Caz

@timberwindart.bsky.social

adventures in the plausible midfuture art-only account of @timberwind.bsky.social

Flag of Microselenesia, a pan-cislunar intergovernmental organization formed in the mid-22nd century to govern affairs between the growing cohort of permanent free-space habitats orbiting the Earth and Moon.

A flag with a black background and a highly stylized 3/4 cutaway of a cylindrical space habitat. In the center is a white structure with a green interior, representing lighting systems and microgee parkland. To the right is the inner wall of the cylinder, showing green parkland and the glinting blue band of a circumferential river. Surrounding the cylinder is a white outline, symbolizing the glacis of shielding material  - be it sandbags, glass, concrete, or steel - that every permanent space hab shelters from cosmic radiation under.

Lunine Beach, a sleepy seaside town on the shores of Kraken Mare - a sea of liquid hydrocarbons at the north pole of Titan, largest of Saturn's retinue of icy moons.

We see here a view from a dirigible cargo robot, taken in the far northern regions of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. In the foreground, a peninsula of ice-and-tar 'wetland' terrain stretches off into the distance. On it, a settlement made up of habitat modules of varying sizes - from longhouse-like parks to long twisting arcades, all raised on stilts like the old research bases of Antarctica (most of these stilts are obscured under the bulk of their structure, from this angle), curves off along the more orderly lake-facing shoreline. Looking further afield, past the jumble of braided rivers that makes up the inland side of the peninsula, we see a far shore occupied by a sprawling industrial city - pale plumes of steam rise from the cooling towers of nuclear fusion reactors, chemical plants, and water refineries. The sun, smeared into an orange blur by storied layers of photochemical haze - drifts of complex organics formed from unfiltered sunlight smashing into methane molecules at the top of the Titanian atmosphere - sits low on the horizon at this time of the Saturnian year, casting a ruddy glow comparable in brightness to a bedside lamp.

The "dusk chorus" - as evening falls on Mangala, its binary companion's infrastructure belt of orbiting power stations catches the sun, brightening to become a ring of stars circling the little Mars analog. (mocked up in Celestia)