TTA: Civil: Astrolab
The Astrolabs, of which there were nearly thirty, are often mistaken by the casual observer for fuelling stations. This is an understandable error as they were an adaptation of the fuel supply ships developed during the war and which are still to be found along the spacelanes.
Large numbers of these supply ships were manufactured to service the huge battlefleets of the Proxima Wars, their job being to collect free hydrogen and other gases from space, process them, and store them until required.
After the war many of them became redundant and were thus available for other uses. Some were bought by commercial concerns to generate private liquid gas supplies or simply to provide storage facilities, and a number were allocated to the Research Council, which was short of funds and needed ships desperately. They were ideal for conversion into mobile research stations and could be modified fairly easily for this purpose. They had the added advantage of enjoying a high degree of independence, being naturally self-sufficient in terms of fuel supply. Whereas the original ships possessed a storage globe at either end, the Astrolabs retain only one, the other having been converted into living quarters able to accommodate up to two hundred personnel. Most of the central factory section was then reconstructed to provide laboratories and research facilities. Probably the most distinctive of the Astrolabs are those used for plotting radio emissions, which have been totally encased in a delicate tracery of antennae and receivers. They are an extraordinarily beautiful sight but are rarely seen as they operate far out on the Perimeter.
The illustration shows one of the more usual units working in the rings of Saturn. This type can occasionally be seen by travellers within our Solar System.
Motive power is provided by one of three nuclear piles coupled to fairly small ion drive engines for extended cruising potential rather than rapid acceleration. Only five of the Research Council's twenty-eigh Astrolabs have been equipped with warp generators for interstellar research, including the three radio emission labs.