuel-used scenario. Slowing to 50% of Earth's orbital velocity would take about 11 months for the station to catch up (quite close to it's starting postion, actually!)

And 1/4 fuel would be only be true for round-trips...if it's just a cargo drop, it's probably cheaper for them to be one-way trips. Or, possibly, a very extended return trip to Earth (at 90% orbital velocity, it may take a few years to get the empty box back to Earth, but it'd be quite cheap to do it.

Don't forget about all the secret stations we don't know about yet!

Like the one the runners are about to be shipped off to....

Makes one wonder exactly what is so secret/dangerous that they have to do it at L-3 don't it?

i am still saying we need something like SHADOWRUN: IIN SPAACEE! ò,Ó

Trips to the Hive.

Isn't it implied that that's the bug-metaplane expedition station?

I would think that's where Ares would be conducting those experiments. But that'd mean it's got to be a pretty big station to support enough biosphere for the mages they've got there.

They have a railgun that can lift 1 kg of material for about 20 . You have smart demolishers, coupled with the right equipment, can manfacture nearly anything out the elements in orbit. It's not hard to build things in space. It's hard getting stuff up there to build it with.

Known stations (Target: Wastelands pg 75)
LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Stations (around 50 of these exits)
* Apollo Station (Ares run)
* Camelot Research Platform (Novatech (I'm guessing NeoNet runs it now))
* Himmelsschmiede Orbital Factory (S-K run)
* Shibanokuji Freefall Resort (Yamatetsu run)
* The Spindle (Aztechnology run)
* Zurich Orbital (the big ZO and home of the Corporate Court)
GEO (Geosynchronous) Orbit Stations
* Icarus Station (Ares run)
* Echo Station (Fuchi run (no idea who runs it now))
* The Obelisk (Hisato-Turner Broadcasting Corporation run)
* Silver Pinnacle (The Station House) (Trans-Orbital run)
Lagrange Points
* L1: Treffpunkt Raumhafen (Proteus run (no idea who runs it now))
* L2: Darkside Junction (Novatech (NeoNet now))
* L3: Nerva (a silent, lifeless hulk not used by anyone)
* L4: Daedalus (Ares run)
* L5: Junkyard (Contested between Yamatetsu and Novatech (I'm guessing Yamatetsu won as Novatech had no plans to rebuild the Junkyard))
The Moon
* Artemis Lunar Arcology (Ares run)
* Fernseit Luner Station (S-K run)
* Olympia Lunar Base (Novatech run (NeoNet now))
Deep Space
* Helios (Ares run)

When I created a star system for my novel project I learnt that only L4 and L5 are stable. A station at L1, L2 and L3 would need thrusters for path corrections or drift into open space over time.

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMM17XJD1E_index_0.html

Yep. Hence why L4 and L5 are noted as having accumulations of debris, whilst the others aren't. The obvious advantage to using a metastable Lagrange point is right there; an artificial station can orbit correct, whilst debris can't, so you don't end up floating in your own private asteroid field of broken satellites and frozen astronaut shit.

The Lagrange points are all still favorable, because even the metastable points require far less orbital maintenance than anywhere else you could pick.

It's mentioned on page 111 of Street Magic. Ares runs its Hive jumps from Daedalus station at L4. They have a special section of the station called Eden that is a greenhouse of special engineered flora to maintain a weak ambient mana field.

Of course one might wonder why somebody wants to stay in the middle of nowhere in the first place.

How do the Awakened survive on the trip out there?

As long as you're not dual-natured or projecting, you can survive in space just fine. It's when you hit the astral that it really begins to suck for you.

Unless, of course, you're in a gaiasphere like in Daedalus.

In theory you could maintain an ambient mana field on the trip out, but it'd require a massive amount of flora on the ship. As such you could create a "Titan AE" type colonizer where onboard you could have enough ambient mana to allow for dual natured and astrally perceiving beings.

Umm... reading some of the early comments I immediately realize that most of the posters have no clue about orbital mechanics.

If you consider the earth's orbit stable and close enough to circular... the earth is moving at roughly 30km/s. If memory serves, mercury is close to 50km/s in it's small tight little orbit. IIRC: earth has an escape velocity or roughly 12km/s.

Coming to a dead stop is not practical. One after accelerating to escape earth's immediate gravity. You'd need to fight said gravity and the sun's gravity just to hold position while waiting 6mo's for the station. Energy which would be better spent changing your orbit. Which when it got to you would still be moving at 30km/s, which you'd need to match velocity and orbit with (or have a nice collision once you've traversed the 3AU to get there). This has the other problem that the L5 isn't going to have the mass to have much of a capture velocity (or require nearly the velocity required to escape the earth in the first place on the way back).

Assuming for arguments sake, you drop from orbit moving 30km/s w/ escape velocity and are now managing 15km/s. L5 is closing on you at about 15km/s. You're looking at about 9 months til it catches up with you. The look of things isn't much different going the other way (accelerating and trying to 'catch up' with it's orbit)

If you have more energy, you could make it faster using a constant frame of acceleration type. That's the kicker for SR... how good are the engines and how do you fuel them. (reaction mass & energy).

Nononono. Get a mage to cast Levitate. That's gotta be worth something.

Why would someone want to live on the bottom of the sea, floating on the clouds of Venus, or on a private island in the south pacific?

Well, with the way the Movement Power of spirits works and magic cast on Earth still functioning when entering the upper stratosphere, it's quite easy to reach these far-out space stations in less than 3 week.
In fact, everything major in the Shadowrun world that needs to be shipped fast or often will see tremendous gains on time.

Your valuable cargo on some 20-year old ships won't need two days to cross the Atlantic, they'll make it in approximately 4 hours, and with no accidents.
And your space transporter will be up there at whatever space station and back to earth in 6-8 weeks, and won't have any accidents either. In addition, you just saved a big amount of fuel. Horray.

The joys and the wonder of Magic and Spirit Powers.

...I would think that the Lagrangian points discussed in the various supplements and run modules are the Earth - Moon, not the Sun - Earth ones.

It took the Apollo spacecraft (1960's technology) roughly three days transit time from Earth to lunar orbit. Given the advancement in propulsion technology since then and extrapolating for the future, a trip from LEO/HEO to the the lunar orbital range could take as little as half that amount of time.

However, such a trip also requires critical calculations and timing to hit the correct departure window (Trans Lunar/Lagrangian Injection) so the moon or station will be where it should be when the ship arrived. This is why when there is a launch delay, the mission is often scrubbed for several days until a new launch window presents itself (and this is just to arrive at a specific point in Earth orbit).

You drop a decimal place or miss an exponent, and you may as well just open all the hatches to space.

No.

two words: Mana Void


Also, the spirit powers won't work at all w/ the SR4a changes (fortunately... the movement powers were quite a bit over the top before).
Too much mass and too few hits to do it with.

So spirit powers were changed considerably in Shadowrun 20 Anniversary edition?

Interesting.

So, mana voids now do disrupt magical powers initiated on Earth? And spirits now have to roll a test to influence a thing?

TECHNICALLY it is possible to cast magic in space. I believe space has a background count of 12, so if your magic is 13 or higher, you can do a little bit of mojo. HOW? asks you. Simple, magic needs life, and you are alive. If you are good enough (and we are talking REALLY good enough, like Dragon Level good enough) then you can use the magic projected by yourself in space. For mere humans, you need gaia spheres. But hey, at least that means that Dragons can go into space, right?

So, in Low Earth Orbit (stations that need constant course corrections not to fall out of the sky), there are several small research facilities, a few factories that require freefall (feel no effects of gravaty), and some large hubs, including Zurich Orbital which is quite literally the ivory tower in the sky from which the elite rule.

Okay, so there is are several stations in geo-synch with earth, there are several research stations there, as well as Echo Base, the only independent station. Echo is a converted, scrapped Harris M3 Base called Helo that has been taken over by a shadowrunning team and given a semi-legitimate face.

Earth-moon LaGrange Points
L1-Proteus's German Station. Constructed in secret and unveiled during Haley's commet. Between the earth and the moon.
L2- On the Dark Side of the Moon, Darkside Junction, Was owned by Novatech, but after it's redesign to NeoNET, status is unknown. Was a staging platform for lunar Operations.
L3-'Behind' the earth, opposite orbit of the moon. Abandoned Station called Nerva. Used for black, biological research (or so the rumors go.)
L4- Daedalus 45 degrees between earth and the moon. ABSOLUTELY HUGE Ares space station. Research facility and Hub for deep space exploration.
L5-Junkyard: Several large pieces of space-debris have conglomerated here, making the prospect of building a space station . . . Hazerdous

L3 Earth-Sun Lagrange Point: Behind the sun, in an orbit opposite earth, is Ares secret space station. Supposedly a staging area for deep space exploration, no one knows what's going on over there, and it has no oversight. Heck, it takes MONTHS just to get to there.


There is a station at the L3 Earth-Moon point, which is called Nerva

wonder how long it will be untill someone brings up the dwarf cyberzombie backpack?
As for the: "why would anybody do that?"
simple answer: "because we can! "

As was mentioned, as long as you're not interacting with the Astral on the trip out, you're just fine.

Not dragons, Great Dragons.

Deep Space has a backround count of 12. Low orbit (or anything closer than the moon) has < 7. I can say that with certainty because of one of the examples in Street Magic about a mage on the moon and how he's in -7 backround count.

Don't forget in you're example, as soon as you start "charging your magic batteries" in BC -12, you take 12 damage (can't remember if it's physical or stun) as the absolute void of magical energy siphons off large chunks of your soul.

Back in the mid 20th some rocket scientists figured out a way to extend the altitude of their rockets. They attached the rocket to a hydrogen balloon and let it fly. Sometime later, after the balloon/rocket (called Rockoons by the way- don't you just want to paint a raccoon on the side of it?) had achieved buoyancy they'd light the rocket by remote.
We might not be able to cast spells in space but we can cast a spell on the ground and sustain it until the upper atmosphere. So think on it a bit. If I take something heavy, like rocket fuel, and cast levitation on it while on the ground and then levitate that cargo up to the extend of the gaiasphere then I can let it go and have technology take over. Much faster than balloons and probably cheaper too.

IIRC they got taken over by Horizon.

Sorry for the potential newbieness of the question, but I've been out of the loop recently. Why is Ares attempting to contact the insect metaplanes? What could they possibly be gaining or hope to gain from it? Do they want to use the bugs as some kind of spiritual bioweapon, and if so, why the unholy frag hasn't anyone nuked that station already?

In the Street Magic fiction, they have targeted particular insect queens for destruction. Killing an insect queen on Earth doesn't destroy it, just disrupts it. They have to go to the Hive to destroy them.



The protection of mankind! *grins* But there's a theory on these forums, based on the fact that Ares does have a secret bug breeding program (see Threats 2), that Ares is using its ability to destroy insect queens as leverage to get other queens to work for them.



Because they don't know? Daedalus station is at LaGrange Point 4, not exactly some place people visit often. Besides, one corporation nuking another corporation's space stations would be open corporate war, a big no-no in the Corporate Court's eyes. And even if they did know, a corporation killing insect queens doesn't sound like such a bad thing on the surface.