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Fresh Kills: Where is it?

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Sun, 2009-11-22 02:21
#1
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Fresh Kills: Where is it?
OK so the book says that the Scum station Fresh Kills is at Earth's L5 It also says that the Hexagon is at Earths L5 When someone says "Earth's L5" I'm generaly thinking the L5 of the earth-sun system but I've also been thinking that Fresh Kills orbits the Earth. That would mean the Fresh Kills would be at Luna's L5 right? So do both the Hexagon and Fresh Kills orbit at the earth-sun L5? the earth-moon L5 is pretty primo realestate but I haven't read about anything orbiting there. Where is Fresh Kills? Does "the earth's L5" mean what I think it means?
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Sun, 2009-11-22 12:01
sjmcc13 sjmcc13's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
I am pretty certain is is referring to a Lagrange Point, which is a term I have heard outside of the game, so probably has an actual real world definition. My best guess would be Boby-Sun point, when a second one is not specified, as They do specify the Earth-Luna point for Hexagon (pg. 71), but the sample map has the mars trojans at the Mars-Sun points. edited after checking the book.
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Sun, 2009-11-22 12:27
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
OOPs. You're right about that. Thanks the Hexagon is at the Lunar L5 Fresh kills is at Earth's L5 Now I'm wondering what the hell they're doing all the way out there.
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Tue, 2009-11-24 12:12
standard_gravity standard_gravity's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
OneTrikPony wrote:
Now I'm wondering what the hell they're doing all the way out there.
I suppose you mean Fresh Kills? And I agree - if I'm not mistaken the Earth - Sol L5 point is at 0.01 AU from Earth, i.e. 1.5m km. This is FAR AWAY from Earth. And the core book even says that for any distances beyond 1.5m km, almost everyone egocasts. Although scum scavangers may fall outside "almost everyone", why on Earth (no pun intended) put an Earth Orbit Scavanger Station here? It will be very expensive and time consuming to go travelling back and forth to orbit. It would be easier (political issues aside) to operate from Luna.
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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/ext_userbar.jpg[/img] "People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes." - John Dee
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Tue, 2009-11-24 21:36
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
If [i]I'm[/i] not mistaken the Earth-Sun L5 is 60 degrees behind earth in it's orbit. Which put's it a little more than 1.0 AU from Earth. (I got 156,660,753 km with the new math) That is to say it's closer to the sun than it is to the Earth. That make's it sound like it's out there all alone but really it's no farther from Venus and Mars that the earth is. I guess I was just thinking that it was somehow involved with the earth. You know, besides sharing an orbit. The whole thing that got me started was a story about a reclaimer guy on Fresh Kills looking at the earth whistfully. Obviously That's not gona work. So I'm either gonna have to change the character's faction or pay someone to transfer Fresh Kills to earth orbit. I don't understand why Freshkills is so heavily armed. They kinda just left that hanging. Hope they develope that with some serious [b]Metaplot[/b] ;) in the next book.
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Thu, 2009-11-26 06:43
standard_gravity standard_gravity's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
Sorry sorry sorry I was thinking of the L1 point. At L5 point, Fresh Kills is even more (a lot more) misplaced. As for FK's armament, this would be explained as a response to other factions not liking the fact that they scavange hostile TITAN areas, and (above all) that many a scavanger will be infected by TITAN tech. I suppose.
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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/ext_userbar.jpg[/img] "People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes." - John Dee
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Wed, 2009-12-09 13:57
jackgraham jackgraham's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
Heh, I'll have to be careful about this in the future... I realize now that there were some places where I wrote "Earth L4/L5" referring to Earth orbit, when "Lunar L4/L5" would have been more correct. Sorry 'bout that... one more for the errata. Fresh Kills is in Earth orbit, at the Lunar L5 point.
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J A C K   G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!   http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
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Wed, 2009-12-09 13:57
jackgraham jackgraham's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
It's also a garbage dump in New York. :)
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J A C K   G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!   http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
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Sun, 2009-12-13 13:57
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: Fresh Kills: Where is it?
Jack, Thank you so much for clearing this up. I was trying to write an EP story that opens with the protagonist staring at earth from Fresh Kills. It totally shut me down when I realized that that Fresh Kills wasn't where I thought it was. And now it's back. Sweet! Guess I'll get back to work on that one.
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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

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Wed, 2015-06-10 12:34
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
Wait. Fresh Kills is in Earth
Wait. Fresh Kills is in Earth Orbit? Then the Hexagon is Earth-Luna L5? 60 degrees behind Luna as it orbits Earth? I was about to Head-Canon that Fresh Kills and Hexagon were secretly run by the same folks.
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Wed, 2015-06-10 13:42
R.O.S.S.-128 R.O.S.S.-128's picture
Naming Conventions
The way I see it, since Lagrangian Points are features of two-body systems, when naming them it is useful to include both bodies acting on those points to avoid confusion. So there would be no such thing as "Earth L5". You have "Earth-Sun" L1-5 and then "Earth-Luna" L1-5. A single gravitational body cannot have Lagrangian Points all by itself. A simple system consisting exclusively of two bodies (which the Sun-Earth-Moon system certainly doesn't qualify as) would only have one set of points, which would seem to make listing the second body redundant in that context, but in my opinion it is good form to do so anyway for consistency's sake. As far as the Hexagon, keep in mind that being "at a Lagrangian Point" doesn't necessarily require that you occupy the precise location of the imaginary zero-volume object. Often satellites stationed "at" one of those points is in fact orbiting around it, so it's quite possible that the Hexagon and Fresh Kills are "neighbors", as opposed to a single entity occupying the same volume of space. L4 and L5 are orbitally stable, meaning that you can set an object orbiting around them and it will stay there much like if it was orbiting a physical object. So the description of being "at" an L5 could potentially describe quite a large region of space, though of course the stable region for Earth-Luna L5 is likely much smaller than the one for Earth-Sun L5.
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Wed, 2015-06-10 14:12
Lazarus Lazarus's picture
Sunward p. 71 shows both
Sunward p. 71 shows both Fresh Kills and Hexagon at the Earth-Luna L5. This isn't really a contradiction as it is sort of like saying two different stores are Downtown or two different states are in the Midwest. If you were to think of the gravitational field as peaks and valleys that are modified by the orbital speed then you get certain 'flat spots' that occur around two large bodies. Small bodies are able to sit in these 'flat spots' maintaining their relative position to the two other bodies. L[sub]1[/sub], L[sub]2[/sub] and L[sub]3[/sub] are actually unstable and could be viewed as being sort of like the tops of hills. Objects do need to expend small amounts of energy to remain where they are or else they will ultimately 'roll down hill' and fall out of the Lagrange point. This also means the boundaries of these points are pretty vague. L[sub]4[/sub] and L[sub]5[/sub] are stable and more like bowls in the gravitational topology. Attempts to dislodge an object from these locations require the object to be pushed beyond an actual 'lip' at which point they will fall out. This can be viewed as giving these points more sharply defined boundaries but the truth of the matter is that an object can sit on the 'wrong side' of that curve and maintain its relative position with just a tiny bit of energy, the same way an object can maintain its position in the first 3 Lagrangian points by expending a small amount of energy. The thing is that these areas are really, really big (at least relative to the size of space stations). In the real world the L[sub]4[/sub] and L[sub]5[/sub] points of systems tend to accumulate a lot of things such as asteroids. Even though the points are gravitationally 'bowl shaped' and you have the added impetus of gravitational attraction between the objects they don't tend to accrete all that much. I'm sure some collisions and accretion occasionally occurs but the general environment is still a field of objects rather than a large object at the center. Habitats with their station keeping rockets don't have any real concern with colliding with one another. So that's how it is possible that both stations are sitting in the same Lagrangian point, but just because it is possible does that mean that it is actually occurring or did the authors make a mistake and mean to put one of them at the Sol-Earth L[sub]5[/sub] instead?
Sunward p. 71 wrote:
The base itself is at the far edge of the Earth-Luna L5 point from the Hexagon, but this proximity makes for some uneasy shuffling on both sides, especially given that Fresh Kills is also bristling with armaments. Ships going to and from either generally steer far clear of each other’s operations.
So it is pretty clear the authors intended for the two stations to be 'near' each other (in space terms. You probably couldn't look out a window from one and see the other, except perhaps as a small dot of light) and occupying the same Lagrangian point.
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Wed, 2015-06-10 15:06
VorlonJoe VorlonJoe's picture
jackgraham wrote:It's also a
jackgraham wrote:
It's also a garbage dump in New York. :)
On Staten Island in fact, although it's more proper to say "was" as it was closed in 2008 for reclamation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Kills_Landfill I drove by it semi-regularly for four years while my daughter was going to college on "the Big Island" ;-).
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Wed, 2015-06-10 17:42
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
Okay, so they are neighbors.
Okay, so they are neighbors. New headcanon planned.
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Wed, 2015-06-10 17:49
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
Wonder how often they take
Wonder how often they take potshots at [s]each other[/s] micro asteroids in the area.
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Wed, 2015-06-10 18:14
uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture
Just enough to dissuade most
Just enough to dissuade most from listening to the conspiracy theories that they benefit from one another and may be two faces of the same coin.
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