Tycho Colony (WW3 Era)

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Tycho Colony
British Overseas Territory
Official Name Tycho Colony
Primary Language English
Motto TBD
Area 22,700 Square Kilometers
Politics
Owner United Kingdom
Governing Body Governor and Council of Ministers
Government Type Dependency under a Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State Queen Elizabeth II
Head of Government Governor Natalie Bass
History
Established 1984 (construction began in 1980)
Demographics
Population 22,485

The Tycho Colony is the United Kingdom's primary facility on Luna. Located in the southern hemisphere of Luna's near side, it always has line of sight to Earth.


History

Tycho Colony was originally founded as a Helium-3 extraction facility for the British Commonwealth.

Layout

Old Colony

When someone refers to the 'Old Colony' what they are actually referring to is the first round of subterranean habitats built into Tycho Crater's central mountain peak. Historically, this is actually the second colony, as the first was the original exploration base that remains near the spaceport. The Old Colony consists of a 6-level underground facility, with 2 levels above ground level and 3 below ground.

Level 2

All of level 2 is very upscale, with plenty of screens on the walls displaying exterior views of the colony area, real plants, and flowing water installations.

  • Quadrant Zero - Located at the center of Level 2, Quadrant Zero contains the colony's government leadership offices and the governor's residence.
  • Quadrant A - Quadrant A contains consulates of other governments, the management offices for the Colony-owned resourcing operations, and more resident-focused government offices.
  • Quadrant B - Quadrant B contains upscale housing. Unlike all other areas of the colony, all housing in Sector B is fully-equipped with cooking facilities. Average rent here is well over 10,000 GBP per month, while the cost of buying an apartment outright is currently over 2 million GBP and rising every year due to the inability to add new residences.
  • Quadrant C - Quadrant C contains high-class eateries, upscale shops, and financial services catering to the wealth bracket that can live in Level 2.
  • Quadrant D - Quadrant D contains the Four Seasons Tycho resort and Lunar Rosewood luxury hotel. Costs for suites at these hotels start at 30,000 GBP per night.

Level 1

Level 1 is catered to the upper-middle-class, with flowing water installations, exterior view screens, and everything that corporate management would need.

  • Quadrant A - Quadrant A contains corporate offices, eateries, and remote work facilities. Corporations with offices in this quadrant include Solar Dynamics, Yang Enterprises, and Yang Enterprises Astroconstruction.
  • Quadrant B - Quadrant B contains upper-middle-class housing, services catering to the residents of those apartments, and eateries for the residents.
  • Quadrant C - Quadrant C is entirely corporate offices. Corporations with offices here include Metapharma, Mondessa Ltd, and Pizzuto Industries.
  • Quadrant D - Quadrant D is an entertainment district, containing theaters, movie theaters, a casino, and several multipurpose sports arenas.

Ground Level

The Ground Level of the Colony is where industrial activities take place. MetaPharma and Mondessa have extensive facilities here and are the two largest occupants of this level. Solar Dynamics has a production facility here, used for rapid prototyping of equipment to be tested out at their R&D Facility on the crater rim. Access to the ground floor from the exterior is accomplished via 4 vehicle airlocks, large enough to accommodate even the largest lunar crawler. In addition to these, there are smaller personnel airlocks, and a dedicated surface-level railway to the spaceport facilities.

Sublevel 1

More industrial facilities, blue collar work, aquaponics facility, food court

Sublevel 2

'Blue collar housing'

Sublevel 3

By far the most expansive level, sublevel 3 is dedicated entirely to maintenance facilities, piping, power lines, and all the behind the scenes things that keep everything above it functioning. It is a tangled maze of crawlspaces, pipes, treatment vats, transformers, and a nightmarish array of more than 30 years of replaced-in-place-and-bypassed hardware. Consequently, Sublevel 3 is also home to the Colony's criminal underground, with illegal operations scattered all over the Escheresque floor.

Colony Expansion

The Colony Expansion began life as a landing facility for the cancelled Iron Arrow super-heavy lift rockets. Acres upon acres of regolith were excavated away and replaced with tens of meters thick lunarcrete slabs sitting atop pilings driven deep into the regolith. All of this was situated a sizable distance away from the central colony for safety purposes. Control facilities were located underground, as were transportation tunnels with rail links to the colony. However, with the cancellation of the Iron Arrow, the construction workers were essentially left stranded at the colony, which was having a housing crisis. Sensing an opportunity, Zhong Yang, an investment banker from Hong Kong, stepped in to form a new construction company with the intent of converting the landing pads into a new housing complex. The tunneling hardware used to construct the original colony was rebuilt, and a grid layout of underground housing blocks was carved out in and underneath the lunarcrete slabs. In the early 2000s, surface domes began to be constructed for recreational and agricultural use. The Colony Expansion has turned into the new housing area of the colony, with continual plans to add additional domes and deeper layers of residences.

At present there are currently 6 surface domes, and a 5-layer-deep grid of housing tunnels. Scattered throughout the housing tunnels are resident services, food courts, and entertainment facilities.

Exterior Facilities

The exterior facilities of the Colony are those that are at the surface level and separate from the Old Colony and the Colony Expansion. These are primarily greenhouses for food production, solar power facilities, communications arrays, and the spaceport. Pizzuto Industries has a construction facility here, supplying 'handcrafted' (as much of a claim as that can be) spacecraft for the rich and powerful.

Colonial Enclaves

The Colonial Enclaves are several small, privately-owned facilities within the Tycho Colony's jurisdiction that are technically separate from the colony infrastructure.

Governance

Political System

Governor: Her Excellency Dame Natalie Bass, appointed representative of the British Crown. De-facto head of state for the colony. Appointed 2010.

Cabinet:

Defence

There is a small contingent of the British Army stationed at the colony. The Royal Air Force maintains a small contingent of patrol spacecraft as well. There is a single recruiting office, however it is not common for residents of the colony to sign up for military service proper. It is more common for residents of the colony to serve in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force or the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve - fully 40% of the colony population have been affiliated with one of these two organizations at one point in time.

While the Wolf Brigade is not responsible for the defence of the colony proper, several of the colonial enclaves have contracts with them for security.

Population

Demographics

The first wave of immigration happened during colony construction itself, when the British Government began an experimental effort of offering deportation (and effectively temporary exile) to 'politically disruptive elements' during the Troubles. As part of plea bargains, these people were offered a choice between prison and construction labor on the moon (with training included). Many people who violated minor laws during the Troubles were subjected to this choice as well, leading to a sizable amount of non-criminal-elements winding up on the Colony as well. When construction was finished, a sizable amount of these workers chose to stay behind when it was found that they would have been charged for the return trip.

The second wave of immigration occurred in the early 1990s when the British Government gave amnesty to any of the inhabitants from the soon-to-demolished Kowloon Walled City that signed up to travel to the Colony to act as construction workers for the new heavy lift landing facilities. These heavy lift rockets were supposed to take these supposedly-temporary workers home after the pad was completed, but the Iron Arrow super-heavy lift rocket (also known as the Thatcher's Thousand-Ton Travesty for the fact that it was supposed to launch 1000 tons to the moon) was cancelled in the mid-1990s. Left with no practical way to get home and a useless super-heavy landing complex, the workers began to stage an occupation of the facility and issued a list of demands, which started with better housing. They were negotiated out of most of their demands (such as free rides back to Earth), but the demand for better housing was met with a counter-offer - "Okay, but you have to build it yourself." The workers were going to reject this demand when a financier from Hong Kong sensed an opportunity. Zhong Yang, a Chinese expat living in Hong Kong, stepped in to negotiate on behalf of the workers, and in the process laid the groundwork for what would become Yang Enterprises's core business, Yang Enterprises Astroconstruction.

Religion

While the Luna Colony is technically a part of the Diocese of Space, the majority of the residents of the colony are not members of the Anglican faith. As a melting pot of three distinct cultures (British, Irish, and Chinese) the colony is highly diverse in its religious practices.

Worship Facilities

  • Cathedral of Holy Trinity (Anglican)
  • Hindu Temple Society of Tycho
  • Islamic Center of Tycho
  • Temple Beth Israel
  • Tin Hau Temple (Taoism)
  • Tycho Gurdwara
  • Tycho Meditation Centre (Buddhism)

Languages

English is the primary and official language of the colony. There are sizable populations in the colony speaking Irish and Hong Kong Cantonese as well.

Education

While there exist local schools for K-12 education, post-secondary and graduate education is done via teleeducation. There exist local trade schools for locally-relevant professions, and there are apprenticeship programs as well.

Culture

Cuisine

The abundance of locally-grown produce sourced from the colony's extensive (and ever-expanding) greenhouses and agricultural domes and has led to a diverse and innovative food culture. Combined with the cultural melting pot nature of the colony, the restaurants at Tycho are renowned for being some of the highest-quality and most innovative on Luna - and this includes both high-class and and everyday-fare eateries. Most residents do not have fully-equipped kitchens in their residences, as they are high-power-draw appliances so they cost a premium to own and operate - most people just have refrigerators, low-power microwaves (usually with a low-power convection oven mode), and tea kettles. Consequently, there is a diverse array of food-court style eateries in the living areas of the colony, many of them subsidized by the colony government. Every food court is guaranteed to have at least one place serving British pub fare, another serving Irish pub fare, and a Cantonese restaurant. Other cuisines from across the British Commonwealth are also common.

Furthermore, there are several breweries in operation at the colony, however due to the low gravity and lower-than-earth-normal atmospheric pressure the beverages that are produced locally are made with a lower carbonation threshold in order to keep things from getting too messy. Additionally, there is one distillery in operation, and a winery is due to produce its first bottle of wine in 2016 after planting grapes in 2013.

Sports

Notable People

The Right Honorable, The Viscount of Luna Darian Goodwin Watson Sanderson, Viscount Sanderson of Luna. Life Peer in the House of Lords.

Economy

Exports

The primary export of the colony is Helium-3. Additional exports include prefabricated buildings, pharmaceuticals, produce, semiconductors, spacecraft, and space station modules.

Resourcing Operations

The Tycho Colony was originally founded for the purposes of Helium-3 extraction, and that remains its primary business. Lunar regolith is rich (proverbially speaking) in helium-3 reactor fuel, and it is the primary export of the Colony, accounting for fully 60% of the colony's resource output. The regolith is also rich in oxygen, however most of the oxygen that is produced is consumed locally or set aside for emergency use - there is little commercial value in selling the oxygen since it is so prevalent and is effectively a waste byproduct of helium-3 extraction.

Other elements extracted in the colony's regolith refineries include aluminum, calcium, cobalt, iron, nickel, silicon, thorium, titanium, uranium. Rare-earth element extraction is not a primary goal, however rare-earths are produced from regolith in relatively small amounts. Furthermore there remains sizable production capacity for Lunarcrete from the colony construction days, however due to the fact that it is uneconomical to produce it for export this production capacity remains idle unless needed.

Resourcing operations consist of the colony-run resourcing operation (~40% of output) and several private corporations (Mondessa Ltd (25%), BHP-Glencore (15%), Nova Lunar (10%), Rio Tinto (5%), and Solar Dynamics (5%)).

Telecommunications

  • Intra-Colony - The entire Colony is wired up for data links, with telecommunications being paid for as part of ones' residence taxes. Higher tiers of service are available for purchase, offering additional programming channels, priority access to bandwidth, and dedicated secured data links for private and business use. Wireless is included, and the colony's wireless coverage covers the entire area of the colony both inside and out (effectively the entire Tycho crater). Enclaves and exterior buildings are connected via line of sight V-band links for further locations, and dedicated subterranean data lines for closer ones. Data lines can be run to any non-hardwired location for a cost.
  • Inter-Colony - There are dedicated Ka links to the nearest colonies, done via relay towers along the route. These links route to the American Fra Mauro Colony, Chinese Tsiolkovskiy Crater Research Institution, and Russian Shackelton Crater Resource Operation.
  • Orbital and Earth - Communications to orbital assets are done via an array of X, S, and Ku band antennas capable of operating on all current frequencies in use. Colony to Earth communications use a separate antenna array located on the crater rim and connected via subterranean fiber lines. These antennas are kept away from living areas due to the high power of the transmissions, and are considered a danger zone. Additionally there are several optical data laser links available for use for direct secure connections, however access to these is offered at a premium charge by the colony government as these are primarily intended for government communications.
  • Interplanetary - Communications to the United Martian Colonies are provided via MarsLink, operating UHF and X band links via their orbital relay satellite constellation and Lagrange relay stations.

Transportation

Intra-colony transportation happens via elevators and rail links. The Old Colony is linked to the Colony Expansion via subterranean rail links. Exterior facilities are connected via subterranean rail links and walking tunnels. The colony has rovers available for rent to reach destinations within the colony territory - they are programmed to not be able to leave the territory without an override code. For longer duration trips, there are private rental corporations offering rovers outfitted for further journeys, as well as low-altitude spacecraft.

Orbital lift vehicle transfers to Gagarin Station happen multiple times per day via British Spaceways, as well as private charters. The Colony spaceport is capable of handling any vehicle currently in service, though only two super-heavy pads remain after the rest were converted into subterranean housing.

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