For my own personal satisfaction, I am writing a political science fiction story as a summer hobby.
The basic story involves different factions of humans, such as nation-states, private corporations, communal collectives and religious cults, pioneering and colonizing an earth-like planet orbiting Gliese 581.
This planet is tidally locked with one side forever day and the other forever night. Weather, oceans and mountains regulate the climate planet wide, so there is no worry about heat vs cold from one side to the other. Besides, life can evolve to live without sunlight or constant sunlight.
How would communication work with Earth with a 20 year lag time and can transmissions even make it that far?
One settlement is a military base but general in charge learns that his country has had a revolution in the time it has taken to reach this new world and he is now a wanted criminal. What does he do?
What are the psychological effects on long term suspended animation-like hibernation and near light-speed time dilation?
How much power would it take to bring a 500 ft long, 70 foot wide starship up to 90% lightspeed (.9c)?
The story's first draft begins as follows...
The star twinkled in the twilight sky. The image is twenty years old and is nothing more than an echo of a ghostly past now almost faded. Indeed, it had been twenty years since he immigrated. He looked hard and imagined he could witness the projected images of his old life there, the old crowded, sweltering, crime-ridden cities where the privileged lived high above on rooftops protected by steel, concrete, glass and guns from the unwashed masses that squatted in the shadows of the high rising towers.
He was twenty years old when he decided he would leave. He went to his parents for the money. They could hardly afford it but, miraculously, they came up with the three million that it would cost for the passage. For them, it was what they must do to ensure a better life for their one and only.
He prepared for a year for the hibernation with workouts, diets and medication that made him nauseated. He was assigned to the Atlas Corporation Lightship Libra Scales as passenger number one thousand and ninety two.
Interstellar travel is always dangerous, a small percentage of sleepers do not survive the voyage. Fortunately, he did. Libra Scales was a lightship which meant that she could reach up to ninety percent of light speed with her mighty engines. On terra firma it would take twenty years, but with Einstein’s time dilatation it would be ten years onboard. Yet, for the sleeper, it would only be a single night.
The first few months in New World always came with a shock, no matter how prepared one was. The gravity was heavier, the air smelled acidic and stung the lungs and of course their was the unmoving blood red sun on the horizon. Like a broken clock, time was frozen at permanent dusk, or dawn, depending on your mood.
The only natural measurement of time was the movement of the dim stars on darkened horizon over the Western Mountains. It took twenty years for it to make its path though the celestial sphere and here it was again, where he first spotted the old home star when a little dazed and confused from a ten year nap that he looked up and saw it.
John McIntyre was s skilled robotics technician by trade and that proved to pay dividends in the New World. Spare parts were hard to come by and robots always broke down. Without robots there would be no farms and without farms there would never have been permanent settlements. McIntyre Robotics started as a one-man operation and would balloon to become the largest robotic servicing company on New World.
10:32 AM PT: General Ming was freshly promoted and awaited his next assignment with glee. After decades toiling under yes-men, cronies and hacks, he was finally in a position of real authority. No longer would he have to calculate every decision and step as if playing chess against a master. He opened the envelope and read it and was immediately crestfallen. One of his rivals must have engineered this as a way to get rid of him. At least it was not an assignation but it was damn near close. The message read: General, please report for command at Military Station Gliese 581 g.
Still getting his New World legs, he bravely marched out to the center pad for the change of command ceremony. The general that he was relieving wanted to go back home. He had been here for five years. By the time he landed back on Earth, forty five years would have gone by but he would only have been aged five of those. Ming thought about that for himself, forty five years of absence from the thick of things back on Earth would leave one at a great disadvantage. This was his last command and he was finally starting to accept it as he watched the crimson flag being raised as the anthem played.
The military outpost was secure enough. A steady stream of supplies came in every ninety days or so. What was a day here? The sun never left it’s position about 45 degrees from the eastern horizon, always at nine in the morning. Rose colored light always bathed the base. How could he every expect to a decent night’s sleep? Sleep was always important to Ming.