Classic Space station SHIP v2 - deep space weapons platform Upsilon
This was Classic Space forces secret weapon against any uprisings of any alien, robot, or human race in the Galactic Space Congress. I say WAS because it's (non-lethal) ion-super laser was never fired due to a planted Blacktron bomb sending the laser and it's final adjustments crew hurtling through hyperspace toward a black-hole in early 1988 during the early hours of the attempted Blacktron coup. The station was never recovered and almost all of the crew was presumed killed by the black hole except for Benny, who fell off the station before it reached full light speed.
(He survived a day floating out of conciseness in orbit off Jupiter II before being found by retreating Congressional forces. Benny still wears the broken helmet and smudged suit from that day as a reminder of the eternal sacrifice of his fellow two crew members that were lost.)
Anyway, the smaller ship that is shown docked with the station is for the engineering / maintenance crews to keep an eye on the satellite's systems until final boot-up was preformed. Their were two such linkup stations on the station, opposite each other on the middle ring segment of the central core. The satellite featured both a dual fusion reactor system and solar panels in twelve moving segments as a backup in case of emergency. This was to keep the communication / trajectory equipment's backup batteries charged for several hundred-thousand years.... you never know how long this station would have been needed!
Classic Space station SHIP v2 - deep space weapons platform Upsilon
This was Classic Space forces secret weapon against any uprisings of any alien, robot, or human race in the Galactic Space Congress. I say WAS because it's (non-lethal) ion-super laser was never fired due to a planted Blacktron bomb sending the laser and it's final adjustments crew hurtling through hyperspace toward a black-hole in early 1988 during the early hours of the attempted Blacktron coup. The station was never recovered and almost all of the crew was presumed killed by the black hole except for Benny, who fell off the station before it reached full light speed.
(He survived a day floating out of conciseness in orbit off Jupiter II before being found by retreating Congressional forces. Benny still wears the broken helmet and smudged suit from that day as a reminder of the eternal sacrifice of his fellow two crew members that were lost.)
Anyway, the smaller ship that is shown docked with the station is for the engineering / maintenance crews to keep an eye on the satellite's systems until final boot-up was preformed. Their were two such linkup stations on the station, opposite each other on the middle ring segment of the central core. The satellite featured both a dual fusion reactor system and solar panels in twelve moving segments as a backup in case of emergency. This was to keep the communication / trajectory equipment's backup batteries charged for several hundred-thousand years.... you never know how long this station would have been needed!