Hesperus
The Hesperus Class Atmospheric Habitat, or simply Hesperus, is a class of Cloud City made to allow permanent human habitatation within the dense atmospheres of gas and cloud covered planets. The city sized habitat was designed by Steven Craigs-Peirce and Fialle Andrews and thier team for the UNE's "Ariel Horizons" project during the later half of the 2360's. The habitat was designed to hold a maximum population of about 1 million.
Structure & Design
A Hesperus city is known for its distinct two teired rigid gondola system. A series of helium balloons which fly along above a tethered habitat platform, underwhich protrudes a sortof semi-flexible inverted spire. The balloons sit higher in the atmosphere and hold the platform at a level which is near Earth normal as far as pressure and relative temperature.
Balloon Tier
The city is held aloft by eight massive mylar-polymar balloons arranged in a circle around the central structure they are connected to, this structure houses all the pressure regulartion equipment, as well as redundant balloons that can be deployed in the event of deflation of sinking emergency. The Central structure also contains the cities main elevator network which conects the habitats platform below with the balloon facility and dock platform above. The dock platform sits on top of the balloons and provides a rigid structure above to help further protect the material of the balloons themselves. The docks can only be used by specialized shuttles built to withstand the corrosive nature or Venus' clouds, these shuttles take passangers between the cities in the atmosphere and the transport stations in orbit. This platform has thrusters aimed outward from all corners to keep the upper and lower parts of the structure in spacial equilibrium. The uppermost section of the megastructure connects to the lower components by the elevator, as well as a series of trusses and cables meant to stabalize the two structures as they glide through the turbulant high atmosphere clouds.
Platform
Below the balloons is the main habitat platform which itself has three sections: the dome section, the upper platform, and the lower platform. Unlike the utilitarian nature of the original habitats of Luna, the "Ariel Horizons" team wanted to integrate beauty and aesthetic into the design. The dome was a way to allow the cities to build vertically over time with evolving architectural styles like cities from Earth. In the early stages of habitation, when populations were still small enough as to not require such large amounts of infrastructure, the dome acted as a giant window allowing the sun to illuminate the gardens and farms of the platform's surface. Beneath the soil covered top of the platform five level of chambers allow for further human expansion within the facility as well as storage and industry space for any future need. Like the dock above, the habitat platform has stabalizing thrusters on each corner meant to keep the two platforms balanced in motion as they move along the planetary atmosphere. The four edges of the upper platform hold the connection points for the top tier cables, as well as four turbines used to push the city along in a regular day/night cycle orbit around the planet. The lower platform houses the inner working of the city itself; water purification, air manufacturing and purification, waste facilities, power stations, etc.
Tail
Underneath the lower platform of the main habitat section is a small cone that ends in an elongated semi-flexible tube that desends toward the more pressiruzed clouds below the city. This "tail" consists of two sections and along its length houses all the hoses and wirse needed to transport raw material pulled from the atmosphere into the city itself. The top section is twenty horizontally oriented wind turbines used to generate electricity. The lower section holds conical tip of the tail, which is the heating facility and siphons for raw gas supplies.
