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Wants Critique
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Artist's Comments
In Jovian orbit there exists a gas mining installation of mind boggling
scale and complexity. The Acadian Queen is a processing facility the
size of a city and extends tendrils of spun nanocarbon and doped
ceramic fifteen miles into Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Collected gas
passes vast pumps an centrifuges separating out helium-3 in
industrially useful quantities. Most of the facility is either fully
automated or run via telepresence, but the maintenance needs of an
installation this size requires personnel in the high hundreds. With
those hundreds come dozens of ships of all sizes, including several
like this one- the LM-3200 'Stork'.
Originally a Bayer-Blohm
design from late in the last century, it has been built under license
by all the major shipyards in a a very wide range of configurations.
Here we see a fairly standard layout, consisting of a lifting crane
offset to starboard and modular external machinery and equipment
lockers fitted to the underside in three locations.
Currently
it's sitting on an access elevator in one of the pressurized sections.
It's unclear from the image what the nature of repairs being undertaken
are. However, lack of protective gear on the worker in foreground
suggest simple mechanical failure instead of one of the more insidious
metaprion infestations.
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