Dear Billy:

        How are you doing?  I hope you're over your flu.  So how's that old pirate uncle of yours?  Well, now that we've finished our history lessons on World War II, the atomic arms race, and early space exploration, I reckon it's time we move on to the colonization of the solar system.  I know this is kind of long, but just hand on to it.  Now remember I'll be quizzing you on Sections 1 & 2 after church next Sunday.

        This lead to the first rotating space stations.  The first ones were just two modules connected by flimsy metal scaffolding that rotated around each other.  Theoretically, these prototype stations could be built up two modules at at time till you had a full "circle" or polygon as it was but this never happened.  The few of these stations ever built served more for determining how to produce "g" factors, and human reactions to them than anything else.

        It was about this time they started doing a lot of research about how to keep people alive in space without carrying all of their oxygen with them.  Eventually they discovered that they could use plants to produce oxygen in space just like they do on Earth, and the secret is bringing along CO₂ for the plants instead of O₂ for the people.  You see back on Earth, and in most space stations there is 21% oxygen in the air.  [I know it has to be a little bit higher in your base because you uncle keeps the pressure lower.]  But back on Earth, and on all colonies and space stations, the percentage of carbon dioxide is only .03% CO₂ or less, unless there's been a major air recycling disaster.  So you're much better off to have A LOT more plants than you need, and release small amounts of CO₂ to keep the plants happy than to try to lug around 21% O₂ to keep all the people happy. They also experimented with "Atmosphere Converters" or machines that would automatically convert the CO₂ in the air to O₂, but they were large and sucked up tons of energy.  Even today, they're only used as emergency backups on space stations in case all the the plants suddenly die from disease, or some burst of radiation.  After all, you could never store enough emergency oxygen tanks for all of the people on a big space station.

        After this people started dreaming of living in space stations and moving to other planets!!!  I guess it always is human nature to want to leap before you look.  HA.  HA.  But there were several serious obstacles that still stood in their way.  One was making the space station rotate fast enough to simulate at least a decent fraction of Earth's normal gravity, but not too fast to make everyone sick to their stomachs, they had to be as large as a couple kilometers across.  Also, once you do get a rotating space station built, the direction of the "gravity" produced is radically outward.  This creates a significant problem because all of your plants (except hanging plants) have to be planted against the outer part of the hull that would naturally get most of the sun.

        According to Hindrich's "The History of Early Space Flight" the solution to these problems came in a whole new kind of space station.  These space stations were built in orbit, and were nearly perfectly circular.  The general solution to the light problem was to make the walls of the biosphere part of the space station transparent except for about one fourth of the hull farthest away from the center.  This was the strip of "ground" that the plants were planted against.  The rest of he hull in this section was made of a super hard, heat resistant plastic composite.  Of course this transparent plastic had to have all kinds of special coatings to keep out harsh solar radiation in the forms of UV-light, X-rays and gamma rays, but they finally figured it out.  Even then, once you've kept out all of the REALLY harmful radiation, there's still the intensity issue.  At certain angles, just the visible light from the sun would scorch your plants to death.  At others, there wouldn't be enough for them to grow.  The general solution to this was for there to be silvery mirrors arranged inside the clear part of the hull like horizontal blinds.  These mirrors could be arranged to keep out too much sun light, or reflect the maximum amount of sun onto the plants.  Usually the "biosphere chamber" or plant section would take up 1/4 of the station.  Then there would be about 10% of the station on both sides of the plant section for crew quarters.  Most of them tended to have at least two docking bays for these new drop shuttles.  The rest of the design of the station depended on exactly what the particular station was being used for.

        With all of these tools in hand, the Great Age of Solar System Exploration began!  Some of these space stations were used as assembly plants with the express purpose of creating more space craft.  Many of them had large tanks of Argon instead of normal air for welding jobs that were very flammable. There was one incident where station operators didn't realize that the welder's oxygen masks leaked slowly, and after they kept recomposing the same argon again and again, the entire station exploded as soon as one man ignited his arch welder. This was called "The Great Orbital Disaster," and was kind of like the Hindenburg I was telling about last time.  When all of this worked right, they produced sensitive components inside the gas filled stations, and then kicked them out into space for further assembly.  This allowed for construction of space ships much larger than the space stations themselves.

        Now, people could "feel" gravity on rotating space stations, and on space ships as long the charged plasma engines were on since they produced a sizable amount of g-forces.  With this kind of acceleration they could make it from a space station 200 miles up to the Moon in less than 3 hours!  All you had to do was wait till the Moon was almost directly over top of your space station, and launch toward it.  The space station would have to fire it's boosters downward to keep the ion blast from the rocket from pushing it back down towards Earth, but only for a few seconds.

        Men soon returned to the Moon and established colonies there!  These colonies were mostly subterranean to protect the inhabitants from solar radiation.  However, this created a problem:  how are you going to get light in for plants to make oxygen, and maybe even food if you're using the lunar surface to keep out harmful radiation?  This was cheaper than using all of the special coatings that went into the space stations around the Earth.  Many of the first Moon colonies just put up plant domes separate from the main part of the underground structure, and used the expensive coatings on them.  However, there were other creative solution too!  One of these was to have a double dome, with a layer of ozone between them.  One colony even had all of its habitation modules inside a dome of this type, but most of the first colonies kept the domes just for plants, and for people to visit.

        The first ionic expedition to Mars soon returned to Earth with great news:  with modern technologies, it would be very easy to colonize the red planet!  Before this a few space ships had already been to Mars, and a very few astronauts had spent two year stays there, but that was about all.  They had left some "biosphere chambers" behind with plants and tiny animals in them, but most of them didn't survive too well since they didn't have the CO₂ counter balancing system, besides they tended to get covered up by the dust storms on Mars and die for lack of light since no personnel or robots were there to clear them off.

Manufacturing plants in Earth orbit and on the Moon were soon turing out hundreds of copies of Solar Explorer Ships!  The golden age of space exploration was under way!  Space ships were sent out as far out Pluto, and beyond, and as far inward as Mercury.

        In all of their zeal, they even tried establishing colonies in orbit around Venus.  However, the amount of solar radiation that near the Sun was simply TOO HIGH, and the cancer rate soared.  A couple of heavy duty layers of radiation protection would have solved the problem, but no one wanted to pay for refitting the stations, and they already had a negative public image.  Out of the six city sized space stations built in orbit around Venus, one was dismantled for salvage, but no one wanted to buy the parts for fear they were radio active.  At least they did learn a big lesson from all this:  all manned space craft must have some kind of radiation shielding on the human occupancy quarters, usually made of Zirconium or Vanadium.  Zirconium or Vanadium are usually used rather then lead since they're lighter. The other five were just left there to orbit abandoned.  A few automated observatories were set up which drop robot probes into the Venetian atmosphere where they burn up rapidly.

        But at least they did find one use for Venus:  To house the highest security prisons ever built.  The pressure of the atmosphere of Venus at the surface is 91 times greater than it is on Earth: That is to say the force of 1337.7 pounds pressing down on every square inch, or 69179 millimeters of mercury!  The temperature on the surface is 460°C, or 860°F.  Moreover, the clouds are actually made of sulfuric acid, and when the sun rises in the West, it takes 4-Earth-months before it sets in the East.  There's also about 25 lightning strikes in any one area per second causing a constant deafening rumble.  The idea behind building prisons here was that if a prisoner escaped, he or she would be simultaneously be crushed to death by the pressure, and boiled alive in their own juices by the temperature.  Moreover, even if a prisoner escaped with some kind of suit capable of withstanding the temperature and the pressure, the sulfuric acid rain would literally eat the suit off of them!  The prisons had to be made out of special material to withstand all of this, and so did the prison ships that would land and dock with the prisons.  Even if a group of prisoners could some how manage to take over a prison ship and attempt to escape, the ships would self destruct without special codes from the crew and the prison tower.  This is where the Earth and the Moon sent the worst of their prisoners:  To the Ultimate Alkatraz of the Solar System.

        It also wasn't long before a large number of colonies were established on Mars, and in orbit around Mars.  Most of the colonies on the surface of Mars were huge domes filled with sky scrappers that could be made air tight at a moment's notice, in case the dome cracked. There's a big debate about weather they should terriform Mars, or leave it alone.  Some of the scientists are worried about contaminating the environment, before we discover the first traces alien life.  No one in this debate seems to be willing to admit that numerous air leaks and waste contaminations from ships and colonies may have already released Earth-based life onto Mars.  In the mean time, they're just releasing CFC's into the atmosphere which have about 10,000 times the heat trapping power of CO₂. A few of the oldest human colonies in orbit around Mars are the old doughnut type stations, but most of them have newer designs.  It's easier for ships to get from the surface of Mars to space stations in orbit, than it is on Earth. Mars has only 38% the gravity of Earth and ~0.01 times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere.  It's escape velocity is only 5 kilometers per second instead of 11.2 kilometers per second.  Therefore, while on Earth drop plane shuttles were used until Anti-Gravity engines were invented, many space craft on Mars could make it into orbit simply by firing their powerful ion-plasma engines straight down.  When Anti-Gravity engines finally were invented and came into use, seeing ships blast off from mars using just a plasma thruster was not all that uncommon.

            One of the more interesting groups to develop since the invention of interplanetary space fight is the "Free Spacers."  Nobody's really sure exactly when or how they started, but they've caught on pretty fast.  Basically they believe that ALL governments EVERYWHERE in the solar system exist only to oppress the people, so they don't belong to any!  They build large space ships capable of producing all of their own food and recycling all of their air and water so they can live, breed and die in the deep space between between planets where there's no one to tell them what to do.  From a political science perspective they're anarchists since they believe that no authority should exist, and that every man, woman and child should be left to fend for themselves.  Some people say they know more about deep space and the outer planets than anyone else, and that they have hidden bases at all of the outer planets.  Most respectable space stations and colonies don't want anything to do with them, that's why your uncle was able to make a deal to repair their ships so easily.  You've met them yourself a few times.  Of course Billy, nobody outside them knows very much about them for sure, and I only have this much to put in your lesson because I got it from your Aunty Diane.  I do know there's a lot of variation among them; they're not all the same by a long shot.

        Many of the asteroid mining companies established bases in the Asteroid Belt for their mining ships to refuel etc. When civilians started wanting to stop by and refuel and recharge their own rockets on their "dare devil tours" of the Asteroid Belt, the mining companies saw a new opportunity for profit!  At first they just let them refuel and recharge at exorbitant prices, but over time they grew into the tourist traps of the solar system, with built theme parks, casinos, water slides, etc. Moreover, in an age with few moral restraints, there had to be illegal pleasures as well as legal ones.  Prostitution and drugs flowed rampant.  Both of these were illegal on Mars, but came to be advertised out in the open in the Asteroid Belt without anyone saying a word.  In fact the Asteroid Belt came to be known as "the New West of the Solar System."

        After the colonies on Mars and space stations in orbit around it declared independence they formed the Conglomerate of Martian Colonies.  Each colony is free to set up it's own laws, and form of government, but must pay taxes and send representatives to the Great Council, which handles interplanetary affairs.  The biggest problem with the Conglomeration of Martian Colonies was, and still is, that there is no central vision.  The colonies had very little common ideological ground before Independence, and still do not.  They're just a group of separately founded colonies lumped together for economic purposes.  Each colonies sends representatives and taxes to the Great Council, but the Conglomerate Charter guarantees each subdistrict the right to have their own form of government.  This translates into communist colonies sitting next door to dictatorships, next door to democracies.  The Great Council itself has little real power except in handling interplanetary trade, and they charge far more taxes than they really need for that. What is more, the extreme moral decay in the Asteroid Belt, and the biggest colonies on Mars lead to Slavery.  This resulted in the Martian Civil War.  Now Billy, this bloody war raged until your father came out here 10 years ago.  The Rebel Martians were a group of extreme Marxists who felt that the only way to end the chaos was to force everyone into their own brand of communist philosophy.

        Right after the Declaration of Martian Independence, followed the Great Depression on Mars caused by the Earth - Mars trade embargo.  As the price of even the simplest of every day items soared through the roof, millions of poor people migrated to the space stations in the Asteroid Belt hoping to find a new life.  THEY WERE NOT READY FOR US WHEN WE GOT THERE.  These space stations were set up for tourists on a short term basis, not for thousands of homeless people for who knows how long.  For "humanitarian" reasons most of the station owners agreed to let as many people stay there as possible, as long as they would agree to work for the station.  For most people this meant being stuffed into a two bed hotel room with 12 other people, and working on the electronics of the station or selling trinkets for 10 hours a day.  Most people were glad for this arrangement when it worked out.  But of course in all of the chaos that was going on back then, there was nothing to make sure that people ended up on an Asteroid Station where there was an open job they knew how to do.  A great majority of them stayed unemployed, and the station security had a hard time telling who was who with 12 or more people no one knew stuffed in every spare room.  Even those who had jobs barely made enough to feed themselves since everything was priced for rich tourists from Earth or the Moon.  People would constantly steal to survive, and when the authorities tried to crack down, riots emerged on most of the Asteroid Stations.  These people and their children continue to make up the continue to make up the The common people of the Asteroid Belt.

        With ridiculous and obscene laws like these people would often commit suicide or "go down fighting" before being caught.  And more and more people were being forced into the other side of the law all the time!  Humanity had expanded so fast that there was a lack of good education away from the Earth and the Moon.  This was a problem being remedied on Mars where a Mars Space Academy was being established to train future fighter pilots and space explorers.  However, there are still pitifully few schools in the Asteroid Belt, where greedy men refused to fund them.  The few that existed are desperately poor, and many of their teachers have many of their facts wrong -- as you already know!

        THERE'S NOT MUCH LAW OUT HERE -- as you already know.  A lot of people are still afraid to come out here.   The large asteroids aren't the problem actually -- you can avoid those.  The real problems are the small meteoroids that can pierce straight through your hull without showing up on radar.  Most "respectable" law enforcement agencies will avoid traveling in the Asteroid Belt if possible, and this includes the Regular Martian Army when they have a choice about it.  A lot of space pirates take advantage of this making their bases on abandoned asteroid stations, or disabled ships floating in the Asteroid Belt.  Of course this only makes the journey all the more dangerous.

        Nevertheless, there is a United Corp. of Space Constables (UCSC).  The UCSC is a group of special soldiers and judges set up by the Martian Conglomerate 5 years after the Martian Independence, right after the slave system was set up.  They have the unenviable task of policing the entire Asteroid Belt.  Their police force (the Space Constables) wear rigid titanium space suits painted red, and are always armed.  Finding themselves in an increasingly overwhelming and impossible battle, they tend to shoot first and ask questions later.  They're poorly funded, and they often have to steal weapons back from the space pirates just to keep themselves armed.  In the midst of this overwhelming struggle, their judges (the Space Justices) tend to become overly vindictive.  Because they're supervised by the evil station owners, there are only 3 punishments the Space Justices are allowed to hand down:

• 1) Death -- and they use this one quite frequentlly.  Death is often by phaser blast to the back of the head, and is quick, even if it isn't always deserved.
• [By the way, phasers are lasers where all of the light is extremely close to the same wavelength.  In the future, "phaser" is used to refer to high power weaponry with a secondary rectifier.  "Laser" is often used refer to smaller weapons (often pistols) that don't have secondary rectifiers.  "Laser cannon" is used to refer to large lasers put on the outside of ship's hulls that don't have secondary rectifiers, but have the sheer wattage to burn through almost anything.  Laser cannons can sometimes be more dangerous than phasers, because a phaser will just cut through anything, but a laser cannon will burn and cut through almost anything.  Sometimes they're not as good as destroying heavy armor, however.]
• 2) Slavery -- they're forced to continue this punisshment even though many of them feel it is morally wrong because of the greed for more slaves,

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• 3) Banishment from a particular space station, usually accompanies by heavy fines.  This last punishment is fairly rare, but if they think that you're not really any harm, the local Space Justice may just tell you never never to come back to his particular station.

        The space pirates are not all the same like the Space Constables have a reputation for being.  In fact, the term "space pirate" has to a certain extent come to mean anyone who commits a crime in the Asteroid Belt.  Some of them only do one "job" like hijacking a ship and heading for Earth or the Moon.  However, this usually doesn't do them any good since their identity is tacked down and their sent back.  Some of the space pirates even have a hero's reputation for rescuing slaves and setting them free.  However, the rescued slaves have little more to look forward to than a life as an outlaw.  A few of these "noble" space pirates have even been offered jobs by the Space Constables, but very few!  On the other hand, some space pirates can be incredibly gruesome.  Alienated from society, and forced to find their own right and wrong, some people will inevitably follow their lower natures.  Some space pirates have formed satanic cults that practice human sacrifice and just about everything you can imagine.  There are also groups that are at almost every point between these two extremes.

        The standard Lunar Shuttle for carrying humans and cargo back and forth from space stations in Earth Orbit and the Moon.  The passenger shuttles have decks arranged "vertically" in the cargo bay with two elevators running up and down the cargo bay carrying passengers between decks.  There are also ladder ways on each side of the twin elevators in case the elevators are busy (or broken).  The cargo shuttles often have one ladder that runs the length of the cargo bay.  Sometimes they can be electronically lowered so workers won't trip when loading cargo into the ship.  However, they tend to get stuck up a lot.  All of this is necessary because while on a space station, "up and down" will appear to be in their regular positions.  However, when the ship fires it's rockets at almost .5g in the weightlessness of space, "up" will feel as if it's towards the nose of the ship, and "down" will feel as if it's toward tail of the ship.  In other words, these ships tend to be built to withstand gravity from two different directions.

        The standard Asteroid Shuttle.  It plays basically the same role as the Lunar Shuttle only in the Asteroid Belt.  To withstand this environment they have to have heavier armor all around them.  This makes them a little accelerate slower.  To make up for this, they have side boosters for building up a  higher speed soon after take off.  The side boosters can also be used to swerve to avoid asteroids, but they can't be used too long because of the rate at which they burn fuel.

         Solar Cruise Ship.  In a time where private space travel is very common this ship is used to transport passengers to distant parts of the solar system, especially Mars and the Asteroid Belt.  It actually has it's own on board artificial gravity generator powered by a small fusion reactor.  It actually has pools and spas, casinos, and just about everything you could want to sin on board.

        The standard Asteroid Mining Ship.  While there are many mining companies, most of the ships look quite like this one.  Like the Solar Cruise Ships, these ships actually have their own on board artificial gravity generator powered by a small fusion reactor.  This means they can accelerate at more than 1g (9.8 m/s) without the crew feeling it.  Some of these ships can accelerate at up to 7g!  They are also heavily armored to defend from asteroids and space pirates.  They also have formidable weapon systems, but you can't see the weapons on ship this size from far away.  The extra ion-plasma engines on the  side are not only for extra speed, but also in case any of the main engines are damaged by asteroid impacts, and allow quick turning to avoid asteroids.

This is the standard Space Constable Cruiser.  It's all yellow color makes it stand out from other ships.  It has eleven adjustable phaser banks controlled by a computer targeting system, and six large Ion-Plasma Cannon engines for molded into it's unique shape for extreme speed and maneuverability!  However, the space constables are terribly undefended, by the greedy owners of the asteroid stations they protect so only a limited number of them were ever made. The ones that do exist are constantly running from one emergency of someone being attacked by space pirates to another.  Finding one just sitting there in the Asteroid Belt by chance is a minor miracle.

Zeus	5 Pyramids

Love,

Barny.