Tag Archive: Monolith

It has been a long and frustrating day thanks to the Monolith creating difficult launch conditions. Why it’s doing this we are still unsure, although the current suspicion is it has to do with how far out into space we sent our last rocket. How it’s doing this we also don’t exactly know, although we did prove today that it cannot create and maintain a storm indefinitely. Storms require energy, in this case heat, and perhaps if we didn’t have the monolith within a structure it could use its own energy to inject heat into the air but as it is now it can only draw on existing heat. As temperatures have dropped the storm weakened and eventually completely broke down, leading to calm surface conditions. However the air in the upper atmosphere remains disturbed and we don’t know how long it will take to settle down. In the meantime though our crews have been at it for over 12 hours now and need some rest.

The rocket will remain fueled and powered up. If we power it off the Monolith with likely stop trying to generate a storm, heat energy will return to the area and if we make another launch attempt several hours from now it will likely get blocked again. This means though that the rocket will need to remain under monitoring, even if it is not armed. At 03:00 UTC half of the launch control team will go off console for a 4 hour rest break while the remainder keep an eye on the rocket. At 07:00 UTC the crews will swap and those going off console will get a 6 hour rest break. At 13:00 UTC all controllers will be back on console and we will send up another balloon to see how the upper atmosphere is doing. By 14:30 UTC we will have a better idea of conditions high above and decide whether it makes sense to continue attempting a launch.

There has been some additional speculation regarding the Monolith’s choice of tactics in stalling our launch. We know it is capable of producing an electromagnetic field that could reach the launch pad and Launch Control and be far more effective at disabling our operations. Those thinking this may have forgotten that scientists have already accepted that the EM field was not an offensive weapon. Also, generating the field again would likely require more energy than the Monolith could handle given it no longer has access to the power stations in nearby Kravass and Umbarg. Again, the storm could possibly be maintained longer or indefinitely if the Monolith had direct access to the outside air, so we may have just been lucky that we built an insulated dome around it.