"Peter F. Hamilton - A Night's Dawn Companion - The Confederation Handbook" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

years have included an atmospheric vapor dispersion system supposed to create
occasional snowfalls, though this has met with only moderate success. Eight Jupiter-
orbiting habitats are dedicated nature reserves for rare original-genotype Earth
animals, plants, and insects (for whales see Atlantis,page 53 ), with many species
reconstructed from stored genetic samples taken in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. One of the most successful reconstructions has been the
mammoth cloned from frozen samples found in Siberia.


Mechanical Systems
Bitek is unable to accommodate every requirement, especially moving systems which
are subject to constant abrasive use, and in particular transport mechanisms. Lifts are
installed in all the starscrapers after they have been grown, and large tunnels are
included in the internal polyp land-contour layer for the maglev trains. Cars and
powered bikes are also used in the cavern, but only by service crews and medical
emergency personnel. Cycling is popular, as is microlight flying and horse riding.


Spaceport
As one end of the habitat is devoted to the maw, spaceship activity is concentrated
entirely around the other end. On all post-2220 habitats, the endcap has a series of
broad projecting ledges for voidhawks to land on. These rings are studded with
pedestals which contain nutrient-fluid transfer mechanisms for the bitek starships;
fluid-production organs are found in the endcap walls.

All Adamist starships and reaction-drive craft use a counter-rotating spaceport (none
of them can perform the kind of swoop maneuver necessary to use a ledge), which
extends out from the habitat axis on a long spindle. These are the same as spaceports
on settled asteroids, though larger in scale, and can be any shape, from simple
extensions of the spindle to discs, globes, and starfish grids. The only thing they have
in common is that they are joined to the habitat by a rotating seal at the axis.


Defense
As with Confederation planets and asteroid settlements, starships are not allowed to
emerge within 100,000km of a habitat, and they have designated emergence zones. In
JupiterтАЩs case, starships are effectively banished from emerging inside EuropaтАЩs orbit.
After emergence, docking authorization and flight-vector management is handled by
the habitat personality, which is linked into strategic-defense platforms via bitek
processor chips.

All industrial stations are maintained within the same orbit as the habitats, which
simplifies the job of the strategic-defense platforms. Because JupiterтАЩs gravity field
makes emergence impossible closer than 100,000km, the He3cloudscoops are
relatively safe from direct attack by emerging starships; nevertheless, they are
protected by beam weapons mounted on the anchor asteroid. In addition to strategic-
defense platforms, there are fifty armed voidhawks on permanent patrol above
Jupiter. This situation is repeated, though on a much smaller scale, around every
Edenist habitat throughout the Confederation.