 | ||
| Lacaille | ||
|---|---|---|
| System | Trappist | |
| Type | Planet | |
| Astronomical Classification Index | TTLCT/H-SE | |
| Habitable | Yes | |
| Affiliation | Colonial Administration of Lacaille and Saltillo | |
| Location | Aquarius | |
| Artificial Satellites | Bartegenaer Station, Piroshok Spaceport, various satellites | |
| Discovery Date | February 22nd, 2017 | |
| Population | 65,772 (2114) | |
| Equatorial Radius | 5797.61 km | |
| Gravity | 0.93225 g | |
| Atmosphere | N2, O2 | |
| Rotational Period | 6.100 days | |
| Axial Tilt | 0° 00'00.00' | |
| Mass | 0.772 M🜨 | |
| Tidally Locked | Yes | |
| Orbital Period | 6.100 days | |
| Orbital Speed | 52.03 km/s | |
| Orbital Eccentricity | 0.005 | |
| Inclination | 89° 51'35.99' | |
Lacaille, officially known as TRAPPIST-1e, is a terrestrial planet located in the Trappist system in the constellation of Aquarius. One of the more promising of the colonies charted by the Final Frontier Project, Lacaille possesses an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and, despite appearances from space, multiple freshwater lakes. The Trappist Mission was the first expeditionary mission of the Final Frontier Project to reach their destination, with the planets of the Trappist system being charted by the SFG-72 Nantes and the LCR-488Tristan da Cunha between September 12th and October 8th 2103. Lacaille and the Trappist system are located 39 lightyears away from Sol.
Lacaille, alongside Homestead and Concordia, is one of the few infrastructure-equipped colony planets, with Lacaille possessing the largest population of every FFP-charted colony planet and the largest single colony city, Revachol. The planet is governed by the Colonial Administration of Lacaille and Saltillo, and hosts personnel studying it's neighbour planet, Saltillo. The United Nations retains executive command over Lacaille. Residents of Lacaille are known under the demonym Lacailleiere.
Planetary Information
Lacaille is a tidally-locked planet located in the habitable zone of it's parent star, Trappist, which got it's name not by standard naming method, but rather through the fact that the name of the antique telescope that first viewed it (The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope) had gained so much notoriety and alongside the fact it discovered a possibly habitable planet, that when it came to giving the TRAPPIST-1 system a name, the Final Frontier Project decided on retaining the name Trappist, though not as an acronym.
From space, the combination beige-orange atmosphere, brown-orange flora and lack of lakes on the bright side may create the misconception that Lacaille is barren - it appears similarly to Mars, and like the other brown-surfaced planets of Trappist illuminated by a red dwarf. However, a closer look and a travel to the surface will reveal that Lacaille is anything but; it has many lakes with cyan tropical coastlines, lush orange forests and jungles along the 'Temperate Belt' of the planet, plains between dry rocky expanses on the bright side, and cold taigas on the dark side. It is in fact, very lush, and home to various forms of multicellular life. It's expansive jungles of diverse xenoflora and xenofauna, fertile, Earth flora acceptable soil, a gravity force of slightly under one g and a breathable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere make Lacaille one of, if not the most, promising colony world charted by the FFP. The majority of Lacaille's colonies, including the city of Revachol, are located along the coast of the Jayendra Sea, the largest body of freshwater on Lacaille and a massive watershed, located on the Temperate Belt of Lacaille. The orange foliage of the planet and the perpetual evening glow at the temperate belt, caused by it's position at Lacaille's terminator, has led to some affectionately referring to Lacaille as the 'autumn planet'.
An observation made about Lacaille is the notable lack of craters - the planets of the Trappist system have been observed to be riddled with craters due to the fact that the system lacks a sufficient gas giant to capture rogue bodies as they enter the system. Lacaille's neighbour planet, Saltillo, has some of the most prominent craters in the entire system, spanning kilometres across and being some of the largest craters discovered on the surface of a planet, ever. Lacaille, however, appears to have an extremely small amount of sizable craters to what would be considered commonplace in the system. As it stands, there is no concrete explanation as to why Lacaille has been exempt from meteor bombardment. Some scientists believe it is due to an average-mass gas giant orbiting at the farther reaches of Trappist's gravitational influence, in it's Oort cloud, and has been heretofore undetectable due to Trappist's lower luminosity, but as to why the gravity of this gas giant has only redirected rogue bodies from Lacaille makes it an unlikely theory.
Tidal Locking
Lacaille's tidal locking does not create an eyeball planet effect, where the two hemispheres of the planet are drastically dichotomous with one scorching hot and one frozen, with a ring in the middle that is most hospitable. It still has a hemispherical dichotomy, but it is far more subtle due to Lacaille's comfortable position in the habitable zone providing a consistent environmental condition across the planet, with either hemispheres only differing due to sustained exposure or non-exposure to the planet's parent star. The solar-side of the planet is notably hotter, with a much rockier surface due to the sustained heat making it difficult for any plant life to thrive with sustained exposure to Trappist drying out any moisture to sustain flora. Flora has attempted to grow on the bright side in the past, based on soil and fossil study. On the dark side, there is plentiful mountaintop snow with some patches of snow at lower levels, though there are also multiple hotspots across the dark side of the planet caused by subterranean heat. This subterranean heat also prevents the oceans from freezing over, however, there have been some smaller lakes observed to be exempt.
While humans can survive for a prolonged period on either hemispheres of Lacaille, they pose issues to settlement, as both hemispheres are, firstly, not optimal for agriculture, and secondly, the conditions presented by the hemispheres have negative long-term effects on the infrastructure of permanent colonies.
City of Revachol
The City of Revachol, Shaary Revacholiere in early Lacailleiere Creole, is the first colony established on Lacaille and also the largest, founded one year after the preliminary evaluation of Lacaille by the Nantes and Tristan da Cunha in 2104. It was named by Samuel Jayendra, Captain of the Tristan da Cunha responsible for scouting out the best location and establishing the first permanent settlement on the surface of Lacaille. Jayendra named the first colony, Revachol, after the setting of the 97-year-old visual novel video game Disco Elysium, an old game said to be very dear to the man. With the fact that the game is 97 years old, and in it's prime the game was somewhat obscure itself, a very small number of people understood Revachol's namesake. Jayendra also became the namesake of the Jayendra Sea where Revachol is located after his untimely death in 2110.
Revachol is situated on an island in the Great Jayendra Watershed, and previously shared this island with a number of other colonies. Expansion of these cities over time led to them meeting in close proximity, which prompted them to conglomerate into the greater City of Revachol. After the majority of the colonies on the island had conglomerated into the same city, the island, previously nameless, was named the Island of Revachol for the city's prominence. The cooperation of multiple colonial initiatives all coming under the same flag caused Revachol to quickly expand to become the largest colony on Lacaille and the largest extrasolar surface colony to date.
From here, it became the nerve centre of all interconnected colonies along the Jayendra Sea - every road and bridge connecting the islands lead back eventually to Revachol, and every Jayendran freight path was based on the location of Revachol. The city hosted, for a long time, the only spaceport on the planet. Today, it hosts 59,263 of the 65,772 permanent settlers on Lacaille and hosts large expanses of both closed and open agricultural plots and the start of an industrial centre, with a major industrial harbour in construction along the coast as part of a self-sustainability program. Revachol, and many of the other colonies on the planet, have developed their own culture that has been attributed in similarity to Martian culture - collaborative, crafty with the majority of the population working in agriculture and shipping over water, creating a consequentially hardworking culture of dedicated farmers and hardy sailors. The residents of the planet have also begun developing the early stages of 'Lacailleiere creole' - a primarily anglophonic language, where the most prominent changes and properties of the creole language are based around the influence on pronunciation that French and Hindi accents have, with the cultural backgrounds of the Nantes and Tristan da Cunha ships being primarily English, French and Hindi.
History
Lacaille is a planet that, similarly to Ballad, received 'prenotoriety' due to it's discovery by very early methods of exoplanet discovery through transit and consequential popularity among the hopeful population of the 21st century. When the Final Frontier Project was first founded in 2090, and established a colonisation roadmap, Lacaille and the other planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system were placed in the first roster. For the Trappist Mission, the Final Frontier Project commissioned the FTL-equipped Science Frigate Nantes and the colony Light Cruiser Tristan da Cunha to chart the Trappist system. The Nantes was a smaller, more compact science ship with the goal of studying the Trappist system, whereas the Tristan da Cunha was relatively larger, with more people, equipped to start colonies should they find a suitable planet in the Trappist system. The two ships departed from Klaesford Shipyard on Jupiter on August 17th, 2103 and arrived in the Trappist system on September 12th, 2103. As they charted each of the seven planets in the Trappist system, only two were found to actually have atmospheres - the rest were completely barren, with those nearer to Trappist being tidally-locked barren planets and those further being tidally-locked frozen, or otherwise frigid, planets. The two within the habitable zone, Lacaille and Saltillo, were consequentially where the Nantes and Tristan da Cunha spent the majority of their time. While atmospheric surveys of Saltillo revealed it's highly toxic chlorine atmosphere, which became a topic of study before they discovered the presence of life, Lacaille was a groundbreaking success.
From space, the crews of the Nantes and Tristan da Cunha were able to analyze the effects that the planet's tidal locking would have on colonisation, and as a result, the Tristan da Cunha touched down on the Temperate Belt of Lacaille on September 30th, 2103 and planted the first prefabricated colonies on what would become known as the Island of Revachol. After setting the groundwork for permanent settlement, the Tristan da Cunha returned to Sol to report their findings and call on reserve colony ships for the establishment of Lacaille. As for Nantes, it's discoveries on Saltillo lead to a permanent Naval Development Group team being housed on Lacaille and the Nantes' indefinite station in between Lacaille and Saltillo. As the fleet of colony ships arrived, they began scouting out other locations along the temperate belt - though the majority chose to settle on the illuminated side of the Jayendra Sea. A number of smaller remote colonies were established at other locations, and two major research stations were established by the Naval Development Group on the two hemispheric extremes of the planet. As Lacaille quickly grew as one of the most prominent colonies, it lead to the establishment of two major geosynchronous stations; Bartegenaer Station and the Piroshok Spaceport. Initially, both stations were constructed to ease the logistic strain that came with establishing colonies. A spaceport was vital for processing and transporting provisions, prefabs and other materials, and a spaceport was vital for all the colony ships coming to Lacaille. As time went on, however, the Bartegenaer and Piroshok stations grew in size similarly to Revachol on the ground, and became multi-faceted stations that surved multiple purposes such as research, manufacturing, and some residence.