The Task requires six Earth centuries to design,
construct, equip, test, deploy and activate. The
millennia of delay in initiating the Task imposes
inescapable hardships on the Solar Community.
Accordingly, when justified as essential to the
Objective, solar governments divert work forces,
systems, and material resources from throughout
their jurisdiction to the Task. The consequences
of these diversions are expected to significantly
curtail construction, activities, lifestyles
of Earth and space colony populations, the
distribution of the solar system's residual
resources and, possibly, the independence of
governments, organizations, and individuals
throughout the solar realm.
Critical to the program's success is timing the
Extractor's launch. Piggy-backed to Pluto during
construction, the Extractor exploits the planet's
orbital momentum for launch. The window is
precise and short-lived along Pluto's outbound orbit;
there will be only one launch opportunity for the
Extractor. Disengaged from Pluto, the Extractor
fleet will accelerate along its course to optimum
velocity through integrated thrust of multiple
thermonuclear burst-propulsion systems or other,
more advanced propulsion systems, that are or
become available for the Task.
##
The Interplanetary Era's second millennium was
tumultuous. The harsh austerity imposed by the
increased deficits in metals, minerals and other
industrial materials and their substitutes created
one set of problems; human cloning augmented with
genetic engineering and their societal and cultural
effects, especially beyond the Asteroids, created
others. Human survival in scores of widely
scattered and unaffiliated space colonies,
loosely called "tank towns," encouraged scientific
and social experiments that altered traditional
cultures as well as human physiological and
psychological characteristics.
Cumulative genetic and accelerated evolutionary
alterations to the human body along with the
effects of unique, often hostile, environments
plus sheer distance from the familiar transformed
humans-in-space into something else. The unifying
forces that had survived the Great Migration
withered. In time, the once shared interests of
peoples, and allegiances to a home planet, sundered.
Varied and increased rates of change opened
doors to pretenders among a colony's populace.
Opportunists promoted a multitude of causes,
usually self-serving. Anticipating advantages to
themselves, they combined forces and became
influential advocates for disengagement from
political, cultural and judicial dominance by the
totally foreign open sky government of Earth,
billions of kilometers distant.
Disengagement, the opportunists agitated, was
long overdue; Earth inhabitants would never really
understand what life in deep space was about.
The crisis came in the middle centuries.
Bureaucrats representing the central government
on Earth were isolated from the affairs of the
colonies they administered. The indigenous populace
ignored their authority, their credentials were
challenged, and they were invited to return to
their home planet -- with no options.
The central government on Earth, weakened by
shortages and distracted by agitators at home
and in space, was neither vigilant nor prepared.
Early in the second millennium of the
Interplanetary Era, several colonies in the Outer
Region declared their independence of the original
United Planetary System and of each other. Other
colonies and outposts joined and within a decade,
all had proclaimed themselves as newly constituted
nation-states. Each reserved exclusive rights to
negotiate with other nation-states of the Region.
New agreements were implemented on matters
of common interest, such as credits, industry, a
judicial system, trade and commerce, science and
technology, space traffic control, education and
cultural exchange, and creation and management
of infrastructure and management of life-support
resources within their territories and jurisdictions.
The Outer Region's proclamations panicked the
central government.
On the one hand, Earth ethicists argued, were the
rights of the inhabitants of the space colonies. As
members of distant societies they had modified
their bodies, their environment and their cultures,
therefore, they had a right to seek their own
destiny unfettered by well-intentioned, but
obviously impotent laws that originated on Earth.
The advocates of this philosophy emphasized
the Outer Region's right to their own physical,
technological and cultural development. As unique
civilizations, evolving at an unprecedented rapid
pace, they were already radically different from
the humankind that had remained on distant Earth.
On the other hand, claimed others, the system-wide
scarcity of natural sources vital to the survival
of the species was a shared crisis. The crisis
could be solved, if at all, only through the most
concerted application of humankind's intellectual
and collective genius. In one context, they were
indeed unique civilizations: robust, sophisticated
and divergent, nevertheless, instinctively taking
nourishment from a common fealty to humankind's
ultimate destiny among the stars. Humankind
would be far stronger and effective together,
they argued, than it would be, divided within a
common species.
The debate raged across the System. The separatists
won.
Earth's General Assembly acceded to the demands
for self-determination. The new status of the outer
and inner regions was confirmed in The Treaties on
the Separation of Jurisdictions for the Planets and
Satellites of the Inner Region and the Independent
Nations of the Outer Region.
The outer periphery of the Asteroid Belt became the
boundary. The United Planetary System was dissolved
and reconstituted as the United Inner Planetary
System (UIPS). The natural and artificial colonies
that orbited the planets and satellites of the
Outer Region, or the central sun, retained their
original identities (Ganymede, Titan, Callisto,
etc.), and Pluto added "Planet" to its name to
distinguish itself from planetary satellites. The
former colonies beyond the Belt formed a loose
federation: Independent Nations of the Outer Region
(INOR).
The United Inner Planetary System insisted that
Planet Pluto and its contiguous space remain within
the UIPS Slingshot Special Zone of Operations until
the Extractor and the Collector were both safely
away from Pluto's jurisdiction, as judged by the
UIPS. The Plutonian government refused. The other
INOR nations, immersed in their own problems,
were indifferent. The issue was left to the UIPS
and Planet Pluto to resolve.
The UIPS continued, without prior consultation with
INOR and Planet Pluto, to construct and operate
Slingshot logistics sites and facilities on Pluto's
surface, in contiguous space, and within and along
the Planet Pluto orbit. The UIPS, interpreting
traditions and treaties that had evolved from
Earth's ancient Laws of the Seas and Space,
exercised and defended free and unencumbered
travel and passage by its citizens and vessels in
deep space and throughout the INOR jurisdictions.
The UIPS took steps to ensure the security of
Slingshot construction and logistics support sites
and space-ways.
##
The Slingshot Advance Cadre arrived in the
Neptune-Pluto orbit-crossing sectors toward the end
of the Interplanetary Era, before the breakup of the
old United Planetary System. Colonizing Pluto and
constructing space kits that would be transformed
into surface habitat and supply depots began
centuries earlier when Planet Pluto was barely past
aphelion but within economical range of deep space
transports. The cadre's vessels carried and towed
communications gear, specialized construction rigs,
platforms and infrastructure kits which had been
fabricated or assembled in the industrial tank
towns above Luna, Venus and Mars, and by
cooperating governments of satellites in the
outer region.
The Cadre's primary mission was to establish a
base of operations on Pluto. The program called
for the planet to support a colony of fifty thousand
specialists and construction workers -- and their
families -- for the assembly, construction and
testing phases, plus ten thousand transients and
temporary residents. The latter would comprise
'rest and relaxation' visitors, liaison and special
missions staff from a nearby logistics depot and
the construction sites, and agricultural and food
processing workers from Planet Pluto's moon
Charon. Also expected were cargo handlers and ship's
personnel from transports entering and departing
Pluto from-and-to points throughout the system.
About eighty percent of Pluto's permanent adult
population would work on the two terminals.
The specialized professions for the initial phase
ranged from scientists and engineers to artisans,
skilled and semi-skilled workers in all of the
disciplines and industrial skills required to
construct and operate a complex station in space
and service and maintain a permanent habitat and
population on Pluto's surface.
Children would be born on Pluto, natural or cloned.
They, as well as the general population, would
be cared for and supported by a host of
administrative, health care, educational,
recreational, life support and community services.
The Cadre's mission was in phases. The first
task of the initial phase was to land on Pluto's
surface, seek out stable surfaces or create them
by fusing subsurface strata to sufficient depth
for support of massive structures.
Gravity enhancement surface panels and their
energy sources would be installed wherever enclosed
communities or special purpose structures were to
be constructed. A detachment of the Cadre would
land on Charon, Planet Pluto's moonlet, and fuse
and seal sections of the moonlet's surface and
subsurface same as on Pluto.
On the solidified, stabilized surfaces of Pluto and
Charon the Cadre would erect a tank town dome. The
dome would have a ten-kilometer radius on Planet
Pluto and a one-kilometer radius on Charon.
Construction would proceed concurrently on surface
and subsurface utility and life support facilities
essential to human habitation. When enclosed areas
were shirtsleeve ready for occupancy, the Cadre
would erect essential life support, residential and
recreational facilities. These would be followed by
technical, communications and transport networks
for Slingshot scientists, industrial technicians,
and staff, followed by enclosed living areas for
the remainder of the general populace that would
train and do the work during the subsequent phases.
The tanktown on Planet Pluto would be named
Coldfield; its counterpart on Charon would be
Lamplight.
An On-site Project Management Team (OPMT) directed
the Advance Cadre. The OPMT formed the nucleus of
upper level managers, scientists and engineers, and
other experts charged with organizing and guiding
the functional task groups. The functional staffs
would bring into being the on-site technical and
administrative support facilities, install and
operate its equipment, and govern the communities
within which the populace worked and resided.
The OPMT was organized into three groups: Group
One: Planet Pluto; Group Two: Charon, and Group
Three: Logistics Depot. Each Group had its mission: