Freedom Star Station
Announced before 2020, the Freedom Star is an orbital platform planned by the United States government to achieve rapid deployment to any theater of war necessary, in an effort to regain its position as the premier world superpower.
Overview[]
While partly designed for civilian research purposes, the station also houses three companies of U.S. Marines, who can deploy anywhere on Earth within 90 minutes.[1][2] This would presumably be done via the shuttles seen on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center, in the news broadcast about the station (seen in the image to the right) and in the artwork for the Freedom Star. The Freedom Star was constructed in four modules, with the Freedom IV being the final module. Comments by Scott Mitchell during Act Two's mission briefing indicate that costs associated with the Freedom IV amounted to $35 billion.
International reaction was extremely negative, to say the least. The Freedom Star was denounced as an "American Aircraft Carrier in Space." The European Federation and Russia in particular despised the development, seeing it as a way the US could use to neutralize their portion of the Space-Land-Air-Missile Shield and upset the balance of power. In 2020 the EF withdraw from the already divided NATO in protest.[3]
Prelude to War[]
The US continued the plans, and all was set to space-lift the final payload, Freedom Four, to complete the station, when the April 4th attack slightly delayed it. Shortly before the re-scheduled launch, elements of the Spetsnaz Guard Brigades embark on a covert operation, disguised as Green Brigade members in the novel and as Forgotten Army forces in the game, to upload a computer virus into the European SLAMS network at Rovaniemi Air Base in Finland. The virus causes an EF orbital laser satellite to misidentify the lifter as an InterContinental Ballistic Missile and takes it down. The entire crew is killed, and news reports blaming problems from "malfunction" to "terrorist hijacking" to (finally) "EF satellite." This final act starts a war between the US and the EF.
Concept Art[]
Trivia[]
- Cut content indicates that news reports would originally discuss the launch of the other three modules (named Freedom I, II and III) and the increasing European-American tensions as the US continued with the Freedom Star's construction in more detail. David Becerra was originally to be shown both announcing and defending the construction of the Freedom Star by arguing it was necessary to defend the US and posed no threat to the European Federation, who in turn accused Becerra of accelerating the arms race between the US and Europe.[4]
- Concept art indicates the Freedom Star's shuttles may have been intended to be able to deploy troops, though it is unclear how this would have been implemented as a game mechanic. Interestingly, cut dialogue for the original 2nd mission of the game indicates that JSF combat engineers would spawn on the JFK Space Center Launch Pad partway through the mission as they already loaded into it with their weapons to go to the Freedom Star space station and Mitchell ordered them out in order to participate in the defence of the Space Center[5]
- The Freedom Star was likely inspired by SUSTAIN, a US military project in the 2000s that looked into the possibility of being able to deploy US marines anywhere on Earth using spaceflight. Notably, concept art for the Freedom Star's shuttles has the name "J.S.F_HOT EAGLE", which is likely a reference to Project Hot Eagle, an investigation by DARPA into possible suborbital spacecraft designs for the SUSTAIN project. The shuttles also closely resemble the design of some concept pieces created for the US military under Project Hot Eagle.