Project Overworld

For the first few weeks they started working in space, most of Spacol members felt like they were in a dream. Everyday, they would float around their base, while getting busy with various tasks.

Since they were all reunited in this station, they usually played with each other during breaks and discovered what weightlessness had in store for them. Those remote controlled cars Michael and Jim brought with them turned out to be a disappointment since they would fly off at any asperity encountered. However, things like football and other team sports were a lot more fun to do in space. Since they were evolving in a three-dimensional environment, they could be juking their opponent really easily by going in a direction they did not expect.

As for the workload, although Keith put a bit of pressure on them at the beginning, it turned out much more managable than they expected. However, the real challenge was to take into account that their was no gravity in the EOSS. A lot of their machine designs had to be redone all over again because it could not print the required part as it did on Earth.

After getting used to it, though, they quickly discovered that it was a blessing rather than a curse. Excepting from the hazardous behaviour of liquids, managing solid items was much easier in space than on a planet. No need for conveyor belts anymore, they could simply throw it using a slingshot. Although anticipating its trajectory was much harder than convey it to the d.e.s.i.r.ed destination, with a few trials and errors they would be transporting materials and finalized parts alike everywhere on the station without anything more than an automated slingshot.

It essentially reduced their need for resources as well as the total time spent on a specific machine. The only problem were furnaces. Since fire was consuming oxygen at such an alarming rate, they could not be smelting ores from space directly. Instead, they had to be using the parts their land base sent to the EOSS while optimizing every crafting process so it does use up a lot of their oxygen.

In the end, they all understood why Keith was so eager to establish on the Moon. Some of them thought about growing plants in space to produce some oxygen their directly. However, they would need so much water to do so that they woould need to find a way to speed up the rate at which rockets were being launched by their land base. It would be much more efficient for now to be launching reservoirs of liquid oxygen from Earth instead of growing plants in the EOSS.

Once they established onto the Moon, however, things would be a lot different. Because of the large amount of ice present at the poles of this celestial body, growing plants and trees in some sort of greenhouses would not be a dream anymore.

For about three weeks, Michael and Tyler focused on building the module Keith had ordered them to take care of. Xena only joined them by the middle of the second week, but she did speed up their work by a lot.

This job required them to be equipped with space suits since they were about to pierce a hole in the station. Picking a location at first, they decided to build this new module by the end of the eastern side of the EOSS. They sealed off the module they would be working from and started off by installing a door leading to the outside of their base.

Fortunately, Keith has been teaching them all a lot of things regarding module construction in the past. As such, they mostly understood which devices and electronical parts should be installed within the wall of this new module. By the end of these three weeks of intense work, they were mostly done with its overall structure. Its goal was to be some sort of a pressurizing chamber while having a device for spacecrafts to be docking themselves onto the station.

Once the main computer of their base detected that there was no opening left in the module, air would be dumped into this chamber and the docked spacecraft. Thanks to this, Jim should be able to dock their space shuttle to the station and work directly from there in the future.

Regarding his progress, Jim started disassembling the back of the space shuttle so he could be expanding it. It has been a really complex task for him to do so since he was forced to use a space suit for this work, but he did not lack motivation. In any case, Keith knew he would not be finished with it before long and actually planned to reassign a few members of Spacol and help him in this task.

This space shuttle was one of their least urgent project to take care of, and for now he prefered the rest of his subordinates to be expanding the EOSS. They needed a lot more functionalities for their station so they could be working more confortably from up there.

Finally, Leyla and him made some real progress during this lapse. They started designing their future dwellings for the first few weeks before getting interested in the exploitation of ice present on the Moon. Their job was the most important for the entirety of Spacol, because it essentially determined their future development. The faster they resolved every issue they could think of regarding live on the Moon, the faster Keith could engage the procedures of building their next base.

This was the reason why he chose Leyla to be working with him. She was undoubtedly the best engineer of his subordinates and had a different way of seeing things than he did. In fact, every member of Spacol also gave off their own opinions and ideas regarding a specific problem thanks to the weekly meetings he organized.

- "What is today's subjects? Same as last week?" Michael inquired after everyone gather inside the meeting room.

- "Well, I think we adressed the problem of ice exploitation last week, so today will be a bit different. Actually, I think we've talked about most of the technological problems we could be having on the Moon. I initially wanted to talk about greehouses and which plant we should be cultivating there, but it should not be taking more than our two brains for this matter." He explained while poiting at Leyla. "No, instead I wanted to discuss our organization for the future."

- "Organization? What do you mean? Like who should be working on which project and so on?" Tyler asked.

- "No, I meant for our establishment on the Moon."

Everyone in the room fell quiet after hearing what Keith just announced. Even Leyla was not aware that Keith already wanted to establish on the Moon.

Tyler spoke again with an hesitating voice : "Are we ready yet? I mean, shouldn't we talk about the machines which would be helping us process the various resources of the Moon into usable materials for our base?"

- "Exactly!" Keith exclaimed. "We need to launch machines there in no time!"

- "Yeah but, have you thought about any way to exploit moon dust and basalt?" This time, it was Leyla who cut him.

- "Well, not exactly. That's why I wanted to review our organization so we may start producing these machines as soon as possible. Recently, I felt like the EOSS has been more of a constraint rather than an upgrade. Obviously, it would be impossible to launch the machines from the Earth all the way to the Moon, so we had to go to space at one point. However, we won't be accomplishing a lot of things by staying on this station. The main problem is our limitations in oxygen and access to water."

- "So... Do you mean we've been working for nothing?" Xena inquired.

- "Nope, we still need to be developing that space shuttle and the module you've been working on will certainly help in that regard. This will be the main way for us to go on the Moon after all. However, me and Leyla will be starting to work one those smelters able to process basalt and moon dirt. After you're done building the docking module, I would need two of you to join Jim on his space shuttle and the last one will be joining us."

- "So, we should be ready according to you." Leyla commented while rethinking about Tyler's interjection.

- "Yeah, I think so. In any case, the faster we get to build some dwellings on the Moon, the faster we should be able to work because we'd be living directly on site. By the time we finish working on those smelters and constructors to build our homes, we should also be receiving parts to assemble greenhouses and the machine able to exploit the ice present on the Moon."

Since nobody was talking anymore, Keith started motivating his subordinates.

- "What are yall waiting for? Resume your work at once! We'll start our new organization by the end of next week, whether you are ready or not!" He exclaimed in an amused tone.