Solar station (novel)

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Solar Station is a science fiction - Thriller and the second plant Andreas Eschbach . The author himself explains the strikingly strong difference to his first work, The Hair Carpet Knotters , with the frustration caused by the numerous rejections of his debut by German publishers and the attempt to write a novel with a lot of "action".

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In 2015, the political balance of power completely shifted - Japan , the leading power, has a plan to supply the earth with energy from solar stations in space. The hero of the novel, the American Leonard Carr, has to perform the duties of a caretaker at the Nippon station . He has a sex relationship with a female crew member, which the crew has condoned .

The space station has huge solar panels made of silicon that can only be produced in space . The space station flies over the earth from pole to pole, passing practically every point on earth. The energy is transmitted to the ground station by means of a powerful laser beam while the Nippon flies over the receiver at the ground station.

At the beginning of the book there are problems with energy transfer. This breaks off again and again for inexplicable reasons, although it always worked well before. The Nippon commander suspects sabotage as the reason.

The departure of the next expected shuttle, which is supposed to transport supplies and people, is delayed. The morning after a failed energy transfer attempt, a member of the team, a brilliant engineer, is found dead. It also turns out that all radio equipment on board has been destroyed. The commander has a member of the crew arrested and locked up who he suspects to be the perpetrator. The station can only receive radio messages but cannot send any more.

Shortly thereafter, someone reported on the radio who claimed to be warning them on behalf of ESA that a rocket stage had accidentally reached the vicinity of the space station. This rocket stage turns out to be a space capsule of radical Islamists . With the help of an accomplice on board, they dock at the space station and take over command.

The goal of the terrorists is to point the laser on the overflight of the city of Mecca, which is besieged by radical Islamists , in order to bring about a victory for the Islamists as if by a miracle. The Islamists lock the crew in a compartment of the space station. After a failed liberation attack in which a crew member was shot by the Islamists, the Nippon crew was locked in the terrorists' space capsule, which was then undocked and hovered a few meters away.

On board this space capsule, however, there is still a spacesuit, with the help of which Carr manages to get back on board the Nippon and overpower the Islamists. In the end there is a fight outside the space station between Carr and the leader of the terrorists, at the end of which the Islamist, left to death by suffocation, spins off into the room.

The book ends with the reappraisal of this raid and Carr's plans to take a position in space travel in the United States.

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  1. ↑ Eschbach, Andreas: The real reason why "SOLARSTATION" is so different . Retrieved November 4, 2009.