Sketches – Fenris Local Space

It’s amazing what you can get done when you’re stuck in a meeting! This sketch actually is skipping a bit of the queue; I did this one in the fall while on a long conference call, and I wanted to get it out sooner than later, so here it is. One note, technically I made a mistake when I drew this diagram. The L2 and L3 points should actually be swapped (and the L2 point should also be a LOT farther off to the left); all descriptions in this post are making use of the Lagrange points as labelled in the image, NOT as they actually/should be.

deWulf space, especially around Fenris, is best described as “busy”. Near space for Fenris has no less than three “major” orbital constructs, as well as four separate clusters of additional orbital installations. Managing traffic in local Fenris space is an exercise in stress management, as well as freight management.

The three major orbital constructs:

• The Mittelspannung Shipyards. Located at the L1 point between Fenris and Sif, it is the single largest shipyard in deWulf space, and is one of the primary logistical nodes for the deWulf navy
• The Reserve Fleet Base. A smaller complex located in low Sif orbit, the Reserve Fleet Base is where deWulf Navy ships are stored in mothballs when not needed for operational service. At present it is a small maintenance shipyard, but there are discussions to expand it to enable it to handle in-storage maintenance, refits, and some limited un-mothballing work.
• Raummünde Station. Located in geosynchronous Fenris orbit, Raummünde is the primary passenger platform for on and off world travel. Worlds with high populations like Fenris require an orbital traffic station to efficiently manage on and off-world traffic.

The four separate clusters of orbital installations:

• The leading L4 freight complex
• The trailing L5 freight complex
• The Sunward research park at L2
• The orbital cargo and passenger stations in geosynchronous Fenris orbit (Raummünde station can also be considered part of this installation)

Freight movement in-system tends to follow the “rules of the road” in deWulf space: Freight going in-system and spinward (as defined by the majority of the local planets) is above the ecliptic, and freight going out-system and anti-spinward is below the ecliptic. Warships, customs ships, and ships undergoing an emergency are allowed to ignore this basic traffic rule, but may have to justify their course when arriving at the spaceport that has jurisdiction over that area of space. This helps keep traffic orderly and ensure that high-relative-speed collisions are kept to as low a likelihood as possible.