CCS Erasmus

Übersicht

The Erasmus is the fourth of seven Century Colonisation Starships launched from Earth, currently thirty-seven years into its ninety-three year voyage to the Tau Ceti system. Its destination: a rocky world in the habitable zone provisionally named Boreas, though surface surveys from robotic probes suggest a colder, drier climate than initial telescopic data indicated. The ship's interior resembles a mid-sized university town compressed into rotating habitat cylinders, with tree-lined corridors, modular apartments, and communal spaces designed to combat the psychological strain of decades in transit. The current awakened shift comprises 214 souls, from xenobotanists to civil engineers, all painfully aware that their expertise might prove useless if Boreas proves more hostile than predicted. Every ten years, they watch another tenth of the passengers emerge from cryogenic sleep, and every year, they watch another tenth return to the cold. The ship carries 2,089 colonists and enough supplies to establish a permanent settlement, assuming the supplies survive the journey and the settlement survives its first year.

Gesellschaft

The Erasmus operates under a charter ratified before departure, establishing a rotating captaincy where nine Captains each command for one year before rotating back to cryosleep, with the Senior Captain serving as final authority in disputes. Major decisions affecting the entire mission require majority vote among the current Captain, the Senior Captain and at least two awakened Captains, ensuring no single commander can unilaterally alter course or resource allocation. Civil disputes among colonists are settled by elected magistrates from the awakened population, though serious crimes fall under the Captain's military jurisdiction. The charter guarantees free speech and assembly, but cargo bay access, weapons, and the ship's industrial fabrication systems remain under military guard. All supplies and equipment are communally owned, yet personal fabrication quotas create friction between colonists hoarding resources and those advocating strict rationing to reduce waste.

Technologie

The Erasmus represents humanity's most ambitious closed-loop life support system, recycling 97.3% of all water, air, and organic matter through bacterial digestion and molecular reassembly. Cryogenic pods slow metabolic function to 2% of normal, extend sleep duration to a decade, and require a three-week recovery period upon waking. The ship's medical bay can fabricate most pharmaceuticals and surgical tools on demand, but raw chemical feedstocks are finite, and the stock cannot be replenished until Boreas is reached. The AI system, named Haven, manages life support, cryogenic rotation, and cryo-sleep failure alongside four enormous rotating cylinders providing gravity through centripetal force. Fusion drives powered by helium-3 harvested from lunar mining before departure provide thrust, but the fuel supply cannot be easily replenished.