Tour Del Sol - Day 2
22 Jan 2016Tuts
*** Sol System, Abraham Lincoln, StarDate 1.20.3302 ***In a sentence: Took a driving tour of Ehrlich City on Mercury, then a Venus flyby, and finally reached Earth orbit.
As dropped down from glide on my final approach vector, I got my first close look at Ehrlich City, which is the largest of three settlements on the surface of Mercury:
As a starship commander I consider myself to be pretty cosmopolitan - and yet I found myself impressed by the sheer size of Ehrlich City. Up until now I've never seen a groundside starport this large; it's capable of accomodating every ship below capital class (which could never land anyway), and there are nearly as many berths as on most modern orbitals. And yet it is not a haphazard collection of buildings, but rather a singular, organized circular structure. Docking pads are arranged around the perimeter in a ring. Here's a view from above (for scale, I think that's a Federal Dropship in the bottom right corner!):
My view from the landing pad:
After selling off my gold on the commodities market, I decided to hit the town. Maybe find a fresh meal & a decent watering hole. I decide the best way to tour the city would be on the ground, so I pop into the SRV and head to the nearest entrance used by the local prospectors:
I think I must've landed after the municipal curfew or something. The streets were dark & deserted, and although I spent almost an hour driving around and taking it all in (and maybe snooping in some back areas a little bit), I didn't find the sort of establishment I was hoping for. Reluctantly, I headed back to my own bunk for some shuteye, with nothing to show for my drive but some nice pictures and some crappy vending machine food.
Bright & early, I boosted out of Mercury's gravity well and headed for Venus. There's one minor outpost in orbit but I didn't bother to stop. I just slowed down for a closer look at Venus. Of course you can't see much of anything past the soupy, dingy yellow, lethal atmosphere. Yet, as I reached perigee, the sun's light began to refract and spread through the upper atmosphere, creating a subtle prismatic effect. I took a moment to wonder if anyone would ever go to the trouble of terraforming Earth's sister world :
Just a couple of quick snapshots I took as I neared earth in supercruise, and then dropped out above Abraham Lincoln, one of several stations occupying the free spaces of the earth-moon binary. I resolved to have a better look at Earth and the Moon tomorrow.
