Difference between revisions of "Rockhounds"

Revision as of 17:41, 3 January 2010

It started with a simple idea. Like a lot of fen, I wanted to make the move Out. But I didn't like the idea of abandoning all the comforts of home, and I'd been cooped up in a small apartment for years. I wanted space, not just Space, if you'll pardon a few dice of pun damage. So I got together with a few friends and planned out the basics, talked Dad into getting a 'dane lawyer to write up the contract, and settled in with a rep from Dolomite to hack the finances into place.

The deal was simple. We, the fen, would head out into the Belt, find a nice solid chunk of nickle-iron (and hopefully some titanium, platinum, or other worthwhile shinies), and haul it into orbit. (We actually had a plan for this, which was what made them willing to talk to us, unlike some wild-sky'ers who'd popped the idea before us. Just say it involved some Israeli-designed catalytic hydrogen generators and most of the handwavium the bunch of us had been able to put together when we'd gotten started.)

We would provide a suitable habitat, thanks to said handwavium and some cargo containers and trailers, and lift Dolomite's crew and equipment into orbit. Then they'd mine the thing out, we'd ferry the results down to a landing site somewhere in Arizona, and we'd walk away with a rather nicely hollowed-out space rock and a wad or three of cash.

The ink wasn't even dry before we had five offers from various scientific and manufacturing concerns to buy it off of us when it was done. A ready-made habitat in orbit, of that size? All sorts of uses for that, from manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to the kind of esoteric research that most fen just say "slap some 'waves on it, dude, don't get so emo about it" to.

Known Space Rocks

These are the "rocks" brought in personally by Captain Marsden and his crew; others for whom Rockhounds, Inc. acted as a middleman are not listed.

• SR-01: NASA experimental station, semi-officially known as "Space Station Beta" - Lagrange Point 5
• SR-02: Dow Pharma/3M Pharmaceuticals (joint operation) - Lagrange Point 5, medical research and drug synthesis
• SR-03: USAF (Classified)
• SR-04: TSAB Benjamin Franklin Station - Lagrange Point 4
• SR-05: Spacecraft Greenwood
• SR-06: European Space Agency (Satellite maintenance depot, occasionally referred to by Fen as "Nouveau Paris") - Geosynchronous Orbit over Paris, France
• SR-07: Seijoutaigakure no Sato (Hidden Village of the Asteroid) - Returned to Belt orbit after mining/refitting
• SR-08: Wonderland - agricultural station owned by Stellvia Corporation, Lagrange Point 5