Gacutil
-Sir, we just received the Unex Report from Commander Blakeley.
-On screen.
A few quiet button clicks. Blakeley's well-worn face appears on the main screen of the command room at JumpOps HQ.
-Admiral, it is my pleasure to report that we have successfully transited JP GAB-2.
-The jump connects to a new single-star system with quite a bit of promise.
-By previous agreement, this system is now known as Gacutil.
-Good news: one habitable planet, terrestrial, with 91% water coverage. Just 10 degrees warmer than home, gravity 90% of nominal, covered in a thick jungle.
-And she's a big one--even accounting for all the water, we estimate the planet could safely hold five billion colonists.
-And more: there's another planet with nominal gravity, but needs a little work. Needs to warm up by ten degrees, and needs to lose half of her oxygen to be breathable. Surface is one third water, the rest mountains and forests.
-She's even bigger than the first. As in, half again the diameter. She'll hold more than 25 billion with plenty of leg room for everyone.
-Being that size, of course, means it will take a while to do the work. Not too bad, though. Three HoneyBees working together would be done in less than a century.
-Those are the highlights. There are also four gas balls: two of them are merely large, the other two are enormous. If any of the lot tests positive for fuel mats, we'll be having a jubilee.
-Two other small planets, low grav, very cold. One of them has a significant ice sheet. If she has minerals, we can park a single HoneyBee there for a couple decades and she'd be warm enough for standard LGI without any insulation. She'll hold near a billion herself. Wouldn't be the worst place for the Prospectors to have a little luck.
-We also count 131 asteroids, the large majority of them warm enough for single-insulated LGI. Most of the rest would need three extra layers or less. With any luck, we could end up with a dozen or two live-mining colonies out here. About a dozen are too far out, too cold. Half of those can be struck from orbit. If the larger ones need digging, we'd be doing it with bots.
-Oh, also: 89 moons, all told. Twelve of the fourteen around the gas ball closest in are suitable for LGI+1 or better. The largest of these has room for nearly two billion. The rest of them combined would hold maybe half that.
-So there you have it. One planet habitable as-is for five Bs. Another one can go domeless for a not-too-great investment, and hold 25 Bs. And a plethora of further possibilities for mines and colonies.
-We are now en route to the prime planet, to scan for thermal and EM signatures.
-You can expect our next report in--oh, that reminds me: the star is about twenty times the mass of our own, so everything is very spread out. The prime planet is second-closest in. From the JP, it's 50 billion clicks. So, we'll let you know what we find in about 18 months.
-Blakeley out.
