November 2015 Post  Farside, Part I

In this post, we look at one of the more important facilities used in the Tales of the Quantum Corps.  It’s the Farside complex, at Korolev Crater on the far side of the Moon.  The complex is run by Frontier Corps, a UNIFORCE agency that is co-equal with Quantum Corps and often conducts joint missions. 

Just to set the stage, Korolev Crater is about 430 kilometers wide and lies near the Moon’s equator on the far side.   The Farside complex is located here, as shown in the image below.

 

Farside is operated by Frontier Corps and has two main tenants: SpaceGuard Center and the Observatory Center. 

SpaceGuard is a defensive network of sensors and detection systems that range across the entire breadth of the solar system, looking for anything out of the ordinary.  They catalogue asteroids and comets that threaten human habitats, stations and settlements, from the Jupiter system to the inner system, including Earth.  They also operate remote sentinel stations in key locations around the solar system, such as the Europa Eye satellite in orbit around Europa, put in place after the Great Rift Zone case to keep an eye on the Europan Keeper.  SpaceGuard’s mission is to know where everybody is at all times and to provide alerts when something changes.

The Observatory Center is also run by Frontier Corps.  It contains radar, optical and infrared telescopes, mass spectrometers, radio telescopes, and a variety of other devices to conduct astronomical research within the solar system and across the galaxy.  The work of the Observatory is predominantly research, although they do have a supporting mission to assist SpaceGuard Center as needed.

The Farside complex itself is home to over fifty personnel, ranging from astronomers and cosmologists, to engineers and technicians and system operators, command staff, even a few robotic bartenders for the habitat spaces.  Most of the complex itself is buried under a few meters of lunar regolith for radiation protection.  The domes have several levels and there are three main elements, called wings: Galileo Wing, Kepler Wing and Newton Wing.  A fourth compound, to be known as DaVinci Wing, is under construction. 

Let’s look at the elements that make up Farside.

1.     Three shuttle and ferry landing pads occupy ground a kilometer or so to the northwest of the main facility.  The telescope arrays are also located to the northeast, connected by wireways and buried access tunnels, to make servicing and maintenance a bit easier.  Many of the scopes and arrays are operated remotely from Newton Wing’s SpaceGuard Center.

2.     Southwest of the main compound, a small nuclear power plant, well shielded, provides multi-megawatt power for night time operations, augmented by a huge array of solar photovoltaic panels for daytime power.  Again, there are buried wireways, power cables and access tunnels.

3.     Galileo Wing contains offices for UNISPACE and Frontier Corps command staff.  There is also a protected and isolated section for ANAD operations, including a containment vault, a foundry for assembling parts and items needed by the base and replicator banks to test out molecular assembly and disassembly ideas and concepts.  Note the crawler garage and airlocks; all wings have this.  Crawlers are pressurized surface mobility vehicles used by personnel to shuttle around the complex above ground and to conduct forays further afield as needed, for science, materials (mainly dirt) and other needed tasks.

4.     Newton Wing contains SpaceGuard Center itself, including mission operations and supporting rooms.  The mission of SpaceGuard is critical so there are plenty of backups and redundant systems for everything.  About half the instruments located in the array fields are operated by SpaceGuard Center. 

5.     Kepler Wing is where most of the base personnel live and hang out when not on duty.  This wing contains the berthing spaces, the wardroom and mess facilities (café and lounge) and the canteen, which is currently done up to resemble a South Seas beachside cantina.  The Locals call is ‘Fiji Island Lagoon’ and it’s said that the robo-bartenders can mix up anything, including a mean daiquiri.  All personnel have individual rooms, though calling them rooms might be a stretch.  Perhaps ‘closet’ would be better. Farside operates on an Earthside duty schedule, which means three shifts over every 24 hours. 

6.     DaVinci Wing is the newest wing and, when finished, will house more hab spaces, staff facilities and labs for the Observatory crew.

 

This completes our quick tour of Farside. I'll put the layout diagram of Farside in a following post. The next post in early December will cover another key facility that plays a big role in the stories of the Tales of the Quantum Corps.  This is the Quartier-General, in Paris.  The Q-G is UNIFORCE headquarters. 

 

See you in December.