"So for the most part, I believe it's quite rare for there to be only one planet, but not impossible with two suns, or rather, stars," He finished.
Ridge smacked himself mentally for not listening and could only smile awkwardly while asking, "Uh, hehe, could you please repeat what you just said? I was lost in thought for a moment."
Clearing his throat, Berkay was speechless, but he spoke once more, "Well, to answer your question, what I was saying was that in binary systems like the one we seem to be in, the rarity of their being one planet depends on certain circumstances. Three, to be exact. Let me explain," he paused, "Once more."
Scratching his head, Ridge indicated that he was paying attention and waited for him to continue.
"The first circumstance would be a Tight binary, meaning the two stars were less than a hundred and fifty million kilometers apart from each other, which, in the grand scale of things, is close enough for the gravitational pull from each star to create a chaotic environment, increasing the odds of only one planet being formed in the aftermath of such an environment." he took a breath.
"The second scenario is a medium binary, which is roughly one point five billion kilometers to ten billion kilometers apart. The likelihood of a single planet forming is probably reduced by about fifty to sixty percent, meaning it's moderate odds that only one planet is formed rather than multiple.
Finally, the third situation is a wide binary, which is roughly thirty billion kilometers in separation, but the odds of only one planet forming with this are pretty low, so I won't bother explaining much else about it," he said, clearing his throat once more.
"Which one do you think we are in now? I guess is my only question then," Ridge asked.
"Uh, to be honest, the scanner hasn't reached that far out to precisely locate the coordinates of both stars, but just guessing with the naked eye, purely on intuition, I would say we are in a medium binary system. So there are probably more planets not yet scanned," Berkay replied after some serious thought.
Getting some kind of answer gave Ridge the information he was looking for. Rather, the assurance he was looking for: at the end of the day, asteroid belts have great resources to exploit, but were not the perfect places to sustain a base without at least five times the effort of a regular planet. Not to mention a breathable atmosphere.
Unfortunately, with no other planets being scanned, they would likely arrive at the asteroid belt and need to build one such base. No room for regret; they would just have to make do.
"Thanks, I'm glad you managed to retain most of your astronomy knowledge, haha," Ridge joked.
Berkay also chuckled, "To soldiers, training with guns and their own bodies is important; to navigators, learning and retaining as much information on the systems we travel and have travelled is much more important, which is also why you never see me leave the ship most of the time. I'm usually up here scouring our databases and reading up on as much data as I can in relation to space and astronomy in general."
Ridge nodded and moved on. "Mm, well, that's certainly great; anyhow, notify me when we get to the belt. I'm going to sleep."
Without waiting for an answer, he walked to the room usually adjacent to the bridge, which was the commander's quarters. Previously, this room was in somewhat of a mess, but after all that time on Stira-1 it had been completely repaired and cleaned up. It resembled Ridge's personality more than its previous occupant. His own being rigid and somewhat empty in his own opinion. After all, looking around, there were only the gray metal walls of the ship and the reinforced window looking out into space next to his bed.
Within battleships and really most ships of the federation, there were also attached bathrooms to the commander's room, so taking advantage of that, Ridge washed himself quickly, ensuring he didn't waste much water. Even though it would technically be recycled through the ship's own built-in water-purifying system, inevitably there would be some loss after each use.
Lying down, he quickly fell asleep, and this time he had a dream.
In this dream, he woke up to the crew returning to the Federation's fold and himself being promoted to admiral for discovering and conquering a new system. The Federation as a whole only had one system under its control, so it would be an accomplishment more than worthy of said promotion.
Enjoying the benefits of his new life, Ridge smiled in his sleep and was abruptly woken up by an alarm from his panel.
Sitting up and inhaling a quick breath, he looked around and recognized his surroundings. His wrist panel was still beeping. Rotating his head around to stretch his neck, he let out a sigh and looked at the time.
It was currently five in the morning and the twenty-fifth of the fourth month. Shutting the alarm off, he checked his messages and saw that he had received one, which likely prompted the alarm for his panel to sound. He personally set it that way to ensure he never missed a message.
A long time ago now, he had been a recruit, and during one of the missions he was sent on, he had missed a message in his sleep that indirectly led to the death of a fellow teammate. So he changed it ever since then.
'Arrived,
Commander, the ship has arrived and is currently initiating landing procedures on the largest asteroid we found. Based on the scanners, it reads at around 1,000 kilometers. Enough to classify it as a really small planet, really. Full of resources that we can fully utilize.
-Berkay'
Getting up, Ridge made sure he was dressed appropriately and literally just opened the door to enter the bridge once more.
The only people currently on deck were the pilots, who were seemingly reading data and preparing to land, as well as Berkay, who seemed to have not gotten any sleep.
Seeing that his eyes had bags under them, Ridge felt obligated to ask, "Did you get any sleep at all, Berkay?"
"No, not quite, just a quick nap here and there. I wanted to make sure everything went as planned. Not to mention the scanner sometimes transmits data, and there are no pings for it, so," he replied tiredly.
"Okay, just make sure to get some rest after we land. It'll be our turn next to be sleepless, and I don't want everyone to be sleep-deprived," Ridge said, smirking while turning to look out the bridge window.
The asteroid, being 1,000 kilometers long, was bordering on dwarf planet status from what Ridge understood, which would also mean that it had a strong enough gravitational pull to keep them anchored once they set down. This would also include buildings and people. The unfortunate thing was that suits would become much more important. Though perhaps the large artificial domes they planned to create could make up for that difficulty. It would be a bit of a hurdle to directly make more suits, to be quite frank. Perhaps more basic ones could be used, but there was inevitably a bit of risk to that.
As he looked down on this gray mass they were landing on, he imagined, similar to in his dream, that this place would soon enough be a sprawling place filled to the brim with humans, regular and artificial alike, inhabiting domed cities and a large spaceport capable of repairing and building new ships.
In fact, holding this train of thought, Ridge realized that although it would take time and it wasn't guaranteed that the artificial humans would be extremely smart, more and more scientists and engineers would pop up, and the artificial humans, starting with a blank slate, would likely be much easier to teach. With enough of them collectively combining their intelligence, it wouldn't be impossible to reverse engineer the very battleship they were using now. So not just the scoons could be built, but maybe even battleships, the second most powerful ship within the entire Coro Federation.
Berkay tapped him on the shoulder and brought him back to reality; the same desolate view of a large grey rock returned. Shaking his head, he looked over. "What's up?"
"I've been calling you for a while commander, I was just gonna say that the landing went smoothly and we can begin operations," Berkay said exhaustedly.
Scratching the back of his head, Ridge sheepishly chuckled, "Heh, sorry about that. Great job, go get some rest; I'll take it from here."
Nodding to him, Berkay raised his hand to salute and then slowly made his way out of the bridge and down the ship into the sleeping quarters area.
Ridge sent out some messages before leaving some words to the pilots to relieve them of duty as well; they, alongside Berkay, didn't get much rest, so now that the ship was stopped and landed, he figured now would be the best time to get more than an hour of sleep.
The first message he sent was to Caroline with the following written: "Gather every engineer and able-bodied man, suit up and wait for me at the elevator. The first thing we need to construct upon touching down is the mining equipment and refining equipment we previously disassembled.
Once done with that, we are going to use the stockpiles we currently have to create a headquarters. Within said headquarters, we'll set up the crystal generator, and we can use that to power everything else for now. Though later down the line we will likely have to attempt to manufacture some solar panels with your machine on board the ship."
It was a somewhat lengthy message, but he sent it out to both Yayha and Caroline. Of course, he changed Yayha's message to just explain the plan and his current task of gathering men for assembling.
It was time to get to work once more. This time he planned on going all in.