Supplement 14: Space Stations - Now on Drivethru!

[alex_greene]

This was Mongoose's first foray into space station territory. Second Edition High Guard has refined on this somewhat, and more: it has established that space station design is as important as ship design in the core rules for Second Edition Traveller.

As for the feel of what life is like on a station, that still seems to be the Referees' job.

 

[steve98052]

Naturally, the size of the station does not have any limit - so it is entirely possible for a TL 15 space station to be built entirely circling its homeworld, even encasing it in a cage with the planet visibly spinning away inside it and vast regions to explore - the stationary polar command area, for instance, being a region the size of Wales, and the equatorial spaceport area with berths for literally thousands of ships of all sizes.

Something like this appears in the classic Arthur C Clarke novel The Fountains of Paradise. I don't think that the following includes any real spoilers, but consider yourself cautioned.

A prologue features a story from the ancient history of Sri Lanka, where Clarke lived for many years late in life.

The main story is an adventure set in the near future, during the construction of Earth's space elevator. (The base of the elevator is in Sri Lanka, while is on the equator in the book; in real life it's a bit north of the equator.)

An epilog is set in the distant future, perhaps as far in time from the present as the prologue is in the past. In the epilog the small geosynchronous station between the downport and the counterweight has been expanded to a complete ring some 132000 km in circumference.