Bern Orbital (FI)

Hard Science-Fiction Setting

The largest habitat in Sol space, the Bern Orbital is a megaproject and the jeweled crown of Earthforce.

Bern Orbital

Bern Orbital is the largest space habitat in the solar system and the centerpiece of Earthforce power. Constructed as an open-sky ring habitat at the Earth–Moon L1 near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), it remains one of the few megaprojects to have survived the Fall and the Kessler years largely intact. Its immense size, deliberate legal status, and symbolic ties to the Swiss city of Bern make it both a practical headquarters and a political compromise. Today it houses tens of millions, sustains a complex economy, and serves as both capital and fortress of Earth and humanity.

Physical Description

The Orbital consists of two counter-rotating tension spines, each 103 km from the centerline. Suspended from them are a pair of 10 km wide living bands, shielded by sidewalls and enclosed in a breathable aerosphere. At 0.9 g surface gravity, rim speed is ~0.95 km/s and the sky appears to spin once every 11.3 minutes, drifting the stars at ~0.5°/s.

The sidewalls are cable-net membranes reinforced with Whipple layers — multiple thin shells designed to shatter and absorb micrometeoroids before they can puncture the main barrier. Curtain membranes can drop across the sidewalls in seconds, fencing off any breach zone. Small leaks are offset by make-up gas, medium tears trigger local shutters, and only freak multi-hundred-meter failures risk wider effects.

Because the orbital’s scale height is ~10.6 km, weather stratifies naturally: winds, clouds, and even lee vortices form behind mountains. Terrain is exaggerated — peaks and valleys higher than on Earth — yet carefully engineered to prevent storms from becoming dangerous. The result is a convincing small world under open sky, one where nature feels real but remains bounded by design.

Power and Heat Management

Before the Fall, Bern Orbital drew power from a heliostat swarm and sun-tracking arrays, with compact fusion plants as reserve. The Kessler cascade destroyed the mirror fleet, forcing reliance on fusion alone for decades. Temporary tugs provided auxiliary power and heat rejection until infrastructure was rebuilt.

Traditional radiator panels were abandoned in favor of laser cooling. Waste heat from reactors and life support is converted into coherent beams vented in narrow cones aligned with tug exhaust or service corridors. This keeps the sky clear of radiator wings and reduces thermal signature. Redundancy is high: the system can fail in part without catastrophic collapse, a fact proven by its survival of the Fall.

Today Bern Orbital runs on multiple gigawatts of fusion, with solar arrays providing backup and emergency lighting. The heliostat swarm is being rebuilt to restore full seasonal and diurnal control. Until then, weather is pleasant but noticeably artificial.

Light and Seasons

Day and season inside the Orbital are artificial. Heliostats redirect sunlight into the habitat to simulate a 24-hour cycle, while ring-mounted panels provide dawn/dusk effects. Seasons are created by adjusting mirror angles over the year. The natural 12-minute star drift is ignored in daily life, though festivals occasionally mark it.

Control of light rests with the Shade Guild, a cross-chamber Earthforce bureau. Ostensibly a technical service, the Guild is also politically powerful: whoever controls the light schedule can punish or reward entire districts. Its members enjoy prestige and influence far beyond their bureaucratic remit.

Orbit and Station-Keeping

Bern Orbital resides in an Earth–Moon L1 NRHO, offering constant line-of-sight to both Earth and Moon while avoiding Earth’s shadow. Relay satellites guarantee communications; outages are rare and mostly remembered from the chaos immediately after the Fall.

Station-keeping uses electric thruster farms mounted on booms, never firing toward the habitat. Large corrections are managed by tugs. Spin stability is maintained by trim masses and reaction wheels, while “spin-quakes” are damped by distributed mass shifters.

Law and Jurisdiction

Legally, Bern Orbital is part of the City of Bern, Switzerland. This status was chosen to confer Earth residence and neutrality, avoiding disputes between larger powers. In practice, law is divided:

• Dexter Ring — Swiss civil law, applied by colonial courts with a reputation for caution and conservatism.
• Sinister Ring — continuous operational law, effectively martial law, though often lightly enforced outside exercises.
• Earthforce facilities — governed by Senate protocols.

Mixed cases go to joint courts, but Earthforce authority usually prevails.

Dexter Ring

Dexter, the “right bank,” houses Earthforce headquarters, the three chambers, and associated bureaucracies. Permanent population is ~15 million, with another five million transients. Prestige housing and resorts line the surface; utilities, agriculture, and recycling run underground.

Architecture emphasizes display: Baroque, Gothic, and neoclassical facades dominate official buildings, while villages mimic historical Swiss and European styles. Agriculture is mostly hydroponic, supplemented by pastoral herding on the surface.

Dexter is both capital and resort. Its exaggerated mountains attract tourism, while Earthforce institutions and cultural centers create a hybrid of government city and vacation landscape.

Sinister Ring

Sinister, the “left bank,” is Earthforce’s logistics and training hub. Permanent population is ~1 million, but numbers swell during major exercises. Zoning favors barracks, parade grounds, training areas, and vast ports. Civilians are almost entirely excluded.

Rumors abound of secret fleets or alien embassies hidden here, but facilities are prosaic: supply depots, simulator halls, and staging yards. Security is constant, even if discipline sometimes lapses in peacetime.

Safety and Defense

Bern Orbital survived the Fall partly because its mass gave it days of tolerance for power loss, long enough to restart fusion plants. Safety remains paramount:

Safety and Defense

Bern Orbital survived the Fall because of its size: its atmosphere and soil mass gave it days of tolerance for power loss, enough for fusion plants to restart. Still, safety remains central:

• Aegis Shield: A Jovian-style electromagnetic shield surrounds the orbital, creating breathtaking patterns during solar storms.
• Micrometeoroid defense: radar sweeps detect debris; lasers ablate sub-cm fragments; interceptor tugs divert larger objects.
• Rescue operations: Earthforce’s rescue coordination centers are based here, making Bern Orbital the hub for cislunar emergency response.
• Shelters: Even with all this shielding, shelters are still needed to protect against gamma and neutron radiation during severe solar storms.
• Metabolic hull technology — Nanotech is used conservatively to make the Whipple barriers self-repairing.

Complacency may be the greatest hazard — drills and safety routines are often neglected.

Factions and Politics

Several guilds dominate Orbital life:

• Shade Guild — controls day/night and seasonal cycles.
• Ringers — manage the spines, mass ledgers, and spin balance.
• Aero-Wardens — patrol sidewalls and EVA structures.
• 'Debris Bounty Office — headquartered on Sinister and deals with Kessler issues.
• Founders’ Trust vs. Freeholders — contest deeds and shifting land rights.

These groups wield as much local influence as Earthforce itself. Rivalry between the Chambers keep these in a legal limbo where they can exceed their formal authority, the Shade Guild in particular is notorious. Light schedules, mass ledgers, and land claims are tools of power, and intrigue is constant beneath the outward calm.

Culture and Rituals

Culture is diverse, with festivals marking “season flips” when heliostat angles change. The 12-minute sky drift inspires both parties and cult ceremonies. Dexter emphasizes pomp and tourism, while Sinister cultivates a martial ethos, softened by long peace.

Dexter districts follow a zodiac naming scheme, each sign repeated twice around the ring. Sinister relies on technical coordinates, but informal nicknames from exercises and accidents persist.

Economy and Logistics

Dexter’s economy is anchored in government, tourism, and education. Sinister supports logistics, training, and fleet maintenance.

Docking facilities are extensive: heavy docks for capital ships, dozens of medium bays, and hundreds of minor tenders. Sinister's many faculties allows an entire fleet can launch at the same time. Customs and passengers route through Dexter; Sinister handles quarantine and staging. Propellant depots supply both chemical (LOX/LH₂) and electric (argon, krypton, xenon) propellants.

Debris collection is a standing mission: Earthforce’s Debris Bounty Office is headquartered here, with hunters patrolling cislunar space.

Summary

Bern Orbital is more than a station: it is the capital of cislunar space, the headquarters of Earthforce, and a symbol of resilience. Its twin rings — Dexter for politics and tourism, Sinister for logistics and training — mirror the banks of the river Aare in Bern-on-Earth. Its survival of the Fall, its fusion-powered endurance, and its continuing role as both sanctuary and fortress make it the largest and most important space settlement in the solar system.