Because of this, also, it's unlikely that it would occur at the end of the war. The work there would take a lot of time and resources that presumably would be in rather short supply toward the end of the war, which seemed to be ferocious indeed. I am assuming that Forte and his Lucrehulk (and certainly two Lucrehulks), in the last months of the war would be on some assignment that'd be more important than an expedition to Companion Besh. I can see this happening earlier in the war, though, when the Confederacy had the luxury of being more industrious. I mean, even so, it's a bit unlikely the Confederacy would do this kind of exploration, but if it's punishment for Forte's indiscretions with respect to slavery, as we discussed in Messenger, then it's believable enough for me. The timing needs to change, though.

The ring, however, is not possible. Imagine picking up the World Trade Center and dropping it from any height (even a couple feet). It would collapse. Then bear in mind the Lucrehulk ring is many, many times larger than the World Trade Center and is constructed in zero gravity, intended to operate in zero gravity conditions. Worse, Jamie is right that something the size of the Lucrehulk ring (or, more likely, the three large pieces the ring would probably break up into) would cause apocalyptic destruction to the planet. Any one of these three pieces would hit the planet with the force of a thermonuclear explosion the magnitude of which is beyond the yield of any human weapon on Earth. In order to orbit the planet in the first place, the ring would already need to be traveling at many kilometers per second, and it would be accelerated tremendously on its way down, thus producing a massive crater and ejecting many times its own mass in dirt and rock into the atmosphere. As you'll see from that film, the landing site is no longer desirable in this scenario. Also, the ring and, if it is present, the core ship would be vaporized.

You mention that Terminus is livable, so I assume it has trees. Many of these would now be on fire. This would add a considerable amount of ash to the atmosphere. Also, although the particulate debris would settle within about 3 months (because this is a relatively minor impact event compared to what has happened to Earth in the past—a Lucrehulk is 2 miles in diameter while the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 6), those are still three months that nothing could be built on the planet because of the prohibitive conditions. Also, assuming there is rain, much of the surface—comprised now of loose, uncompacted dirt, silt, ash, etc., already too unstable to build upon—would now become too muddy to build upon too. You could excavate it, of course, as you would need to do anyway when you start mining for metal, but it would now take much more time (especially to ship in the specialty equipment that would be needed for dealing with unstable terrain, all the way to Companion Besh).

There would be no appreciable change to the planet's temperature or climate, and damage to the ecosystem would probably be negligible (a few species of flower* might become endangered, but if so they would probably have been nearly endangered already). Conditions on Terminus would return more or less to normal in about 3 months time, and there would be no significant disruption of seasonal patterns. Indeed, the regions on the far side of the impact(s) would probably not see any changes at all except for pretty, red sunsets and, as aforementioned, silt and ash deposits.

But yeah, dropping the Lucrehulk ring not the best idea in my opinion.** Even if, somehow, it was delivered to the planet intact, I don't see it being terribly effective; there are too many corridors that could be easily breached and a lot of inward-facing hangars and windows that would allow attackers to shoot in at the factory from the cover of the ring itself. I'm inclined to agree with Jamie again that an ordinary wall would be more appropriate. I don't think a trench system is necessary though, strictly speaking, since the only thing the base probably has to worry about are pesky predators wandering into the complex. A wall should keep them out.

A CIS factory is, as Jamie mentions, one alternative. I don't think it's any more or less desirable than the unlimited projection base, though; both will require the Confederacy to assist Forte in setting it up, and investing a considerable amount of time and resources to do so. Note also that the CIS factory is crewed by officers, scientists, and "many Ugnaught workers." Still more proof, I think, that this is a large enterprise that Forte wouldn't be able to accomplish on his own. I think, necessarily, a larger number of people will need to be aware of Terminus considering the work that will need to go into setting up the base there.




*If so, ferns may enjoy something of a renaissance, as they are known to thrive in habitats where conditions are prohibitive to other plant species. Indeed, ferns first appeared shortly after what's called the Kellwasser extinction event (or events), in the Devonian period about 400 million years ago. They've survived every damn thing since then and now they're one of the most pervasive weeds in the world.

**I spent 3 hours unnecessarily researching this post, as you can probably tell. Yes, I realize that "If you drop the ring, it will blow up" probably would have been adequate. But oh well.

Jace Varitek
Manager/Administrator from January 2003 to Present
My recent posts here, pre-2009 archives here

"When my information changes, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
—John Maynard Keynes

Furthermore, a dancing Wookiee:

But what kind of radiation, and how much? We don't know for sure. I'm going on the assumption, though, that hypermatter annihilation produces more radiation than antimatter annihilation does, in the same way that antimatter annihilation produces more radiation, and more energy, than a nuclear reaction. Hypermatter annihilation, presumably, produces more energy than antimatter annihilation. Thus, more radiation too. It's still difficult to say how much, though; all we can really go by is nuclear fallout, which we know something about, and then multiply it by 3. Even so, though, there probably wouldn't be an immediate problem on Terminus (except for the collision of the debris I mentioned above, obviously). It would be more of a long term problem, in that the radiation would probably be light enough to only contaminate water and certain flora (think Honoghr, before they changed the canon to make a toxic chemical responsible for its destruction instead of radioactive fallout, which, I guess, was too hard for Clone Wars fans to understand). This does pose a bit of a problem though; animals eat plants and drink water, and so do people, who also eat animals. If your colony plans to subside on the land, you'd be looking at accumulation of radioisotopes in the body resulting in cancer and birth defects or infertility. This would probably be most pronounced among the fauna on Terminus. Unfavorable mutations would occur. Many species would likely go extinct simply from being unable to reproduce. So yeah, again, dropping the Lucrehulk ring isn't something I'd recommend.

P.S. My last post was #600! Woot!

Jace Varitek
Manager/Administrator from January 2003 to Present
My recent posts here, pre-2009 archives here

"When my information changes, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
—John Maynard Keynes

Furthermore, a dancing Wookiee: