Icarus: Airship

Space Colony: Energy conservation

Energy conservation would be key for any struggling new colony. There are no power plants and no means to produce the power that you might need as quickly as you need it unless you utilize renewable energy forms like solar, wind and water. As wind and water power would take too long to set up for an immediate power source, it is my idea that the Colonists would use solar panels for nearly everything.

Clothing items are equipped with solar panels to charge personal technology

The use of almost any personal technology, from a communicator to a flashlight, would require personal responsibility to keep them charged. Batteries would simply be a waste of storage space and would run out too quickly to keep any supply. However, rechargeable solar cells that could be switched out with whatever would make perfect sense.

Laptops and solar rolls are an automatic match

Laptops are commonly brought with the colonists as they're quite handy and virtually everyone would have one. That also means that everyone would have to have their own solar roll to go along with it to keep it powered.

Field Panels are good for charging multiple objects at once.

In some situations, you might need a bit more umph for a charge or need to get something charged up in a hurry. The benefit to having solar panels hooked into bags and such is that they can charge an extra cell or a communicator while you're just walking around. When you need to charge a few things at once or make sure everything is full, you'll need to unfold a 'field panel'. These panels come in a variety of sizes but more often than not they're about the size of a small blanket.

Large Field Panels are usually carried by scouting parties

Some field panels come from military surplus and are lighter and more compact for the size they are. Panels of this size are often used to power communications stations, several laptops and the like. It's the main power for a team-sized element for when they would go exploring. Often, these panels are slung over a tarp and wires lead down to a central cell for everyone to use.

Space Semi-Truck

When you're dealing with any kind of Space Colony or colonization story one of the logistical problems that your characters will face is 'how to move the cargo'. A colony will live and die by the supplies that they bring with them or can find while in their new home. In an environment such as the space colony, they probably wouldn't be able to afford large luxury ships with all of the latest gadgets but they could probably pull off buying a few cargo haulers; a semi-truck for space.

Cargo Hauler with four cargo pods attached

This is a model of a ship that I'm going to use for my 'Space Colony' storyline. It is a long frame with engines in the rear, landing pods and a cockpit for aiming it in the right direction. Each one of the cargo pods is about the same size as an average Connex box. When you're moving lots of cargo around, a standard size of 'pod' is required to regulate weight and cost and all that.

Cargo pods for space would be made out of a material resistant to impact, but essentially the same concept.

The cargo containers are rigged between the landing thruster pods so this gives us an approximate scale of how long one of these transports would be. If you connect to semi-trucks together and factor in the size of the cab as being the space between the two as shown in the picture above, this would be the distance between the landing thrusters. Not exactly a small ship but when you're hauling everything that you'll ever be able to bring with you - it won't seem like enough.



One of the modifications that the space colony will end up using is a cargo box that has been altered prior to launch. Rather than holding boxes of cargo, it will be built to serve as either a medical facility, command and communications link or something to that effect. Rather than try an make a structure serve as a temporary 'command' center with all of the computers and electronics that you've had to build while on planet, why not pre-build the thing where you can get all the supplies you need?

This means that once you touch down on the planet and the builders have found a place for you to put the box, you can be up and running as a central hub of your colony's activities within a matter of hours rather than a matter of days. Since it's self-contained, you could just plan on adding tents or pre-fab buildings to the front of it to elongate the usable space. Hardware such as computers, servers and the like would be built in to a protected 'shell' that could be picked up and moved (by some other heavy-lifting vehicle or the like) .

JoTB: Hook Pistol

The pistol was made by Thomas' friend and inventor, Dr. Hugo (something), the Swiss Clock maker.

The pistol is a gas-propelled and fires a steel hook with spring-loaded prongs. A sliding scale on the side of the pistol dictates the amount of gas used and how far the hook will go a maximum of 50 feet.

The spool is detachable and can be clipped to Thomas' belt so he can swing on the braided silk cord. The small gas canister must be replaced after 1 shot at maximum range.

Dr. Hugo made this for Thomas after hearing that he was trapped on a building's ledge and some thugs were trying to kill him. Thomas carries the Hook Pistol in an outer, side pocket on his Utility Bag (tm).