Taurus Research Station

Possibly hanging right over your head right at this very moment, the Taurus Research Station is an orbital scientific and planetary defense platform built by the Disputatious Assembly of Sovereigns in AES 940. Don't let the name fool you—the only research they're doing up there is how much toxic waste they can shove into their weapons systems before the gravitational stabilizers break and the whole fucking mess disintegrates into a radioactive cloud of poison in our atmosphere.

The Taurus Research Station used to be an actual research station back in the 40's and 50's, but then along came General Kade "Ripper" Gorson and the Flandrean military. Asshole got up in front of the Disputatious Assembly and gave a big speech about how we're probably less advanced than aliens, so we need guns in space to shoot any aliens that come to get us. I guess military goons stealing your base is just the price you pay for trying to do some science in an out-of-the-way corner of the world.

Anyways, the last decent publication out of the TRS was Gadner's paper on space persuasion back in '78. It could have been groundbreaking, but that was about when DAS Command made the station off-limits to everyone with civilian-level security clearance, so I guess we're back to square one until I can convince Milton to sociologize himself more security clearance.

Oh well, I guess we have to talk about the military side of things. Technically, everything in space is falling, which is probably why everything about the Taurus Research Station has been going downhill. During the 60's, all the DAS member nations brought their own weapons projects up to space and then nailed them piecemeal to the station. That immediately caused a new problem, which was that the station's thrusters weren't rated for that kind of mass, meaning it started to sink back into the atmosphere.

The goons did the math and realized it was going to come down over the ocean, which pissed off the whales. Since the whole mess was Gorson's idea, the Hegemon argued it was a Flandrean conspiracy, despite the fact that the world is like 70% ocean and the affected area from the falling station is basically guaranteed to hit water somewhere. Blubbery fuckers. Anyways, that led to a round of everyone nailing their nationally-branded thrusters to the TRS, which in turn led to the realization that the station could maneuver itself around and point all those shiny new weapons at the planet. The DAS was gonna order everyone off, but then someone pointed out that they all had space shuttles, so now the compromise is that everyone keeps a few soldiers up there to watch everyone else's soldiers. Gee, that seems like a stable situation.

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Gwen Hanson, PhD