The World Of Solar Dawn

The Solar Dawn series centers on human expansion into the solar system in the 21st-century. We have explored and colonized planets and moons to an extent. The story starts around 2120 and involves the colonies Asgard and Shangdu on the moon and Olympus on Mars. Space stations orbit Earth in the LaGrange point L4 and L5 positions to complement the colonies. Without spoiling it for readers of the series much, I’ll let slip that nuclear war destroys the Earth itself early in the first book, the story revolving around the space-based societies afterwards as they struggle to survive and grow without the crutch of Earth to support them. 

Before Earth’s destruction, the key access to space from Earth was a space elevator. However, saboteurs severed from its tethers on Earth as one of the first measures in isolating Earth from space. A security space station in low Earth orbit, called Sentinel, survived to tell the tale of the sequence of events leading up to, and involving, the nuclear holocaust.

Now, to give an outline of the various settlements in the solar system, I’ll start with Asgard.

Asgard is an internationally populated colony on the moon surface at the south pole. It uses a lava tube as its colony shell, which the constructors lined with a flexible ceramic lining, making the internals airtight. It also protects the colony against cosmic rays. With such a construction, they could expand the colony downwards and outwards as it grew, and as the needs arose. A dome caps Asgard to allow its people a view of the universe and to access and egress it. To minimize chemical propulsion requirements, a long electromagnetic linear accelerator provides spaceships with the means of acceleration to escape the moon’s gravity and to slow the spaceship as they land. 

Asgard comprises several levels, the upper levels being taken up with the administration and general business concerns. Commercial, hospitality and essential services populate the levels below that with residential levels at the bottom. Below this, huge excavated agricultural caverns produce foodstuffs and other essential nutritional requirements for the colonists. And at the very bottom, a huge bunker protects the colonists for emergencies, primarily protection against solar flare outbursts. 

Shangdu has a similar setup to Asgard, the difference being Shangdu is a Chinese colony, completely separate from Asgard and has its own political structure and loyalties. The conflict between these two colonies is a big part of the story.

Mars houses the colony of Olympus. They built it over and in a lava tube below the Martian surface. However, it has also expanded outwards with several radial corridors extending out to satellite constructions for industrial and other secondary activities. Access to the Martian colony is via a platform orbiting Mars, where visiting spaceships dock. Personnel and equipment and supplies ferry to the Martian surface with shuttles, negating the need for huge spaceships to descend to the planet, saving the fuel requirements to achieve such access.

The space stations in the L4 and L5 Earth – moon LaGrange point positions house industries requiring low to zero gravity that were unsuitable for the lunar colonies or required other conditions necessary for their research and manufacturing needs. It allows the people involved a certain autonomy from the lunar colonies, allowing them to undertake their activities with less stringent oversight. The L4 space station houses a smelter, smelting minerals derived from asteroids ferried from the asteroid belt. They then fabricate and manufacture refined metal products into other equipment. The L5 space station houses technologically advanced industries, including medical research, electronic and artificial intelligence developments undertaken by multinational corporations.

That briefly outlines the world you enter when you read the Solar Dawn series. I detail many other aspects of Solar Dawn in the story that I won’t divulge in this short blog post.

Thank you for your time. I hope you enjoyed reading this article.