Project Overworld

After another few weeks of intense work, Spacol members were finally seeing the end of the tunnel with their current projects. Most of the induction furnaces and the three-dimensional printers Keith had planned to launch on the Moon were finished and almost two third were already up and running on the natural satellite.

Thanks to the cameras Leyla insisted on equipping onto one of their robots, they managed to see the progress of the construction of their dwellings. This process was quite a bit slower than they initially expected, but steady nonetheless.

The 'Moon explorer' as the group of friends called their camera robot, was also meant to be receiving order through radio waves. Because of that, Keith has been able to test the rigidity of their base walls by headbutting them and was pretty satisifed about the result.

'I didn't think things would be going so easily for us. However, my estimations were based on the best possible outcome and I don't think we'll be able to establish there in less than two months, in the end.' Keith meditated.

In fact, they had quite a bit of work left to do before officially establishing on the Moon. First, they needed to launch quite a bit of greenhouses so their base would be supplied with enough oxygen for the five of them. Other gases were also required to produce and habitable atmosphere for humans, but as long as they did not grow plants consuming said gases they should be able to live off of a single gas tank for several years straight.

In any case the greenhouses, albeit using materials totally different materials than they have been constructing their machine with, would not be that hard for them to produce in large quantity. The main limitations regarding these plant habitats would be size-wise. Since the rockets they sent on the Moon were limited in their capacity, they should not really be able to launch greenhouses of a size exceeding two hundred square feet.

Because of that, they would need to launch around a dozen of them towards the Moon, meaning that they should be launching as much rocket. Afterwards, well, they would mostly be set with their Moon base. Quite a lot of tasks required them to be working from the natural satellite directly. Their factory meant to be exploiting the ice on the poles of the Moon needed to be assembled from scratch as well as the pipe leading water to their base.

However, this was not nearly everything. After accomplishing all the tasks stated before, they would certainly be able to live on the Moon for months, nay years, without inconvenience. The thing was, all their resources would still be routed towards the EOSS, and they would have no way to recover them from their future settlement.

The 'EOSS Launcher' series was not meant to be traveling all the way to the Moon and was only equipped with almost the exact amount of fuel it needed to reach orbit or Spacol's space station. There was a bit of leftovers, certainly, but nearly to enough to be traveling hundreds of thousands miles into space. Keith has been quite torn about finding a solution during the past few months but only unefficient ones came up in his mind.

Since most of the journey towards the Moon was taking off from the Earth anyways, the rockets they were currently launching towards the natural satellite were only one fourth of their 'EOSS Launcher' supply rockets. However, once these rockets went through several stages and got rid of their heavy structure along the way, they docked on the station with only a small portion of their initial size.

Even resupplied with fuel, these would not quite be able to reach the Moon. Keith thus imagined building another 'Rocket assembler' directly on the EOSS that would be using some of the resources contained within the rocket itself to expand upon its fuel tanks and its engine a bit. This solution would be one of the less inconveniant one for them, but not necessarly the most efficient. Every now and then, one of their supply rocket would be destined to restock the fuel capacity the station so it could be refueling future rockets before letting them launch towards the Moon.

Another solution would be to improve the 'Rocket assembler' present on their land base yet again so it could be building rockets large enough to reach the natural satellite of the Earth. However, this was an almost unthinkable solution as they would essentially have to revamp their entire machine design. According to his calculations, Keith estimated that they would need several months just to accomplish such a feat.

'This is so complicated...' He complained while making order in his thoughts. In the end, the first soluation consisting of making another machine to enlarge their rocket was the only one he could consider. Albeit unefficient, they would still be able to find some materials on the Moon to work with an improved rate.

Their natural needs such as eating and drinking would not be a problem anymore because they would be growing plants and exploiting water on the Moon. On top of that, the latter could also be separated into oxygen and hydrogen which exploded when put into contact with each other. This was really useful in producing rocket fuel so they would need a lot less resources coming from the Earth, in the end.

'Well, I don't think we have any other choice.' Keith concluded. For the next few months, it looked like Spacol was going to get even busier than before.

_______________

- "The first session of Project Vanilla is officially finished!" Amber proclaimed. After two months, the launch of their large project finally showed its fruits. To celebrate the occasion, the mayor of Midgard organized an event to congratulate the first twenty thousand players who took place in the arena.

The players were asked their feelings regarding their experience so that this game may be improving in the future. The ten most performing player also got their name reserved in the 'Hall of fame' of the first edition of Project : Vanilla.

Amber was being really excited because most of the feedback she got was positive. Overall, for the extended period of time this event took place in, the popularity of Yggdrasil and Project Overworld as whole surged yet again.

After the opening of Asgard and this new 'Survival arena', the number of active players grew by more than fifty percent. Amber could not be more elated after seeing such a rise in the playebase and her projects succeeding.

The next step of the municipal team of Yggdrasil would be to expand upon both of these concepts and maintain the entertainement of the community as high as possible. For Project : Vanilla, this would not really be that complicated. The team affect to the elaboration of the event already thought of many way to improve both the arean and the rules surrounding it.

In any case, since only a small portion of the population would be able to take place in the arena every few months, this event would certainly not be losing in popularity anytime soon. However, Amber and her team were much more worried about the future of Asgard. They had to constantly make new films, new dramas and new sets of cards for the player to not lose interest in the city.

Thus, recently, Amber started recruiting another municipal team that would be specifically assigned to Asgard. This was a first, actually, because every continent only had one municipal team up until now. However, this job was so constraining that the municipal team of Yggdrasil could not be taking care of every city they had to manage while thinking of new games they could be developing.

- "Mina, why didn't the company Ironclad respond yet? I thought they would be considering my proposition?" Amber asked her secretary.

- "They are going through so many commands at the moment, madam. I don't think they will be able to respond anytime soon."

"Seriously now..?" She mumbled in her beard. 'Things are going to get quite a lot complicated in the next few weeks, I should get ready to spend most of my free time in this game.' She meditated before focusing back on her paperwork.

_______________

- "Alright, we should be done with the base itself." Keith announced after they witnessed their last greenhouse being launched towards the Moon. "For now, we should focus on the rocket extender." They were left with quite a bit of work related to the rerouting of the resources coming from the Earth towards the Moon.

If this process was not completely functional by the time they got to the Moon, they would essentially be stuck there without anyway to come back on the Earth other than respawning at Midgard. This was a last stand solution that Keith did not want to resort to.

The most worrying factor about their incoming journey, though, would be the amount of essential resources they would be able to bring alongside them. They would essentially need several months before being completely self-sufficient within their Moon base. In fact, before any plant started growing within their greenhouses, they would be left with no oxygen production. Thus, they would need to bring a large quantity of oxygen reservoirs on top of the construction resources they needed to assemble the ice factory and every other machine that was still incomplete.

Fortunately, Jim did a really great job with their space shuttle. A total of fifty-two tons of materials could now be fitting inside its cargo while not being affected too much regarding their future landing on the Moon. This much weight would certainly prevent them from going back on Earth, but it was never designed to do so anyways.

After Keith examined the spacecraft, he could not help but be impressed by the young man's job. He was fairly certain its thrusters would be able to produce enough power to bring them all the way to the Moon and its fuel tanks would certainly be enough to supply them for over half a million of miles with its cargo being filled to the brink.

'Everything is going quite smoothly.' Keith realized. 'Let's follow up with that rocket extender and we should be set for a Moon lifestyle!'