I have a sneaking suspicion that the interdiction is a lot like a roach motel. You can check in, but you can't check out. Which is to say that if your entry trajectory doesn't cross any killsats you should be able to make it down fine. Barring the difficulty of finding a craft that can actually safely land in a 1G gravity well with a deep atmosphere. The problem is surviving on the ground amid the exurgents, polluted environment, human survivors, femoswarms, and headhunters (remember the headhunters? They just want to give you a hug...) I think the biggest prize down there artifacts that people want (greed and nostalgia), samples of TITAN tech (yeah, that's safe), or people in the form of cortical stacks, databases, or, best of all, cryogenic crypts (Most people didn't get out so there's a lot of famous people down there, not to mention that... have you noticed that no major world leader got out, isn't that suspicious?). Then you've got the biggest problem, getting out of the well and surviving doing it. A ship that can lift out of the 1G well is hard to come by, egocasting out doesn't work for your scenario. Then one of the biggest problem hits you. The interdiction, leaving the roach motel through the network of killsats, bombs, drones, and occasional warship. Every part of a mission like that is a challenge. But, absent gods, it's a glorious one.

I don't think there is a canon group responsible for the killsats, but most factions aside from the Reclaimers will be grouchy about you risking everyone's safety by knocking a hole in the fence designed to keep the possibly sleeping TITANs trapped on Earth. Why physically export items? MONEY! Earth Artifacts are approximately tens of thousands of credits in value. You bring back a CD or a baseball or any trinket, and you've got enough money to buy a GOOD morph, and then some. A trip to Earth is a potential gold mine of wealth! Like buried pirate treasure! Retire for the rest of your eternal life if you grab enough!

Scanning the TITAN tech may not provide the secrets to its "violates Transhumanity's understanding of science"? But scanning and faxing would be sufficient for lots of things I bet. There is a dearth of data lost on Earth, which if recovered would be useful and lucrative to scan and fax spaceward too.

Thule Gesellschaft wrote:

-Moreover, how much would their enemies pay for the original if it could be used to leverage, say, a takeover bid on a hypercorp on the basis that the current CEO is now legally a beta fork?-

Farcasting sends Alpha forks normally, not Beta, but ALL forks are of questionable legality in hypercorp space due to the complications of property law and finances. So just having the original mind/body of an oligarch could be very profitable. Even if the courts declare the Fall-era Alpha fork as the true person, with the body being declared a property-less fork, having the full ego of your commercial rival has its uses. Find out his childhood weaknesses or something.

That's why my thought was aerobraking. So cool things... A specific hardcopy book title (or even a specific book, Gutenberg bible anyone?) The formula for coca cola? A specific plant sample? (A yellow rose perhaps? Or even a notable lichen) The Japanese Imperial sword? (草薙劍) Or perhaps the inverse: Which could be heartfelt live... "I promised my husband that when he chose final death I'd have his ashes spread in (location)..." Or just plain mean... "Your mission, for which I'm paying you a fuckton of money for is to go piss on Dave's grave. I won and I want an XP recording of him getting his comeuppance." (Being rich and immortal doesn't mean you're not a petty SOB)

I've always wanted to do an Earth mission myself but never really got around to it. Seems like it could be lots of excitement. For things that you need to physically transport: Well, it depends on what you are planning the mission to be about. Quite likely it is difficult to set up a very high-tech research facility on Earth so any weird technology or new biological life (twisted by the exurgent virus) might be needed to ship off. Some crazy collector might also find it worth to get a hold of historical artifacts or valuable art. I guess you know all this already, if I come up with something more creative I'll let you know. I think the PC will be upset if you shoot down killsats even if they deny having built them. Maybe even parts of Firewall? More interesting though, perhaps the killsats [i]themselves[/i] will be upset. Wouldn't it be creepy and an interesting story hook if when you shoot down a killsat, another one is built by the others and then put into place? That would bring some very real questions about how exactly it is all being run and why (and by whom). The best way to get up is probably to stage another downward entry and have your rocket dodge through all the debris and hide in the scrap. Sort of the same way you do to get down but in reserve. You could even have your rocket being layer-on-layer that will eject an inner rocket the moment the outer shell gets hit. I guess it's hard but doable.

you are forgetting neutrino far casters. they are the one thing that can't be jammed. in fact the emergency farcaster does just that and it fits in spine with a very very little amount of anti matter in fact its used in the opening story of the core book. things burning up in the earth's atmosphere are rather common because of all the decaying low orbital debris and the kill sats would work themselves to malfunction if they shot at every bit. its just getting through the interdiction zone to begin with but with total emissions control and very very well plotted route it can be done. exfiltration is going to be bitch though. the kill sats are going to see any thermal bloom denoting a launch and if you did not find a wide whole they will probably get 1 or more sats in kill range before you are out of the zone. careful watch of the patterns would be required to find a large enough opening. and remember ewar works both ways. you can always jam their radar as for all that is shiny and glitters? you wan't high value to mass ratio items. while i hesitate to say paper books and trading cards might be worth it. specific historical documents worth it.if any of the seed vaults are still intact those would set you for life. only a fraction of plant species were present off world when the fall occurred. new plants would be a boon to orbitals and the seed fault most of those are food bearing. genetic samples of any new species or non archived prefall species

Thule Gesellschaft wrote:

Moreover, how much would their enemies pay for the original if it could be used to leverage, say, a takeover bid on a hypercorp on the basis that the current CEO is now legally a beta fork? ... For my money I'd think of carrying a small multihead exit vehicle. Large enough for your cargo and the corticle stacks of the team and driven out of the atmosphere on something bonecrushingly powerful in terms of acceleration (like an Orion drive).

Great ideas throughout the post. A well-financed op to retrieve an oligarch's stack, followed up by a highly politicized aftermath has huge possibilities. The exit strategy is really nice, too. A hardcore team planning on ditching their bodies would be a very efficient escape option. It would also mean that the cargo ship could push serious acceleration after getting to orbital height, assuming that the escape vehicle had the fuel capacity for it. In terms of other ideas for high value items, there are endless possibilities: *Retrieve Action Comics #1 (or similar) for a super-rich geek. The value would probably be 1000x or more what it is now, because very few comics and similar items were probably saved. I especially like the idea/juxtaposition of a huge amount of money and lives being put on the line for any kind of "trivial" collector's item. The excess of the super-rich, etc, etc. *The Mona Lisa or Monet's Water Lillies (some of which are huge paintings, though). *The last, unpublished work of famed composer Zynod Novavedrynin, a descendant of both Frank Zappa and Bjork. Or maybe Zynod was performing his magnum opus for the first time in New York as the netwar escalated. He (and a number of his most stubborn fans, including celebrities and oligarchs), are rumored to be buried under rubble in downtown NY. And the concert recording may have survived...

Oh, I know -exactly- how I'd get off world... Alas that there are spies in this thread.

Well, since you said it first... Nuclear shotgun. Engineered metal spheres sitting on top of a high yield bomb. They'll see your launch, but which of the spheres has your cargo?

Maybe, maybe not. It is really the same principle as an Orion drive. We've (probably) put a big steel shaft cover into orbit using the technique, anyway.

Research conducted during the HARP and SHARP trials indicated that properly manufactured electronics could survive approx. 20 000 g. Stacks are diamond coated secure storage devices. They'll be fine! Forget the morph, though.

If you've got cash to burn (patron), small payload (their stuff), and no regard for the local real estate (several dozen square klicks) then a small antimatter vehicle may be your best bet. One hell of a ride.

Staying long enough to build a big mass driver without feeling that special tender caress offered by TITAN headhunters might be a challenge but then if that's what you're into... head hugs for everyone!

I don't think I'd let the one bomb idea fly unless a player could: 1) Show me the math 2) Explain the math I think you just want an excuse to use a strategic nuke you insane crustacean.

And that you could get the trajectory you wanted.

Thank you Aldrich. So one would need to bring a small orion vehicle or antimatter rocket with you and not try to use a strategic weapon for lift.

Easily? Look. I'm not saying that this automagically works, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. First off, nobody wants to be in orbit of earth - that's where the killsats live. You want to fly away as fast as possible, which is exactly what happens if you're going fast enough to hit escape velocity. As I said before, even modern electronics can survive what you'd think are insane accelerations. The trick is that it's all small and of similar density. 20,000gs are possible, you just have to make sure there's no air gaps internally. 28g is nothing to even modern materials. The thing about a one-shot cannon is that you don't -need- a gun barrel. Just an overkill of energy below you. And like an Orion drive, you use heavy duty materials and ablative layers to keep yourself intact as you're pushed.

Mwahaha! Thank you Aldrich! Space is wide (and good friends are too few) but a locator shouldn't be too difficult to throw on your nuclear cannonball. And hell, as heavily built as it must be, it might just go -through- a few killsats... I suppose that in many situations a neutrino farcaster makes more sense. I'm sure I'll think of a practical application eventually, though! . . . Nanite samples. Biosamples. Couriering large amounts of data? Hmm...

OneTrikPony wrote:

There may be something I dont understand but doesnt aerobraking from orbit involve about 3.5 minutes of reallly intense plasma, thus heat shielding on the shuttle. Failure of which can spread parts over half a continent?

The problem with orbiting is that you have to go REALLY fast to keep missing the Earth as its gravity tugs at you. If you're just at orbital height but stationary relative to the Earth's rotation, getting down isn't dramatic. Think Felix Baumgarten (even if he was stationary at a lower height). The same goes with getting up. The reason we need those incredibly big rockets isn't to get the height, it is to get the sidewards velocity needed to orbit. And when the shuttle has to come back down, instead of having an equally big rocket to slow it down from orbital speed, it uses aerobraking to shed the velocity. To compare, an ICBM can fit on a truck and carry a MIRV warhead to a height of 400km (but of course it doesn't have the delta v to stay up there). In reverse, the ICBM rocket moving slowly at 400km has the delta v to land safely on the ground. Theoretically, you could have a spaceship that flies by Earth, drops a payload that somehow manages to slow down relative to Earth and decend undramatically, and then flies back up in something that can only achieve height but is then picked up by a spaceship that flies away with it. A bit like a skyhook. Of course, the hooking part is very difficult when your relative velocities are at meteor magnitudes... But with a few stages, it should be totally doable. You drop a number of booster rockets - the first at the velocity needed to hook the slow payload, which then accelerates it up to speed to hook up with booster rocket 2, which then gets it up to speed to hook up to the spaceship. Since booster rocket 2 doesn't have to carry the fuel for rocket 1, their combined size would be much less than the size of a modern rocket (though you'd still need fuel to slow them down enough to make the rendezvouses, and that's going to be a lot).

Everybody here is forgetting the obvious solution. The Kilimanjaro space elevator and counterweight station [i]are still standing[/i]. And the counterweight is [i]far[/i] above the level of the killsat interdiction. So however you choose to get down (and boy, it will probably be a !!FUN!! ride, unless you're getting down the way you're getting up, in which case it'll just being boring and nerve-wracking,) you just get to Kilimanjaro and start climbing. You can restore power to the cable-cars, you can engineer your own self-powered cable-car, or, if you're in synths that just don't give a fuck, take hold of the cable and start manually climbing. The only bitch will be the fact that the spaceport is headhunter central, but they're low-altitude rotordrones, so once you get above their territory, you've just got a mind-numbingly long climb ahead of you. I'd use a synth that doesn't have any obvious "head" and is heavily kinetic armored. Also one equipped with a plasma rifle on a swivel. Then you can escape earth with [i]literally[/i] what you can carry out on your back! After that, you just need to have a ship waiting at the counterweight station, preferably an antimatter courier or an orion, and burn [b]hard[/b] because the LLA will be [i]piiiiiiiiiiiissed[/i] at you. (Or you could just do things the boring way and exfiltrate to more "normal" orbital habitats and propagate outwards like regular relic hunters. But that's not nearly as much fun as riding a nuclear jackhammer or an antimatter rocket out, whilst projecting a five-kilometer-tall fist with upraised middle finger at the LLA.) I also feel obliged to point out that EP tech has advanced to the point where a biomorph wearing a sufficiently engineered space-suit is a reentry vehicle in and of itself. Though Sunward points this out, and also points out that because of this, the killsats sometimes keep shooting the debris until they can no longer track any pieces bigger than a breadbox. So go ahead: you're already gonna make enemies. May as well sail in at the tail end of a swarm of MIRVs designed to nuke an entire patch of sky clean of the little fuckers.

ORCACommander wrote:

I was under the impression the counterweight was both in the interdiction zone and filled with titan war bots

It is neither, as the opening story from the [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] core rulebook illustrates. It [i]is[/i] potentially full of still-functioning security bots which were set to "slaughter everything" mode as a last-ditch measure, but either way, plasma cannons, yo.

pretty feasible but them using the term mass driver keeps me thinking about c fractional kinetic strikes

I would imagine that mass driven shots from the Moon to Earth are [i]not[/i] "gentle" pushes. I'm not saying you [i]couldn't[/i] hitch a ride on one, though. What I [i]am[/i] saying is that to actually get to Earth, you'd have to ride the kinetic warhead below the interdiction zone, and [i]then[/i] separate, and [i]then[/i] shed all of that momentum. You'd have to ignite a [i]very[/i] serious rocket to do that.