nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Continuity has a map of a research station. You might want to dig through Arementarous's site, I'd give even odds that he has something.

Thanks for the vote of confidence :-) However, I don't think I have a research station per se. The closest thing is the location in http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/ThinkBeforeAsking.pdf but that is largely a converted living habitat. The key thing is: what kind of research is going on? Research stations dealing with virtual stuff (AI, psychosurgery, philosophy...) can look like anything, since all the work is going on in AR and simspaces. They will be a habitat where researchers can live and work in relative comfort, so they will have living spaces, environments suitable for having AR-supported meetings (everything from offices to gardens) and the always necessary life support systems. Servers can be housed in discreet wall spaces. If there are high bandwidth links the outside might have antenna arrays and neutrino transmitters. Gravity is highly optional here, largely dependent on what the owners can afford and want (a linked tincan structure like the ISS is super-cheap, a rotating torus costs more - having one or two habitat modules connected by a rotating tether as a bola might be a nice and cheap intermediate solution). For research dealing with stuff - biotech, nanotech, chemistry etc you want labs. But a lab in EP can be very different from current labs. It can be microscopic (a matchbox-like device housing all equipment you need to analyse and work with nanomachines) or completely sealed or isolated from the rest of the hab (you just link up to the local robotics or even sleeve in them to work there, no matter ever enters the living section). Here is a few sketches: Anbar Station This is the R&D department of the Luna-based security software hypercorp Naos. It is an oldfashioned torus habitat in orbit around Luna, bought cheaply a few years after the Fall and refurbished with the latest interior and security features. The interior has a mild 0.25 G gravity, supplied by a 1.5 rpm rotation. The torus radius is 100 meters, with a width of 20 meters and typically 5 floors. At the rotation axis there is a docking system and elevator complex for bringing visitors down to the torus (the hub and elevator are also part of the security screening). The interior is divided into seven sections: Fluorite, Apatite, Feldspar, Quartz, Topaz, Corundum, Diamond (with matching interior design). Each section is separated from the others by strong bulkheads and have their own airlocks/emergency escape pods, energy storage and local life support. Entry to each section is controlled. The layout on each floor is fairly similar, with a central hallway running along the torus and elevator/stair batteries at the centre of each section. The outer rim (the "lowest" floor) has a hallway running around the station (popular among joggers and people who like to work while walking), surrounded mainly by the utility functions. Security-wise it acts as a low-security eight section. Fluorite and Apatite are living areas, Feldspar is life support and engineering, Quartz a communal meeting space (cafeterias, a small park, sports facilities) and Topaz, Corundum and Diamond are the workspaces. Workspaces tend to be empty, fairly bland rooms where people manage their virtual projects. Some are equipped with smartmatter that can be shaped or used in tactile environments (the red-blue intrusion/counterintrusion challenges held every week between the offensive and defensive teams often leads to quasi-virtual snowball fights). Research at Anbar focuses on artificial intelligence (Topaz), software security (Corundum) and military automation (Diamond). Unsurprisingly, the software security is the best Naos can build. Outside communications are handled by systems completely separated from the internal mesh, and everything is scrutinized by dedicated security AGIs. There are several isolated sections where systems can be totally isolated from the internal Mesh and outside sensors. They have Faraday cages of superconductors, dense matter shielding and even arrays of particle detectors to check for external scanning. Some of them contain big mainframes. This is where the truly sensitive research happens, such as experiments bordering on seed AGI, reverse engineering competitor software or running massive simulations for clients on military scenarios. Security is paranoid in the extreme: the security airlocks not only scan people in all available wavelengths, they inject inspector nanomachines that remain at least for the duration of the visit, checking for contraband (and, rumour has it, later breaches of the nondisclosure agreements). Avestrucera Avestrucera is the research habitat run by Liuwang-Troy Associates, an extropian biotechnology consultancy firm. Located in the Belt, in a loose orbit around 21082 Araimasaru, it is fairly isolated but not too far away from the Inner System. Avestrucera is a small bolo habitat. A docking rig at the center of rotation allows ships to dock, but ascending and descending along the cable requires a spacewalk. It has a living module with space for 5 biomorphs that looks like a 20x20x20 meter cube, irregularly divided into 4 levels. The interior is a mixture between biotech utility jungle (engineered plants and animals are everywhere) and functionalism (think Biosphere 2). Gravity is 0.5 G. At the other end lies the research lab module. It is composed of seven cylindrical compartments 20 meters long and 10 across. Each compartment has entirely separate life support, robotics and nanomanufacturing facilities. The only thing needed from the outside is energy. The interiors can be reconfigured for different kinds of work: they can be filled with water, they can be compartmentalized into small cells, they can be classic labs or artificial ecosystems. When needed they can also be sterilized by incineration and nanorecycling. Normally kept at 0.5 G, it is possible to raise or lower compartments to produce different levels of gravity. Nanofactories placed on Araimasaru can produce new lab modules as needed. They are brought up by 'forklift' (a small orbital utility transport/manipulator robot). There are also some finished lab modules kept in reserve on the surface; recently a few have been used for a zero gravity neural growth project for Examente. The asteroid surface also houses some large solar panels for producing extra power for the station, which can be beamed over using a microwave link. Liuwang-Troy Associates runs experiments and projects for other companies. Typically they run through the variations of different genomes, mapping out their consequences and testing their robustness. This can be everything from improved baker's yeast to biomorph organs to small artificial ecosystems. One reason for the isolated location is to ensure minimum risk of industrial espionage. Some of the company's customers pay dearly for extremely secret projects. Recently one anonymous (but well-paying) customer has started delivering samples of alien organisms via robotic transport to the lab, running very unusual tests on them in a few lab modules.

Hmm, what kind of lab would I bring a piece of weird, possibly TITAN-infested ore to? (Black Mesa is the obvious answer, haha :-) )? A lot depends on whether this is a standard occurrence (then there is a dedicated research station with experts and routines) or something unexpected (bring it to the nearest lab for preliminary analysis). I can imagine something like Anbar or Avestrucera, but with a physics/chemistry/nano lab. A proper lab might have a sealed compartment filled with vacuum, where the sample can be manipulated using robotic waldos, bots or even lab synthmorphs. It might have not just an in-compartment fabber for equipment but a small accelerator for particle imaging and various nanosystems for sampling, disassembly and nanomanipulation. If they expect it to be dangerous there will be guardian nanobots and other immune systems - but if they are really paranoid, they will put the sample inside a Faraday cage and investigate very carefully. An improper lab is of course much more dangerous... no real bio or nanocontainment, no truly paranoid security, staff that think the sample can be handled like ordinary rocks. The real scare might be if the lab is housed inside a bigger habitat. Then it would be like a normal building, and if something gets loose it will be amidst plenty of bystanders.

One habitat I'm working on for my own campaign is a group of carousel habitats (see video here: [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCitVw8GP2o[/url]) looking a huuuuuge hourglasses. [img]http://img2.lln.crunchyroll.com/i/spire4/04222008/b/e/b/c/bebc114684bd30...