The deceleration burn took almost as long as the acceleration one, the difference only occurring because the system was currently moving slightly away from Sol, meaning they needed to lose slightly less speed than they had to gain in the beginning to match the velocity of the star system. They could have made the burn shorter by simply waiting and lighting the engines at a higher throttle level. The ship was now much lighter that when they first lit them back in Sol, so faster accelerations were now possible. But that would have left them with less time to scan the system ahead of time and affected the direction of gravity much more. So, instead, they executed the same burn they did before, with only a slight course correction planned for later once they figured out which world they should go into orbit of.
Sensor data started pouring in and the technicians and scientists started pouring over it, hoping to be the first to find something significant. All of the captains were on the bridge, even though Johanes had lucked into being the one to be in charge at this point. Still, who was in charge would change several times between now and when they settled a planet, so that didn’t matter so much.
Over the last four hundred years the population of the ship had exploded. Most of the twenty thousand crew had at least one child, usually at least a few, so they now had over one hundred thousand additional people from when they set out. Johanes was one of the few that hadn’t had a child, though the other two captains had several children each, The General having four and Wlodek having seven. This had resulted in most of the original crew now waiting out the journey in cryo while their descendants took over the various ship roles for a few decades before going into cryo themselves. Even the captains had spent a bit of time in cryo, with Johanes spending his last four times outside the captain roll in there.
The cryo process was a bit slow, but not difficult. When you were placed into cryonics, you would be injected with a chemical that lowered the freezing point of all of the fluid in your cells as your brain was scanned to establish the pattern of your thoughts. Once the chemical had a chance to work its way throughout your body you would be sedated before your heart was stopped with an electrical pulse. After that your body temperature would be lowered to negative ten degrees Celsius and your frozen corpse, or “corpsicle” as it was jokingly called, would be put in a pod along with a copy of your brain scan and medical record in case you needed to be awakened.
Thawing out was only slightly more complicated. The doctors would print a copy of your DNA from your medical files and inject it into a human stem cell, or in some cases generic mammal stem cell that had its DNA destroyed. This cell would be allowed to divide until there were several thousand of them and then injected into your corpse once it was properly thawed. Damaged cells would be replaced by new ones that were genetically identical to your own, just biologically younger. Your heart would then be restarted and life support systems would be used if necessary until you were perfectly healthy but unconscious. At that point your brain would be reflashed with the copy of your brain that was on file. Strictly speaking, this was not necessary. You would still be you if you awoke without your brain being reflashed, but some of your memories might be faded or missing altogether. Any brain cells that died while you were frozen might have played a part in neural connections which held memories, so it order to make sure that no memories were lost you needed to have the new neurons be made to act like the ones they replaced, a process called ‘neural flashing’ or ‘reflashing’. After your brain was repaired the sedative and the cryofluids would be neutralized by other injections and you will be able to wake up after a few seconds.
After awakening you might be a bit confused, as your brain’s continuity of consciousness was disrupted similar to if you got passed-out drunk, but due to the reflashing you will return to the way you were in a few hours to a few days, the exact length of time being roughly proportional to the amount of time spent in cryosleep. Most crew had been through the procedure dozens of times and the worst thing that happened was that one woman forgot that she had a daughter on Earth for a few days after waking up, those memories having already been weakened by not seeing her for over 300 years.
At the appropriate time the captain ordered that the ship be turned around so that the thrusters faced the new star system, after which the ship started its deceleration. All of the spare metals they had had been made into shielding which was placed at the rear of the ship. This plating covered everything except the nozzles of the thrusters, and anything that made their way into them would likely be vaporized before it could do any real damage. The shielding wasn’t as good a the forward shielding the ship used while traveling through the stars, but it didn’t have to be. While the background debris would be greater within a start system, by the time they got into one they would only have lost most of their speed, especially considering that the system was significantly smaller than the Sol System and therefore they would have much longer to decelerate.
At this distance they could tell that the system seemed to have a large number of rocky objects from a distance of approximately 0.2 to 0.1 AU from the sun. Whether it should be considered this system’s oort cloud of kuiper belt was debatable, but it surrounded the entire system in the plane of its ecliptic. The ship was coming in from outside that plane, so it didn’t risk hitting any of them.
Long range scans of the planets confirmed what was already known. The system contained seven worlds, each about the size of Earth. All were tidally locked to the star, but that was already the most likely case. For the sake of tradition they would be referred to by the designations Earth astronomers had given them almost seven hundred years ago, but once they had colonists on them they would likely receive proper names. One of the crew suggested naming the worlds something with the first letter the same as the designation, but it was decided that would be a matter for the colonies to decide once they were formed.
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The innermost planet, planet B, had almost no atmosphere and likely would only be valuable for its mineral resources, much like Mercury and its mines in the solar system. The only trace of an atmosphere was also Mercury, in this case the element, at around 100 pascals of pressure. This greatly stabilized the temperature at a range of 115c to 135c as the liquid mercury pools on the surface evaporated to redistribute their heat on the cold side of the planet. There were only traces of hydrogen even on the cold side of the planet, so any significant quantities of water was unlikely. It was a large planet, however, with 111.6% Earth’s size and 110.2% of its gravity.
The next planet, C, had only nitrogen and argon with traces of oxygen and water vapor. The oxygen was probably left over from when the hydrogen had been blasted off of its surface by the sun. The atmospheric pressure was only about a tenth of Earth’s, but the presence of those gasses in the atmosphere meant that one could easily make a breathable atmosphere within a habitat on the planet. The planet was only cool enough to consider that on the cold side, where the cold spot got down to around thirty seven Celsius. The average temperature swung by about thirty degrees from the average of sixty seven, with a high of ninety eight at the hot spot. The lack of any significant quantities of water on its surface, however, meant that, outside of massive condenser units, at most, it could support a few hundred thousand people from the small ponds at the colder parts of the planet, much like Shackleton on the moon with its small deposits hidden at the bottom of a crater. It was also larger than Earth, but not quite as large as Planet B, at 109.7% the size and only 108.6% the surface gravity.
Planet D was much better. It had Nitrogen, and Argon in similar amounts, along with half a percent of oxygen and around 0.1% methane at about two atmospheres of pressure. The temperature range was much better as well, at an average of 13.1 degrees, making it at the right level for human habitation. While the temperature had about a fifty degree variance either way, from -40 at the cold spot to 55 on the hot spot, it was no worse than Earth’s Antarctic and Sahara desert. There was also a moderate ocean on the cold side along with an ice cap, and several seas, lakes, and streams which got smaller as one neared the hot spot. With a surface gravity approximately 62.4% that of Earth and size of 77%, it was small and the gravity was a bit light, but the almost ideal temperature range caused by the currents in the upper atmosphere meant that it might one day support most of the system’s inhabitants.
Planet E was also fairly nice. Its sizes and gravity were much closer to Earth’s, at 92% and 81.7% respectively, but the temperature range was too low. The half-pressure atmosphere of nitrogen and trace carbon dioxide meant that the planet had much larger temperature swings than planet D, at about eighty degrees on either side of the median of negative twenty two. This meant that its hot spot was actually hotter than D’s at 58 degrees, and its cold spot was much colder at -100 or slightly less. It had slightly more water than D, though, with most of the cold side being covered completely in ice and the ice extending over a thousand kilometers into the sunlit areas before it melted to produce massive cold wetlands, seas and lakes. Around 40-50 degrees off of the hotspot the area was an almost ideal temperature in the twenties range, and it was here that a large number of rivers existed and most likely here that humans would focus on their settlement.
Planet F was only preferable for its size and gravity, at 104.5% and 95.1% of Earth’s. It had an atmosphere of 88% nitrogen, 11% CO2 and 1% argon at 80% of Earth standard, which meant that its atmosphere was the closest to Earth’s. Those that wanted to look into terraforming the planet, however, soon came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t make sense to do so. The planet was far too cold, and its temperature variation of only around 60 degrees from the average of -55.5 meant that even at the hotspot the temperature only got to four point three degrees. Furthermore, their were only a few minor islands showing through the ocean which covered the surface, and the only one close enough to the hot spot to live on was a 3 square kilometer area with a near constant temperature of one degree. It might, at best, hold a few cold weather plants and animals. That, combined with the fact that if the CO2 were converted to O2 to make the air breathable they would need to dump massive amounts of other greenhouse gasses into the air to bring the temperature back up above freezing meant that any ideas about terraforming would have to wait until a point in the future where they had access to far stronger greenhouse gasses than CO2. Maybe something a million or more times stronger would be necessary, if they wanted the atmosphere to remain mostly free of the gas.
Planet G was colder still. It was slightly larger than F, at 1.129 times Earth’s size and 1.035 times Earth’s gravity, but it had an average temperature of only -76. The planet’s thick atmosphere of nitrogen and hydrocarbons at over three times Earth’s atmospheric pressure meant that the temperature only varied by around 35 degrees from the average, at -42 at the hot spot and -112 at the cold spot. There was considerable water on the surface, with it being an ice planet like F. Some crew suggested that there might be subsurface liquid water due to tidal heating and/or radioactive mineral deposits, like on Europa, but until the ship could send out a survey crew to look for such they wouldn’t know.
Planet H was near the edge of the system. It had a thick atmosphere of 99% hydrocarbons and 1% nitrogen, at over 22 atmospheres of pressure on the surface. It was much smaller than G at 77.5% the size and 57% the gravity of Earth, and appeared to be little more than a white ball of ice when the clouds of methane parted enough to allow a glimpse of the surface. There was almost no variation in temperature from the average of -101.5, with a temperature of -103 at the cold spot and -99.7 at the hot spot. The movement of the liquid and gaseous forms of methane acted as a heat pump to move the heat from where it evaporated in the hot areas to where in condensed in the cold areas. The ice was made of some hydrocarbons, but mostly water and carbon dioxide. There was no way to know how deep the surface was below the ice, so this world would, at most, serve as a hydrogen and water source for the inner planets.
With the information gathered, the people began to debate on whether D or E should be the first settlement of humanity in the system. Johanes believed that both should be settled at the same time. It wouldn’t make sense to immediately land on a planet immediately, after all. They would need to sit in the outer belt for a few years, manufacturing prefabricated buildings and space elevators for all seven planets. They could then place elevators at the cold spots of the hot planets, the hot spots of the cold planets, and the colony location of the temperate ones where people might actually want to live. Cargo ships would also need to be made so that the various worlds could trade with each other. They were quite close to each other, enough so that communication lag between worlds would be less than a minute even at the worst position of the planets, so communication wouldn’t be difficult. After all, this system was more like a gas giant system than the Sol system in terms of distances.