User:Cesrate/The New Future/Laythe ascend

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After a bath, I walk to the window. The room temperature is comfortable. Quark City, the first colony on Laythe. Rather than calling it "city", it's more like a village. The majority of the building is made of concrete and bricks, and the thermal coatings are inside to keep the room warm. There're also a geothermal station and several bases landed from orbit, like the Picker Base B-5 landed there just a few minutes before the C-2's landing (C-2's place is about 40 kilometers eastward) yesterday, aiming for nuclear fuels.


The Picker B-5 is the "artificial gravity partner" of Picker C-2. During the past 150 days B-5 and C-2 was attached to the VASIMR stage by fifty-meter-long ropes, and as C-2 is a little heavier than B-5, the rope for C-2 is a few meters short. C-2 and B-5 were rotating during the travel like binary stars to simulate a comfortable gravity, and their barycenter is VASIMR stage, the thrust provider. Quiet neat, isn't it?

Well, as B-5 is mentioned... From the news, there was a breathtaking interlude when it was executing the final descend. After the deployment of parachutes, one out of the six airlocks of heat shield was failed to release. In such an emergency, the commander promptly ordered to fire the descending engines to their rated thrust. The heat shield turned over with the effect of engine exhaust and the failed airlock was twisted, but the shield was still hanging there. Then when approaching the Quark City, the airlock suddenly broke. The shield dived fast and hit the ground heavily. The residents were pretty scared although it didn't hit Quark City.


"Space flight isn't safe, though..." When I'm talking to myself, the door bell rang, it's Stephen.