Elite Dangerous 016 Col 285 Sector WL-L c8-40
Piper Prospect - Park Tourist Hostel - Quantocks Wandering - Richard Broz At Peace On The Eternal Sea
The Grand Tour, PAGE 16
NOTE: All 138 facilities built in this system are listed (and shown) in order of distance from the sun. At least, according to the in-game architect’s view. There's a total of slightly over 18 hours of video, so the video, and the descriptions, are broken into smaller portions across multiple posts.
Some descriptions were written by myself, some with the help of AI. I've personally edited all of them, so if you must blame someone, blame me. :^)
08D Orbital 00
Piper Prospect
Research Installation (Astraeus)
DOCK: NONE
Piper was our beloved Schnauzer… but she shares her name with a brilliant writer, as well:
H. Beam Piper (Henry Beam Piper, 1904–1964) was an American science fiction author who pioneered complex "Future Histories". Piper created the Terro-Human Future History, a massive, interconnected sequence of novels that mapped out thousands of years of human expansion. These novels detailed the rise and fall of the Terran Federation, corporate-controlled corporate planets, and the eventual decay into interstellar feudal empires.
His highly acclaimed 1963 novel Space Viking is a masterwork of military space opera. It describes a gritty, lawless galaxy where independent starship captains from civilized worlds launch continuous raids against decadent, decaying outer colony planets to salvage technology and raw materials.
Piper is globally beloved for his 1962 novel Little Fuzzy. The plot centers on a massive interstellar megacorporation that owns the exclusive resource rights to a planet, claiming it is uninhabited. When a rugged independent miner discovers a small, adorable, and highly intelligent native species, a massive interstellar court case erupts to prove their sapience, which would strip the corporation of its greedy charter.
In his novel The Cosmic Computer (originally titled Junkyard Planet), human colonists live on a destitute planet that was once a massive military logistics hub. The entire economy revolves around scavenging military battlegrounds for left-behind weapons, tech, and starship hulls.
08D Surface 00
Park Tourist Hostel
Tourist Settlement Large (Fufluns)
DOCK: Large
Paul Park (born 1954) is an acclaimed American science fiction writer known for his atmospheric worldbuilding. He is most celebrated for his masterwork The Starbridge Chronicles trilogy (beginning with Soldiers of Paradise in 1987). The epic is set on a massive world with bizarre, decades-long seasonal shifts, dominated by a strict, oppressive religious hierarchy and corporate class systems.
Park's work tends to be about the psychological toll of deep-space isolation, decay of human dynasties on colony worlds, and the friction between authoritarian systems and independent frontier explorers.
08D Surface 01
Quantock’s Wandering
Tourist Settlement Large (Fufluns)
DOCK: Large
This is a little indirect, but worthy of inclusion:
The Quantock Hills Frankenstein
If you want to look at the real-world history that breathed life into the entire sci-fi genre, the name Quantock directly represents Andrew Crosse (1784–1855). He was known as the "Thunder and Lightning Man" of the Quantock Hills in Somerset, England.
Crosse was a wealthy, eccentric 19th-century "gentleman scientist" who rigged over a mile of copper cables through the ancient trees of the Quantock Hills to capture raw static electricity and atmospheric lightning, wiring it directly into his mansion laboratory.
In 1836, Crosse ran a high-voltage electrical current through an acidic chemical solution dripping onto a volcanic stone. A few weeks later, tiny, living arachnid mites (Acarus electricus) began growing out of the electrified, toxic liquid and scurrying across his desk. The public and local churches accused him of blasphemy, branding him a madman who was trying to play God by creating life from raw electricity.
Historians widely note that Mary Shelley was living nearby and actively attending lectures on electricity right when Crosse's early experiments were being discussed. His bizarre laboratory in the Quantock Hills serves as the direct, real-world structural blueprint for how Dr. Frankenstein brings his monster to life in Shelley's masterpiece.
08E Orbital 00
Richard Broz At Peace On The Eternal Sea (was Nimoy Point)
Coriolis Starport
DOCK: Large
My Dad’s memorial station. Actually, his 2nd memorial station. The first is an Orbis in the same system as the original Georgie Girl station.
Dad was a career Navy man. He was meticulous, quiet, thoughtful; a master craftsman, and an excellent mechanic. He taught me to fish. He taught me to always do my best. He tried to pass his skills on to me… but engines and woodworking aren’t in my nature.
He loved to sit late into the evening and debate things. I can remember in my teens, going back and forth with him for hours. If the discussion got too stale, we’d swap opinions and keep on going. Mom used to tell us to stop arguing, and we'd both look at her and say "We're not arguing, we're debating."
One of my favorite memories was when I was about 6 or 7. Dad was hammering something at his work table, and accidentally slammed the hammer on his thumb. No reaction, other than to look closely at the thumb for a few seconds, quietly mutter the word “Damn.” under his breath, and then continue with his task. Dad was always self-controlled and quiet in his response to... everything.
There’s a lot to unpack there, and a wonderful example of the way he lived his life. It’s also the only curse word I ever heard him say, until near the end of his life. He’d fought cancer to a standstill for over 30 years, but he couldn’t stop dementia. In spite of that, his life ended with grace and dignity. I’ll never be the man my Dad was. But I do my best.
