EVA © Alex Ries 2011

Powerful Birrin societies have engaged in space exploration and exploitation for decades, constructing a number of orbital facilities, satellites, and launching several manned interplanetary missions. The critical orbital systems, with their relay of radio and television data, climate monitoring, GPS signal transmission and global defence, form an expensive and vulnerable investment by the major houses.

Maintenance of these systems, and the manning of interplanetary vehicles, is undertaken by a politicaly independant astronaut corps funded by an investment pool of nations and organisations with interests in space. Paid well, the corps construct, salvage and decommission orbital objects on a contract basis.

Seen here, a technician sets to work repairing damaged internal systems on an orbital antennae. The large impact-hardened diagnostic package has been integrated with the antennas' interface to root out faulty code or hardware for repair or replacement.