Lava world research outpost

A shuttle brought be down to the surface of Gammel XI, to the station's landing pad. "Station" is somewhat of a euphemism - there is not even a proper docking bay. The arrival itself was quite turbulent, which the pilot blamed on unpredictable thermal currents in the atmosphere, due to active volcanism and lava flows.

After landing, we had to don heavy thermal suits to protect us from the heat and the poisonous gases and walk over to the main structure. Usual carry-on luggage would just melt, any regular luggage is transported in special cooling containers.

The outpost is on a platform on top of a lone basalt rock mesa. It rests on pylons, as the rock here is too unstable and too hot. The support pylons are drilled deep into the rock to anchor it, and equipped with inertial dampeners and feedback systems to compensate for the incessant seismic activity. The main feature is a large tower which does not contain the habitat for the scientists, but has the instruments and drills for a deep shaft that leads into the ground. The habitats and the labs and the engineering machine shops are surrounding the tower. 

I have been received by the principal investigator, Marcus Nahrami, who introduced me to his team. They are not used to visitors and organized a mini-colloquium so the students could present their work. 

There are engineering folks who presented the low-cost solutions they found to ensure the thermal and seismic stability of the outpost. Most presentations were about the geology of the planet, and what led them to believe that it was no asteroid impact that caused the current cataclysmic conditions: the absense of a central peak, no impact basin, no crater rim mountain ranges, and a lot of other proof that I did not understand due to lack of training in geophysics.

There was a review of other possible causes, and all of them were rejected. Several presentations investigated the possibility of a truly massive mantle plume, released due to energy pent up from differential rotation at the planet's core. But that did not explain the isogen-5 decay signatures.

Tomorrow I will get a guided tour down the shaft that they drill deep into the crust.

((ooc: image from chatgpt after inputting the above description))