Historical Backround |
The Lunar Mining Base in the Mare Nubium crater, aka �Darkside Station�, has been
in operation for more than a century. The original base was constructed in 2091
as a joint project of several multi-national manufacturing concerns. (This alliance,
usually referred to simply as �The Lunar Partnership�, has been regarded
as an important predecessor to the WEC.) Originally, the Darkside mines were
largely engaged in producing raw materials for the new Orbiting Production Platforms,
first providing construction materials, then later producing raw materials
for the orbital stations� manufacturing operations. Shipping raw materials up
from Luna and finished goods down to Earth was, in the long term, a far more
economically efficient model than a closed earth-to-orbit loop, since the Luna-orbit-earth
model minimized the economic impact of overcoming earth�s powerful
gravity well. Even at its inception, however, the LMB site was selected because of the high concentration of the radioactive compound di-coreallium. Even if the eventual economic dependence on Di-Cor was not foreseen, its potential usefulness as a power source and catalyst was obvious from the very beginning. Lunar Di-Cor mining, however, proved to be an economically problematic endeavor, and the problem was not so much the logistics of spaceflight, but the human element. Because of the hazards of the lunar environment, particularly the high radioactivity of Di-Cor, prospective Lunar miners demanded and received extravagantly high wages and radical (and expensive) safety precautions. This extremely high overhead kept Di-Cor prices inflated, which in turn kept the demand for Di-Cor low, which kept production at a trickle. Although the scientific community was constantly discovering new applications for Di-Cor power, that potential remained largely theoretical, until the rise of the WEC and the creation of the cartel system. |
