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ORION

And now we go and do it all over again. Another pointless battle. Another bereaved family. Another year of war. And the UIR does exactly the same. Someone has to break the cycle. Someone has to create weapons so powerful that if politicians want to wage war, they'll face the same death as the men and women sent to fight it. A deterrent. A damn big deterrent. I can build a deterrent that'll bring governments to their sense. An orbital weapons system. That's my duty now.

-Gears of War

Orbital Retaliation Intercontinental Opposition Neutralizer.

An incredibly advanced railgun put in space to utilize the extra reentry velocity. Of course, to get the most out of the ultra-expensive railgun, it's a fully militarized space station in its own right.

The NAU takes advantage of the microgravity environment to manufacture high-quality optics with minimum waste of precious materials. Growing monocrystaline silicon tiles and diamonds works too.

Force Composition[]

1 Space station, LEO Polar Orbit (480km)

  • Module 1: JUPITER
  • Module 2: LTFR
  • Module 3: Ring-shaped rotating quarters (is a 0.3g environment)
  • Module 4: Ring-shaped counter-rotating quarters (is a 0.3g environment)
  • Module 5: Connecting passageways and docks, plus defensive equipment
  • Module 6: Eight radiator arrays

Sensory[]

ORION carries a battery of four independent E/O telescopes, four Synthetic Aperture Radars (to detect tanks 480km below, in a raging blizzard), and a 360-degree thermograph array to detect incoming threats.

Upgrades[]

Orbital AESA module[]

Attached to the front of Module 1, this X-band AESA is dedicated to the JUPITER, and dramatically boosts the detection capability of both targets on the ground and in space.

Armament[]

General Atomics JUPITER(1)[]

The Joint Universal Precision Intercontinental Target Eradication Railgun, or JUPITER, was specially researched and designed by General Atomics for one reason and one reason only: to act as a non-radioactive nuke. General Atomics delivered a quad-rail (alternates between pairs to enhance rate of fire, complete with liquid nitrogen cooling and hydraulic clamps) electromagnetic projectile accelerator. Breech-loaded and powered by Module 2 (which is dedicated to the railgun), JUPITER can launch a 100mm x 475mm ceramic heat-shielded magnetic sabot-equipped ballistic-capped tungsten rod weighing 178 kilograms to 1,000 meters per second. Thanks to being in orbit at 480km, it can pick up an additional 3,000m/s on its way back to earth, allowing it to deal 1.42 x 109 Joules of energy to a target. Recoil is compensated for by magnetic recharging brakes and the dumping of expended liquid (now gaseous) nitrogen directly backwards. Alternatively the recoil can be used to reboost the space station. Effective rate of fire 1 rpm, rail lifespan 10 rounds. Upon impact, the rod can create a massive airburst causing extreme damage to a huge area, with the concussive kill radius well over half a kilometer, while the supersonic wind can blow apart a human being—literally.

THEL(4)[]

To provide ORION with close-range defensive firepower, Module 5 mounts four THELs on the outer layers. Cooled by liquid nitrogen, the THEL gets a massive range boost in space, thanks to having no atmosphere to diffuse the beam. It has two modes: one is the direct-fire mode that deals (the equivalent energy of) a 40mm shell; the other is the low-powered ablative laser mode that can clean up space junk.

Upgrades[]

None.

Protection[]

Designed to last, ORION gets a Supramolecular (self-healing) plastic “Whipple shield”, and non-Newtonian foam (D-30)-backed Kevlar padding, and last but not least, an Aluminum inner plate. The multi-layered spaced armor allows ORION to survive hypervelocity strikes by space junk. It also has heavy radiation shielding.

Upgrades[]

None.

Mobility[]

ORION has a few arrays of high-efficiency ion thrusters spread out around the spacecraft to effectively maneuver it.

Power comes from Module 2, a Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactor that is mainly dedicated to Module 1's JUPITER, but also provides the electricity for the habitation module and robotic service arms. Excess electricity can also be stored in the satellite's Lithium-polymer block battery. A Stirling engine is mounted in Module 2 to recycle some of the waste heat generated by the LTFR; the rest is radiated out.

Upgrades[]

Power Socket[]

Requiring massive amounts of electricity, ORION can latch onto friendly spacecraft (i.e. SHIELD satellites) with the correct passcode and power adapter and pull electricity out of it.

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