The Wanderer
Summary
The Wanderer is a massive colony vessel produced by the Keeth to carry them out of their home system. It lacks faster than light drive systems, but it bears incredibly advanced terraforming and biomedical technologies.
Structure of the Wanderer
Exterior
The exterior of the Wanderer is a large moon that has been hollowed out and fitted with heavy engine systems. The shell proved shielding from radiation and from impacts with other objects while in flight. The shell varies from 25-50 miles thick and is mostly silicates and water ice. The diameter of the moon is approximately 800 miles.
Propulsion
Propulsion conists of an array of six massive rear engines, a smaller matching forward array for braking, and evenly spaced thruster engines the size of small cities to steer. The Wanderer does not possess faster than light capabilities, and none of its systems produce gravity fields or equivalent means of gravity like acceleration.
Habitat module
Drums
- Two counter-rotating drums with a 50 mile radius, 500 miles long. Every 50 miles is a stationary divider / stabilizer ten miles thick containing transit hubs and means to use the ship's spine for movement between sections. Segmentation also helps prevent total failure of atmosphere in the whole vessel and also causes local variation of environments and people.
Each drum contains 5 layers at 10 mile intervals. The drums' period of 9 minutes produces the following acceleration forces
| Radius | Acceleration | xg |
|---|---|---|
| (miles) | (m/s/s) | (rel to Earth) |
| 50 | 10.9 | 1.11 |
| 40 | 8.7 | 0.88 |
| 30 | 6.5 | 0.66 |
| 20 | 4.4 | 0.45 |
| 10 | 2.1 | 0.21 |
The outer cirumfrence of the drum is 314 miles meaning the outer shell moves at nearly 2100 mph. Because of this high linear speed, the interior of the moon is kept under near vacuum to prevent wind resistance and weathering on the drums. This is also why all transit between sectors MUST proceed through the centers of the drums and throughg the structural baffles that connect them to the spine. The ends of the drums are attached to the massive engines and stabalizers that keep the drums moving steadily. The drums move counter to each other to negate angular momentum effects on the ship as a whole.
Environmental Properties of Drum Layers
The Keeth are primarily a tropical species with some tolerance for temperate forests. The outer two rings of the drums are completely occupied with tropical forests and temperate forests and some of their associated ecosystems. The Wanderer carries a sufficiently complex biome to support all life in the ship including housing, food, and atmosphere recycling. Because mahkeeth and caerkeeth are small and arboreal, they dominate the higher gravity in the 40 and 50 mile rings. Vahrekeeth tend to favor the 30 and 40 mile rings, but they were created on a world with gravity corresponding to the 50 mile ring, so they are not deterred there. These three rings, 30-50 mile range, are the primary living spaces for the crew. Technical systems and support systems are build into the walls of each ring including lighting and heating to sustain the habitats.
The 20 mile ring has the most heavy support system including power generation. It was places at this ring where the reduced gravity would allow crews to better work on it. It also houses more industrial and laboratory workplaces because they are nearer to power and equipment they require.
The 10 mile ring is affectionately called the Aerie because it is heavily populated by Caerkeeth. At the core of this ring is the master tram system that carries passengers along the length of the drum. It is fed by sector baffle trams that move in and our from the central fore to the out rim. This, like any of the gravity dead zones, is a dangerous place for those without wings, and the wrong circumstances could leave mahkeeth or vahrkeeth trapped in the air and unable to land. Caerkeeth were made for just this region, and they have found places in nearly all other domains when small details are important. There are always caerkeeth on call in the Aerie to respond to any emergency.
Transportation Lines
Spine
The Spine is the central corridor of the habitat module, and it is likened to a spine and ribs. The spine itself is almost entirely support systems with transportation and temporary living quarters space along it's length. The spine is the most efficient means to get between the drums or out to any of the external sectors of the Wanderer including sites of mining on the moon's inner surface.
- Ribs
- The battles that attach to the drums at 50 mile intervals are known as ribs. They stabilize the drums and carry equipment to help keep the drum velocity constant. The drum end of the ribs also contain meeting places and housing for those that are traveling. Ribs have a upper and lower arch. The upper arch is easily visible from above and connects to the spine main corridor. The lower arch contacts the underside of the spine and contains several inter-drum trams.
- Backbone
- The backbone is home to the main reactors and computer systems that make the Wanderer function. While the engines do provide power to the habitat module, the backbone reactors and processors as sufficient to keep the habitat module operational even if all engines failed. The backbone is also home to a section near its center that is referred to as The Cradle along its upper section as well as another nearby region on the underside of the backbone known as The Bridge
- The Bridge
- One might think that the Bridge is where the Wanderer is controlled. However the Wanderer's Bridge has almost nothing to do with flight control and instead refers to the physical definition of a bridge as something that links two other things. The Bridge is the master transit node that connects to every rib and multiple points along the spine. It is the scientific, administrative, and sometimes social heart of the Wanderer. Under normal operations there may be over hundred thousand Keeth present. One can imagine the ship as a nation and the Bridge is its capitol.
- The bridge has rudimentary magnetic walkways to allow for more natural walking for Vahrkeeth and Mahkeeth while Caerkeeth simply fly. There is no gravity acceleration in the Spine or the Bridge.
- The Cradle
- If one examines the wiring of the computers in the Wanderer, patterns emerge. The spine carries the trunk lines to the ribs, and at every rib there is a cluster before the smaller lines pass down the ribs and into the drums. If you take away the ship's structure, it becomes very difficult to tell the ship's wiring apart from a anatomical diagram of a nervous system. The place in the spine where all the lines meet is a massive processing system called the Cradle. The names derives from the fast that this place controls and takes care of all life on the Wanderer, so it is, in a way, the cradle in which the child, the Wanderer, rests. Mother, the master computer, resides in the cradle and controls all systems needed to sustain the Wanderer as well as taking care of nearly every single personal request the Keeth make of the computer. Mother provides. Mother protects. Mother cares for you all, and in her you can place faith. Such is the way Mother is seen.
Travel within a Drum
- Travel within a biome
- Flight, trams, and shuttles are all a normal part of travel in a biome, Most sectors of a biome are less than twenty miles from any point that one would want to travel to, so small lifts, flight, or even walking is common for all species. Sometimes travel comes to a baffle plate that are common in the outermost ring, and these require the use of regulated doorways.
- Transport between layers
- The interior of the drum has many shafts connecting the core to the outer drum and all points between. These occur on their own as well as part of internal baffles that are used for environmental regulation. High speed lifts can generally carry travelers to any ring in less than 30 minutes, and comfortable seating, snacks, and personal entertainment are common. Keeth, however, tend to use these times to socialize and meet others that might not be part of their daily routine.
- Transport Between Segments of the Same Drum
- Because of the support baffles, there is no direct means to travel along the outer rings of the drums to other segments. Transport is either by shuttle or, more commonly, by taking the core tram. The core tram is located at the center of each drum and is available via almost any of the radial elevators. This tram moves at roughly 200 mph when at full speed for the express meaning getting from one end to the other takes about the time one might expect a cross country flight at 2-4 hours depending on route. Like the lifts, these trains tend to be rich with things to do and companions to speak with, so transit is rarely seen as a hassle and more like a break time.
- Travel Between Drums
- Because of their separation and counter-rotation, there is link along the length of the drums to each other that is not part of the spine. The fastest link is the inter-drum express that caps the cores of each drum. The second means is to travel to one of the stabilizer junctions that occur ever fifty miles and use this to cross the spine to the opposite drum.
Shuttle Flights
Shuttle exist and are rare to use for transit. Flights leave the drum exterior, but matching speed to land on the other rum difficult, so flights generally drop passengers off at ribs or alone the spine. The most useful thing shuttles can do is move passengers from the habitat modules to the engines or mining facilities.
The Nursery
Located in the Spine near the Cradle is the Nursery. The nursery is an incredibly advanced but generally dormant biomedical research facility. It is the only place where the Xolos, a spherical incubation system, can be found. An activated Xolos can made any kind of Keeth, and it was used to create the first Vahrkeeth and Caerkeeth. It is also what was used to download Mother into an organic body. The data capacity of a Xolos sphere is baffling, but it is usually used just for hard coding the molecular details of a new life including something that may not exist yet.