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One Among Thousands of the Fallen Satellites
🕑 Added 2024-08-25 14:46:38 +0000 UTCTrying out a new process where I start with base colours of the brightness/hue of the intended result and then render with colours picked from the environment, instead of rendering using my go-to palette and then darken and apply colour filters afterwards, which is why this time there's no WIP with brighter versions of the character sprite like in the past.
Markings on the satellite remain spell "Blue Heaven Project". This satellite was launched long before Blue Heaven became what she is today, back when the Causality Engine and its subsystems were still under construction.
Nearing the end of the Great Tofu Wars (Yes, Tofu wars, NusTac isn't that serious kind of setting), in a desperate move, anti-Blue Heaven factions launched 12 rockets loaded with Chain-Collider Bombs into space, believing that, by destroying all artificial satellites in orbit, they could inflict more damage on Blue Heaven's forces on Earth—composed primarily of drones—than on their own organisations, which were mostly manned by humans.
Within 72 hours, the resulting ablation cascade destroyed 99% of satellites in low Earth orbit, and in the following week, half of all man-made objects in medium Earth orbit became dysfunctional. Permanently sacrificing humanity's spacefaring future did not turn the tide, however. Prior to the conflict, Blue Heaven had secretly developed a new method of communication based on stabilised MT particles in the atmosphere, facilitated by a network of ground-based terminals (which were later developed into the standard Blue Heaven Terminal). The near-instantaneous MT field communication defied laws of physics known to humans at the time, and proved vastly superior to other electromagnetic wave-based communication methods available to the Humanitist forces. The great war ended in a decisive Blue Heaven victory.
Although most debris either stayed in orbit or burned up during re-entry, a large amount of medium-to-large-sized pieces still remained and eventually rained down on Earth. Luckily the frequency of these events slowly decreased after an initial peak. A decade after the end of the war, burning fireballs in the night sky had become a relatively uncommon sight. Fallen satellites in urban areas had long been cleaned up, but in many underdeveloped or less populated regions, satellite remains can still be seen in the wild.
Comments
HARK!
It is certainly annoying that the threat of space debris and Kessler syndrome is currently slow to be addressed.
HARK!
Would causing an all encompassing debris field in Earth orbit really result in permanent loss of access to space? On its own, some portion of the debris would de-orbit by itself, given enough time. That could still not be enough to safely conduct launches again, yet one could start an effort to clear up the debris. This could be done by using satellites that are mostly large Whipple shields to collect small, high-speed debris, before dropping back down. Once an orbit is sufficiently cleared from the small debris, satellites to remove medium to large debris can be sent. These would probably need to be more active in their method, grabbing on to the debris to remove them, rather than letting them collide into themselves.
Lync
This is so cute! Great job!!
AstroChrono
Lore and tummy for a balanced diet
