The Runestaff was purring along nicely. We did a fly-by of Saturn because... reasons, and managed to get some extra data-packets to send back to Hermes (always pays to do a favor for the folks likely to know what to do with anything odd you see.)
As we passed Neptunian-orbit distance, I was watching the speed for the shift to FTL.
I almost missed it. There was a hiccough after we crossed the Cochrane Barrier: a blip another 20 AU out, so I throttled back to idle. Safety first. I turned the ship back (for best scanner coverage) and gave a few pings that confirmed: planetoid, and a significant one.
"What's going on? We've lost power?" Kate asked as she dropped into the co-pilot seat. Not hard to miss: the ship was almost dead silent when the engines weren't burning.
"No," I tapped the display, "We've stumbled over a planetoid. Deep cold, probably been falling in-system since before Copernicus was born. Rocky. Trace... maybe ice. Mass reads a little under 1.0: Earth-sized. Rae?"
The Significant Intelligence agent piped up at my cue, "Nothing on record, sir, this is new."
Kate's eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning who finds an actual pony in the living room by the tree.
"Okay, Rae, let's tag it and take a closer look!"
I had been an independent asteroid hunter since '09, so I knew the drill: find it, fix it, register your claim, find a buyer. This might be a bit beyond those rules, though.
"What are we going to call it?" She was rotating through the spectrum on the display to find an image of the planet that was less black-on-black-in-deep-space.
"Let's get a closer look, first." I throttled up very carefully; I didn't want to go shooting past it again. I didn't get that "impending doom" feeling, so I was still relaxed, like it was just another sprint from Earth to the Mall.
"Rae, draw me a polar orbital insertion, to maximize topographic scan." I could do the math myself, it just took longer.
Kate turned to me with a serious look. "We aren't landing?"
"Look at those temperatures! Not ideal for a beach pic-nic!" The spectrograph showed it was nearly space-cold, no tectonic activity. Core was frozen, even.
"Sir," Rae cut in, "Completed planet orbital plot shows near-miss Saturn and Jupiter collision probable." Rae hated using imprecise terms, so this was significant.
"How soon?"
"Ten years, three months, eighteen days, three hours, twenty eight minutes to Saturn fly-by perigee of two hundred-eighty thousand kilometers, sir. Plot accuracy will improve with additional data."
Kate whistled. "Wow, that's... a hundred-seventy thousand miles? Three quarters the moon's orbit?"
"You know smart is the new sexy, right? That's about half-way into the outer E ring's orbit. Something this big will make a mess of it. And that's long before it starts its Jupiter dive."
I sat back in my seat and frowned.
"What?"
"How much force and time would be needed to park this planet in a Jupiter orbit? Or use a Jupiter fly-by to brake it into an inner-system orbit?"
"Planetary engineering? With what, a solar sail?"
"No, that would be silly! I'd use a gravity brake."
"... We do have ten years before it's even close to Saturn. Something to leave the grandkids?"
As we passed Neptunian-orbit distance, I was watching the speed for the shift to FTL.
I almost missed it. There was a hiccough after we crossed the Cochrane Barrier: a blip another 20 AU out, so I throttled back to idle. Safety first. I turned the ship back (for best scanner coverage) and gave a few pings that confirmed: planetoid, and a significant one.
"What's going on? We've lost power?" Kate asked as she dropped into the co-pilot seat. Not hard to miss: the ship was almost dead silent when the engines weren't burning.
"No," I tapped the display, "We've stumbled over a planetoid. Deep cold, probably been falling in-system since before Copernicus was born. Rocky. Trace... maybe ice. Mass reads a little under 1.0: Earth-sized. Rae?"
The Significant Intelligence agent piped up at my cue, "Nothing on record, sir, this is new."
Kate's eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning who finds an actual pony in the living room by the tree.
"Okay, Rae, let's tag it and take a closer look!"
I had been an independent asteroid hunter since '09, so I knew the drill: find it, fix it, register your claim, find a buyer. This might be a bit beyond those rules, though.
"What are we going to call it?" She was rotating through the spectrum on the display to find an image of the planet that was less black-on-black-in-deep-space.
"Let's get a closer look, first." I throttled up very carefully; I didn't want to go shooting past it again. I didn't get that "impending doom" feeling, so I was still relaxed, like it was just another sprint from Earth to the Mall.
"Rae, draw me a polar orbital insertion, to maximize topographic scan." I could do the math myself, it just took longer.
Kate turned to me with a serious look. "We aren't landing?"
"Look at those temperatures! Not ideal for a beach pic-nic!" The spectrograph showed it was nearly space-cold, no tectonic activity. Core was frozen, even.
"Sir," Rae cut in, "Completed planet orbital plot shows near-miss Saturn and Jupiter collision probable." Rae hated using imprecise terms, so this was significant.
"How soon?"
"Ten years, three months, eighteen days, three hours, twenty eight minutes to Saturn fly-by perigee of two hundred-eighty thousand kilometers, sir. Plot accuracy will improve with additional data."
Kate whistled. "Wow, that's... a hundred-seventy thousand miles? Three quarters the moon's orbit?"
"You know smart is the new sexy, right? That's about half-way into the outer E ring's orbit. Something this big will make a mess of it. And that's long before it starts its Jupiter dive."
I sat back in my seat and frowned.
"What?"
"How much force and time would be needed to park this planet in a Jupiter orbit? Or use a Jupiter fly-by to brake it into an inner-system orbit?"
"Planetary engineering? With what, a solar sail?"
"No, that would be silly! I'd use a gravity brake."
"... We do have ten years before it's even close to Saturn. Something to leave the grandkids?"
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
"Being told to be 'open minded' about something is usually a code for 'you're not going to like this, but I want to subject you to it anyway'. Conversely, being told that you are 'closed-minded' is generally a means of asserting that 'I don't like the fact that you're proving me wrong, so I will pretend that your failure to agree with my argument is a philosophical deficiency'." - RationalWiki
"Being told to be 'open minded' about something is usually a code for 'you're not going to like this, but I want to subject you to it anyway'. Conversely, being told that you are 'closed-minded' is generally a means of asserting that 'I don't like the fact that you're proving me wrong, so I will pretend that your failure to agree with my argument is a philosophical deficiency'." - RationalWiki