Protectorate Stellar Telegraphy Network

The Protectorate Stellar Telegraphy Network (PSTN) is a long-distance visible- and microwave-band line-of-sight interstellar communications network established by the Cobalt Protectorate to facilitate communications throughout the Core and Periphery regions.
The PSTN uses high- and low-tech methods of transmitting and recieving data across the vast distances between stars. Each star that has a Protectorate presence will, over time, have close stellar orbits strung with series of automated statites. Each of these statites is initially positioned to broadcast to only a few other statites within the network, but can be ordered to take over duties for one of its counterparts should the need arise. Statites are each equipped with a directional microwave transmitter, signal lasers paired with the optics of multispectral scopes, and an array of large, thin mirrors strung from the spacecraft on tensionable guywires. Aside from attitude control, as the statites hold their positions relative to the stars using radiation pressure, these mirror surfaces can be used to send flash codes. Observers in the system to be broadcast to need merely look for 'scintillation' around the sending star to ascertain that not only is a message incoming.
Because the signal lag means that messages reach the statite constellations at different times and, by extension, a single message may be sent to a system multiple times over the PSTN, the network has exceptional fault correction features in keeping with the Evermornan ethos of modularity and multiple redundancy. PSTN statites are sometimes built with limited space station facilities to support visitors or live-in crews; in these cases, messages can be sent from the security of a statite itself simply by manipulating the guywires.

Utility

The PSTN, like many other such networks established by sentient species throughout the Sealed Kingdoms Region, allows the Protectorate to operate somewhat as a cohesive whole despite the extreme distances between stars and worlds. The Protectorate's ideals are distributed via a culture of subsidiarity, but they are reinforced by regular (if asyncronous) contact with the homeworld. PSTN statites may also have scientific and surveillance roles, fitted as they are with sensitive sensors and positioned as they are for a larger collective field of view than any planet-bound installation. Similar installations may instead be equipped with larger mirrors to provide concentrated solar radiation on a subscription basis to remote solar-electric generators, solar-thermal rockets, and solar-thermal smelters throughout the host system; this helps ameliorate the reduction in insolation experienced by distant system residents due to the effects of the square-cube law.

Parent Technologies

• Auto-Factory
• multispectral scope

Access & Availability

Though the Evermorn Strategic Colony Initiative does cooperate with the operators of the PSTN, new colonies established under the ESCI are typically expected to launch their own PSTN statites only after they have become well-established in a system with space-faring infrastructure - enough to launch their own colony vessels, let alone statites. This is because PSTN statites are themselves higly visible to outside observers and, by extension, may make a sparsely-established system ripe for attack by aliens or even other humanoid factions (i.e. Aniki Labs marauders). PSTN messaging services have a reputation for being secure, not covert as such.