About 25 years ago, some engineer came up with a brilliant use for an EM shield, translucent metal, artificial gravity fields and a beach. At least that was the model I was on. To whoever that was that created these things, thank you! Here’s my experience on one of these marvels.

So, Allister, my friend at the university, called me up and said, lets go for a ride. I said, ok, I didn’t have any work to do anyway. We met outside and drove over the DC regional space port. We didn’t have time for an Space Elevator, so we commissioned a rocket transport to take us to a station that I hadn’t heard of before. Allister called it the Bubble Station. I thought it was an odd name, it really didn’t look like a bubble. It was an odd design, five type three Bigelow modules stacked horizontally on top of each other. From each junction point there were four long docking collars extending outward for about a mile in seperate directions. Attached to each collar were anywhere from two to a half a dozen, what can only be described as, bubbles. They were, of course, Bubble Yacht’s. For some reason I just had never gotten to see these things. Allister told me that they are exclusively for the ultra rich. There were only around 100 of these things in existance.

How we, two ordinary universities professors, were getting on this thing was simply beyond me. And I didn’t ask once. I didn’t want to spoil the moment with the logistics of how this moment came to be. We docked with the station and made our way to collar 5. The ride on the space car was almost as intense as the whole experience.  We went by three other yachts on our way to ours. They were sights to behold. Each one was roughly 1 acre and each one had totally different interiors. Allister would later tell me that there were other models on differen collars that were much smaller. The acre sized ones here were the biggest on this station. But that someone had once built a ten acre bubble yacht. Incredible! No one ever talks about it so I’m sure it’s hidden away in some corner of the system. A mini-translucent bubble world.

The first we saw had a small forest on it! I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. Something as simple as a forest. There was a nice lodge and a small cottage. I could see birds flying through the trees and even some squirls in the trees. I even spotted a large tree house up in the trees. There didn’t seem to be anyone home but I could only imagine what it would be like to drift through the heavens sitting on that porch.

The second ship had two structures on it. One was large house with a partial roof. If you have your own atmosphere, why do you need a roof after all. The other building was, amazingly, what looked like a farm building. I couldn’t tell how far it went down but it went up nearly to the top of the bubble. Little bit of an eye sore if you ask me but the intention is clear. This bubble was meant to be self sustaining. Some billionare’s idea to detach one day and sail off never to be heard from again most likly.

The third ship was stunning. There was a small island in the center of the ship. Water surrounded. There were a few small row boats and even a three man sail boat on the water. Imagine that, a boat inside a bubble floating through space. I could see a few people sitting on the boats, one of them waved.

We made it the end of collar five, got out of the car and went to the docking ring. A few moments through the interlock chambers and there we were. On a beach. In a bubble. In Space. Wow. This one was just as neat as the others. A small beach, small amount of water to simulate an ocean and a few small cottages lining the shore. It was simply incredible.

The owner of the bubble came out to greet us. Or at least I thought it was the owner, he seemed like he was. He immediatly introduced himself simply as Tom and began to give us a tour. He never asked who we were, he must have already known. Tom walked us along the beach, describing the construction of the ship, how the EM fields work, the translusent metal, the propulsion system built beneath us. It was really incredible to hear about these ships. Aparantly, most of the big ones are our in the system somewhere. A few are even serving as ultra luxury hotels.

It was to my dismay that we weren’t going to go anywhere. The ride on the bubble ship was more of a sitting on the beach and looking at the view of earth below us. Still very neat. What’s even neater is Tom told us that sometimes they’ll suspend the gravity and let you float around a bit. They have to lock down the water so it doesn’t go all over the place and do a few safty procedures but it would be very cool to experience.

We sat on the beach for awhile and headed home. It was a fun day to be sure. As soon as I got home I started this post. I’ll be looking for one of the hotels next. I think I want to plan a vacation to a bubble hotel, I saw that one is currently at the Jupiter system. That would be an amazing view!

Whatever my reasoning, I decided to hop an elevator to upper orbit, rent a room and schedule a seat on the next Luna bound shuttle. I must say the elevator ride is quite pretty, though a little long. You get an incredible view of the Earth. I live in DC, so I took the North Atlantic elevator up. Great view of the eastern seaboard and you can see western Europe.

So a short trip up and I was at the Hyatt. That place is getting a little run down I must say. Why is it that companies are unwilling to spend on upgrading things in orbit? I dunno. The Hyatt is based on the old Bigelow design from 300 years ago, again the 300 year theme.  It’s not an actual construction from that time of course but it’s one of the inflatable designs. It’s just such a good, cheap design why make anything else? Of course, other designs have been made. My room didn’t’ have a window but I did go down to the viewing hub and took a look around. It’s crowded out there. I saw three pinwheel hotels, several science stations and a few military installations. The giant O-Ring station was just visible to me. It is the largest station in earth orbit, with offices for nearly 35,000 people, 5,000 of them living there. It is a massive construction. It single handily controls all space traffic for the entire inner system , earth orbit and ships entering or leaving Earth. It is a primary docking station for ships leaving or arriving at Earth.  I do want to tour that place one day, they do offer tours. It really is a building in space. Though not the biggest man made space bound construction out there, it is the biggest in earth orbit.

But at any rate, I stayed in the viewing hub for a bit, watched stations whiz by, a few yachts, some space skimmers, I even saw a girl in a fly suit, those things are wicked! Latest thing out there for space survival and of course someone took it, tweaked it and made it into a luxury item. Love it.

I crashed out and the next day caught a speed shuttle to New Luna. Those things are quick. It’s a “goo” ship, technically called a Fast Inertial Suppression Transit ship, commonly called a FIST ship, obviously.  Kinda gross really. But I wanted to get to New Luna and back in a week and this was the cheapest and best bet. No way in hell am I ever going to scan myself there. That stuff is just not for me, not my way to travel. I don’t care what anyone says.

At any rate, I got submerged in goo, the FIST ship got me to New Luna just under 2 hours. After a very long shower I hit the streets. Ah New Luna. Love that place. It has grown since I got there last. I honestly think they are just going to grow an grow until they’ve hollowed out the entire moon. Though of course, that’s a big exaggeration. They are only 60 or so square miles, roughly.

So anyway, on the first day I walked the main drag, ate some great Italian food, not as good as Little Italy in NY of course but still pretty good. I played a bit in the low grav sector. It’s actually neat how they’ve done it, some streets are low grav and some are Earth normal. Grave plates were a neat invention for sure.

The second day I wanted to go caving. They have tunneled out a massive caving system for tourists. Whole thing is all moon standard gravity. You can practically float from hand hold to hand hold down the caves. It’s a great day trip. There’s a lake down there they have, going swimming in log grav is a unique experience. They have life guards there though, even experienced swimmers can’t handle the uniqueness of low grav swimming.

Day three I decided for debauchery and gambling. I hit the casino district and just played poker for awhile. I actually won some money. And since I won some money I decided to play on the fourth day of my stay and lost it all back again. Ah, gambling.

I ended my week vacation with doing some site seeing. I went to a few museum’s, went to the home of the first president of New Luna, Constitution Hall and the a bunch of the other general tourist places.

After my excursions I grabbed a FIST ship, headed back to the North Atlantic elevator and went home. Was a great trip I must say. I once fancied the idea of moving up there but I couldn’t handle all the tourists. The one great thing about living in a terrestrial city is you don’t have as many damn tourists. No one cares about visiting DC anymore, well that’s not true, we do get our share. But no where near as many as you get on some of the other hot spots in the inner system. The outer system, of course, is more for the hard core enthusiasts. There’s still a sense of ‘wild’ out there and in many places it’s lawless. I much prefer the civil and ordered cities of the inner system. Next up, I think i’ll head to Sphere’s. That is a neat place!