CodexDraft:RTOL Platform

During the expansion of Dusklight, investments were made to construct Dusklight’s very own Rapid Trans-Orbital Logistics Platform. Designed to rapidly transit large quantities of cargo into low orbit the RTOL Platform is prioritized to facilitate the loading of space-bound freighters, though it can be and is often also utilized to deliver any shipments into orbit that are too heavy or disallowed from being transported up in Dusklight’s Space Elevator. The RTOL’s delivery system is capable of launching a half dozen of its cargo capsules in quick succession into, and only requires fifteen minutes to recharge and launch another batch, proving itself as a superior method of orbital logistics compared to shuttling cargo to orbit with smaller spacecrafts.

The RTOL platform is a two-part construction: The base launch facility on the planet’s surface, and a geosynchronous orbital receival station. On the surface of Onia, a mass driver is built into the foundation of Vyksis Mountain. This is where shipments are brought into the platform’s sub-surface facility and loaded into launchable capsules that are 2.6 meters in diameter and 13 meters in usable length, and are equipped with inertial dampening layers to soften the applied to its contents during flight. These capsules are then launched out of a 9.2 kilometer long electromagnetic rail, 7.8 kilometers of which are buried within Vyksis Mountain, with the rest protruding out of the peak and once airborne, fin stabilizers are deployed for the rest of the trip out of Onia’s atmosphere to prevent shipments from flipping off course and tumbling before breaking into orbit. The geosynchronous receival station is positioned out of the atmosphere to account for natural orbital drift the delivery capsules undergo while being launched, and ideally catch shipments with a short range magnetic cone that catches capsules and pulls them into the station. For any capsule that is detected in mid flight to drift outside of the magnetic net, drones are deployed to catch and return the shipments before they are lost to space.