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Description
After Tolkien station was set up in 2037 AD, the USNSC sighted the next best candidate for an extraterrestrial military base in 2038 AD. That next candidate was the largest object in the asteroid belt beyond Mars: Ceres. Ceres was strange in that it had glowing spots on its surface. These strange glowing spots would be the main field of study during the development of Occator Station. Since Ceres was extremely cold, ice was not just at the poles or in craters, it was scattered across its surface which made the possibility of multiple self-sustaining astroports a reality. To set up an outpost on Ceres at a reasonable cost, the USNSC would use its NASA's largest speed hauler Orion-class ship: the ITF Columbus. This ship was not assigned to the NATO Space Force since it wasn't for combat purposes. Most of NASA Orion drive spacecraft were 10 to 20 meters long since they were unmanned but the longest type were 300 meters long since they had to transport 52 kT of supplies and four SpaceX starships.

This Orion-class colony ship was the USNSC's greatest space asset in colonizing the solar system since it could get to even the outer planets in Sol in a few months, outperforming even the NSF's 28MN Methane-7 nuclear thermal rockets. Getting to Ceres took the spacecraft only a few weeks. The only worry was EATA's Red Dawn spacecraft which had a powerful enough fusion drive to rival the ITF Columbus's acceleration meaning it could attack or confiscate the ship's SpaceX Starships. However, the USNSC took the risk anyway since it could keep tabs on the Red Dawn's location using drive-detecting satellites and bombard the EATA Space Force with counterintelligence about its location. With the arrival of the ITS Columbus at Ceres, the development of Occator Station was underway. The USNSC sighted Jupiter's moon Callisto as being the next target in the Solar Colonial Initiative, but their chief scientist, Dr. Mason Reed, disagreed. He told them Venus was actually the best planet for an extraterrestrial base which confused the USNSC generals since Venus's surface was blisteringly hot enough to melt lead. Mason explained that they could establish a floating aerostat base in the layer of the clouds that had similar atmospheric pressure and temperature to Earth. Venus's thick atmosphere was also a great radiation shield and thermal insulator at the right altitude (48 km), and its high concentration of CO2 could be broken down with hydrogen to produce rocket fuel. Venus was closer and its gravity was about 90% that of Earth's which meant that the personnel could stay on a floating Venusian base for their whole lives with only an oxygen mask and without facing health issues. The only drawback was raw material could not be harvested from the surface. With that, Venus became the USNSC's next target. The Venus base, Venusian Station, would be dropped in modules that would deploy a torus-shaped aerostat balloon after its parachutes and would be connected together. In the coming years, the USNSC would produce more of these super-freighter ships to maintain its grasp on the solar system.

Ceres's Occator crater was specifically chosen for a Ceres base because back in 2020 AD, a group of neuropsychologist researchers created a pattern-recognition neural network AI that found that Ceres's Occator crater had a glowing spot that contained a structure that looked to be an artificial structure of a triangular shape. This hinted at xeno-activity on Ceres. Once the crew members of the ship were told this, half became eager to study it and the other was worried it would be an outcome like the movie Prometheus where everyone dies. What's on Ceres? Only time will tell.

By 2038 AD, around two years after EATA media outlets made the USNSC public, the USNSC did not have to hide themselves nor their fleet of nuclear spacecraft anymore since the mass weaponization of space under the NATO Space Force and World War 3 made it easier to distract the public from their operations despite massive initial outcry against Washington DC for turning a blind eye to the Pentagon's funneling of trillions into the USNSC program under the public's noses when it could have been used to end homelessness, implement universal healthcare programs, or relief those struggling with student debt. After the outcry died down and space warfare made the public feel like the weaponization of space was becoming more of a necessity, the USNSC's self-sustaining Moon and Mars bases seemed like a strategic advantage and thus the US President decided to keep the program running despite much criticism. When the USNSC was launching something or conducting an operation, they could easily just say it is an operation being conducted under US or NATO Space Force since the USNSC's lack of insignias or flags made it hard to tell if US spacecraft were being launched by them or the USSF/NSF. Little did the public and EATA know that the USNSC was not the bottom of the rabbit hole. Something else was going on. Something that would keep people from sleeping at night.

---

Specifications:

Dimensions:

- Length: 300 m
- Hull Diameter: 25 m

Mass:

- Mass: 10 kT
- Payload Mass: 72 kT
- Full Mass: 82 kT

Thrust:

- Supercruise: 1 g
- Max Manned Acceleration: 4 g's
- Max Unmanned Acceleration: 100 g's

Protection:

- Artificial Magnetosphere:
-- Given that this ship is going to be traveling to the Galilean Moons which have high radiation levels, this shielding method is a must. The shield uses superconducting electromagnets and creates a magnetosphere of about 1 Tesla to deflect ionized radiation such as solar wind and cosmic rays. In each individual Starship, their artificial magnetosphere can produce about 500 Gauss and can use plasma injectors to create a Magnetoshell Aerocapture plasma shield to dampen air resistance.
- Exotic Polymers:
-- In the internal compartments of the ship and the Starships, exotic polymers are used to shield the crew from high-energy ionizing radiation from space.

Avionics:

- Insulated Wiring.
- High-Temperature Superconducting Wires.
- [Weapon Charge] Graphene Ultracapacitors.

Power Plant:

- 10 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor.

Thermal Control:

- 8 Silicon Carbide Waste Heat Radiators: Cools the Crew Compartment and the Reactor.

Thrusters:

- Main Thruster: Pulsed Fission Drive [31 km/s Exhaust Velocity; 800 Bombs, 0.50 kT Bomb Yield].
- Altitude Control Thrusters: Hydrazine Propellant.

Sensors:

- Omnidetectors: Detects All Particles in the Standard Model (Except Neutrinos).
- Multispectral Cameras: View of the Ship's Exterior.
- Polaris-H Cameras: Highlights Radiation Zones.
- Terrain Mapping: LiDAR Scanners.
- Subterrain Mapping: TeraHertz Quantum Imaging.
- Magnetosphere Tracking: Sensitive Magnetometers.

Communications [Internal]:

- Deep Space Communications: AN/URN-25E Quantum Radio Dish Antenna - 145MHz
- Encryption: Entangled Radio Pulses.
- Local Space Communications: 4 QE-82 Quantum Radio Dish Antennas.
- Radio Receivers: 5 Fractal Metamaterial Antennas [Best Possible Radio Receiver Surface Area].
- Ship ID: Optoelectronic Coherent Laser Array (IFF Transponder).

Complement:

- 4 SpaceX SN40 Starships.
-- Each - 100 Personnel.
-- Each - 5 kT.
-- Methane NTRs.

Orion Ship Operators: Front Command Module

- 15 Personnel.

---

Texture Sources:

- Ceres Texture Map: squee333

- Ceres Bump and Normal Map: FarGetaNik

SpaceX Starship:

SpaceX Starship - Download Free 3D model by MartianDays (@MartianDays) [a8a0b69] (sketchfab.com)

(The ones I modeled were not as good as this free 3D model. So, like the NASA models, I used it instead.)

---

Trivia:

Artificial Structure on Ceres?

AI saw on Ceres structures of artificial origin • Soul:Ask | Unlock your mind and soul (soulask.com)

Venus, not Titan, is Actually the Best Place for Colonization:

The Surprisingly Strong Case for Colonizing Venus | pundit from another planet

NASA "Speed Hauler":

Project Orion: Secret Mars Mission Powered by Nuclear Bombs - YouTube

efba30ac8f231dbfc3a61aa331abaf81.jpg (700×491) (pinimg.com)

Description
After Tolkien station was set up in 2037 AD, the USNSC sighted the next best candidate for an extraterrestrial military base in 2038 AD. That next candidate was the largest object in the asteroid belt beyond Mars: Ceres. Ceres was strange in that it had glowing spots on its surface. These strange glowing spots would be the main field of study during the development of Occator Station. Since Ceres was extremely cold, ice was not just at the poles or in craters, it was scattered across its surface which made the possibility of multiple self-sustaining astroports a reality. To set up an outpost on Ceres at a reasonable cost, the USNSC would use its NASA's largest speed hauler Orion-class ship: the ITF Columbus. This ship was not assigned to the NATO Space Force since it wasn't for combat purposes. Most of NASA Orion drive spacecraft were 10 to 20 meters long since they were unmanned but the longest type were 300 meters long since they had to transport 52 kT of supplies and four SpaceX starships.

This Orion-class colony ship was the USNSC's greatest space asset in colonizing the solar system since it could get to even the outer planets in Sol in a few months, outperforming even the NSF's 28MN Methane-7 nuclear thermal rockets. Getting to Ceres took the spacecraft only a few weeks. The only worry was EATA's Red Dawn spacecraft which had a powerful enough fusion drive to rival the ITF Columbus's acceleration meaning it could attack or confiscate the ship's SpaceX Starships. However, the USNSC took the risk anyway since it could keep tabs on the Red Dawn's location using drive-detecting satellites and bombard the EATA Space Force with counterintelligence about its location. With the arrival of the ITS Columbus at Ceres, the development of Occator Station was underway. The USNSC sighted Jupiter's moon Callisto as being the next target in the Solar Colonial Initiative, but their chief scientist, Dr. Mason Reed, disagreed. He told them Venus was actually the best planet for an extraterrestrial base which confused the USNSC generals since Venus's surface was blisteringly hot enough to melt lead. Mason explained that they could establish a floating aerostat base in the layer of the clouds that had similar atmospheric pressure and temperature to Earth. Venus's thick atmosphere was also a great radiation shield and thermal insulator at the right altitude (48 km), and its high concentration of CO2 could be broken down with hydrogen to produce rocket fuel. Venus was closer and its gravity was about 90% that of Earth's which meant that the personnel could stay on a floating Venusian base for their whole lives with only an oxygen mask and without facing health issues. The only drawback was raw material could not be harvested from the surface. With that, Venus became the USNSC's next target. The Venus base, Venusian Station, would be dropped in modules that would deploy a torus-shaped aerostat balloon after its parachutes and would be connected together. In the coming years, the USNSC would produce more of these super-freighter ships to maintain its grasp on the solar system.

Ceres's Occator crater was specifically chosen for a Ceres base because back in 2020 AD, a group of neuropsychologist researchers created a pattern-recognition neural network AI that found that Ceres's Occator crater had a glowing spot that contained a structure that looked to be an artificial structure of a triangular shape. This hinted at xeno-activity on Ceres. Once the crew members of the ship were told this, half became eager to study it and the other was worried it would be an outcome like the movie Prometheus where everyone dies. What's on Ceres? Only time will tell.

By 2038 AD, around two years after EATA media outlets made the USNSC public, the USNSC did not have to hide themselves nor their fleet of nuclear spacecraft anymore since the mass weaponization of space under the NATO Space Force and World War 3 made it easier to distract the public from their operations despite massive initial outcry against Washington DC for turning a blind eye to the Pentagon's funneling of trillions into the USNSC program under the public's noses when it could have been used to end homelessness, implement universal healthcare programs, or relief those struggling with student debt. After the outcry died down and space warfare made the public feel like the weaponization of space was becoming more of a necessity, the USNSC's self-sustaining Moon and Mars bases seemed like a strategic advantage and thus the US President decided to keep the program running despite much criticism. When the USNSC was launching something or conducting an operation, they could easily just say it is an operation being conducted under US or NATO Space Force since the USNSC's lack of insignias or flags made it hard to tell if US spacecraft were being launched by them or the USSF/NSF. Little did the public and EATA know that the USNSC was not the bottom of the rabbit hole. Something else was going on. Something that would keep people from sleeping at night.

---

Specifications:

Dimensions:

- Length: 300 m
- Hull Diameter: 25 m

Mass:

- Mass: 10 kT
- Payload Mass: 72 kT
- Full Mass: 82 kT

Thrust:

- Supercruise: 1 g
- Max Manned Acceleration: 4 g's
- Max Unmanned Acceleration: 100 g's

Protection:

- Artificial Magnetosphere:
-- Given that this ship is going to be traveling to the Galilean Moons which have high radiation levels, this shielding method is a must. The shield uses superconducting electromagnets and creates a magnetosphere of about 1 Tesla to deflect ionized radiation such as solar wind and cosmic rays. In each individual Starship, their artificial magnetosphere can produce about 500 Gauss and can use plasma injectors to create a Magnetoshell Aerocapture plasma shield to dampen air resistance.
- Exotic Polymers:
-- In the internal compartments of the ship and the Starships, exotic polymers are used to shield the crew from high-energy ionizing radiation from space.

Avionics:

- Insulated Wiring.
- High-Temperature Superconducting Wires.
- [Weapon Charge] Graphene Ultracapacitors.

Power Plant:

- 10 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor.

Thermal Control:

- 8 Silicon Carbide Waste Heat Radiators: Cools the Crew Compartment and the Reactor.

Thrusters:

- Main Thruster: Pulsed Fission Drive [31 km/s Exhaust Velocity; 800 Bombs, 0.50 kT Bomb Yield].
- Altitude Control Thrusters: Hydrazine Propellant.

Sensors:

- Omnidetectors: Detects All Particles in the Standard Model (Except Neutrinos).
- Multispectral Cameras: View of the Ship's Exterior.
- Polaris-H Cameras: Highlights Radiation Zones.
- Terrain Mapping: LiDAR Scanners.
- Subterrain Mapping: TeraHertz Quantum Imaging.
- Magnetosphere Tracking: Sensitive Magnetometers.

Communications [Internal]:

- Deep Space Communications: AN/URN-25E Quantum Radio Dish Antenna - 145MHz
- Encryption: Entangled Radio Pulses.
- Local Space Communications: 4 QE-82 Quantum Radio Dish Antennas.
- Radio Receivers: 5 Fractal Metamaterial Antennas [Best Possible Radio Receiver Surface Area].
- Ship ID: Optoelectronic Coherent Laser Array (IFF Transponder).

Complement:

- 4 SpaceX SN40 Starships.
-- Each - 100 Personnel.
-- Each - 5 kT.
-- Methane NTRs.

Orion Ship Operators: Front Command Module

- 15 Personnel.

---

Texture Sources:

- Ceres Texture Map: squee333

- Ceres Bump and Normal Map: FarGetaNik

SpaceX Starship:

SpaceX Starship - Download Free 3D model by MartianDays (@MartianDays) [a8a0b69] (sketchfab.com)

(The ones I modeled were not as good as this free 3D model. So, like the NASA models, I used it instead.)

---

Trivia:

Artificial Structure on Ceres?

AI saw on Ceres structures of artificial origin • Soul:Ask | Unlock your mind and soul (soulask.com)

Venus, not Titan, is Actually the Best Place for Colonization:

The Surprisingly Strong Case for Colonizing Venus | pundit from another planet

NASA "Speed Hauler":

Project Orion: Secret Mars Mission Powered by Nuclear Bombs - YouTube

efba30ac8f231dbfc3a61aa331abaf81.jpg (700×491) (pinimg.com)