In the later parts of the 20th Century, Cyberdyne lift platforms had been known to lift cargo into orbit at $50/ton - US. Top load the platforms could handle in one lift - 112,000 tons.
Space had suddenly been a boom industry. No rockets taking off, no huge expense on lift vehicles, no having to pad objects at the sudden take off and resulting g forces. The platforms had a gentle acceleration much like an elevator. At take-off and end they were going about 2mph. At mid point they were going considerably faster but those on the platform only felt a slight acceleration. With Cyberdyne robots mining metals and smelting and shaping other space-plenty materials, the main items that needed to be lifted were finished products, electronics, and plants.
A few nations and large corporations had immediately began setting up in space, followed by smaller companies and eventually individuals. Once the huge Lagrange colonies had begun construction, hordes followed.
Air and water was available, if you knew how and where to extract them. Not easy, but with robots and mass drivers slinging the materials in carefully defined trajectories - just the zero g alloys made going into space profitable.
One of the companies to develop a space presence had been Winnebago.
http://www.winnebagoind.com/html/products/recVehicles/winnebago.html
Originally a builder of large "recreational vehicles" or mobile apartments, they had looked at flagging sales of terrestrial vehicles and had begun operating a construction company in Elysium (aka Side 3) - one of the Lagrange colonies being built through multinational sources instead of the two Cyberdyne built colonies. The layout wasn't all that different, you just had to add air recyclers, an airlock, and alter things inside so that the lack of gravity wasn't a problem. The toilet and shower requiring the most work in that regard. The end result of which was somewhere between an old winnebago and a submarine.
This was not the reason Hiro/Ranma despaired. Nor was it their safety record (which was a lot better since many of the colonies had started requiring intelligence/sanity tests of all non-mechanical pilots). They were fairly common, useful, and dependable.
There were three types of vehicle used in space. Squat and utilitarian and starkly functional was one. This was especially common in government vehicles. Flashy was more common in commercial vehicles - though gaudy might be a better word for it. Usually corporate logos and ad space covered the entire vehicle. Third were a lot of the personal vehicles which ranged from gaudy to artistically beautiful.
The Winnebago was a starkly functional "box" design. One customized a personal vehicle by adding options and details. Hiro had seen one which had resembled a silver swan - down to the painted feathers on the wings. Not that most vehicles were intended to go transatmospheric - "in low gee and no air - let your fancies run wild" as one of the customization shops advertised.
This particular one was bright pink, which was actually the refractory primer. It was visible at a distance, reflective to a variety of radiation wavelengths, and usually the first thing people wanted to change. The color choices were bile yellow, shiny neon pink, and a particularly eyesore orange. If a radiation front due to solar flares was in the offing, what you usually did was deploy the mirror shield like a sort of parachute or got behind a colony or moon. The coating was good but not good enough to completely shield occupants from particularly bad storms.
Having a forty foot long bright pink cylinder was not something Hiro enjoyed - and the Ranma part of his psyche knew that Akane would have said something about it being perverted.
Inside, in many ways, it was even worse. Because there was only a distinct up and down when docked to a colony - the "ceiling" was tiled. In this case with a hideous yellow and red marbled pattern.
"Let me guess," offered Hiro, "you got this at a substantial discount?"
"Precisely," said the maid as she left the vehicle and closed the airlock. "Good luck, Saotome-san."
The pink cylinder quickly vanished into the sky, it's one-shot antigrav taking it into space where its cargo would be safe.
(Posted Sat, 11 Jan 2003 12:08)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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