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I'm considering embarking on a project that will probably take forever just because I have very little time in any given week, but seeing as how I'm nearly done with my first year working for a satellite company, I was hoping to ask you guys a question. What would a satellite look like in the year 40,000 (or 30,000)? I already have a few ad mech images on display at my cube and I'd love to round that out with some models, preferably some really religious/sanctemonious(?) ad mech guys encircling a satellite from 40k, working on getting it to function. It would of course feature the new ad mech fellow from the Imperial Triumverate.

What do you guys think, in regards to this? Are there any extreme/interesting/40k-like art pieces you guys can find for this? I haven't been so lucky, so even if you guys can think of a description, that would be great!

I would start with one of our current satellites and add lots of skulls, cogwheels, AdMech symbold and guns.

Make it appear to have been designed in the 18th century, made out of beaten steel panels & powered by steam. Plenty of spurious pipes, wires & rivets as well as the aforementioned skulls & AdMech cogs will all add to the grimdark aesthetic.

There are two options as I see it.
- really big, clunky and including a small crew
Or
- just a servo skull with a larger antenna

It needs to have a big gun facing the planet.

 oldzoggy wrote:
There are two options as I see it.
- really big, clunky and including a small crew
Or
- just a servo skull with a larger antenna

I was going to suggest a huge servo skull.



Obviously it depends on who made it and why. If it's something the admech uses for sensitive data it's probably some kind of servitor with plenty of blessings and a gun to defend itself. If it's anyone else it's likely a fairly generic satellite with possibly a nice paintjob.

First, imagine a regular satelite. Something like a box with two wide rectangular solar pannels or radiators on either side.

Now imagine it as slightly more baroque, brass coloured, an external pipe here and there. Maybe the operational end has a cannon that looks like it belongs on a tank, or a dish with gold filigree on it.

Finally, on the 'top' of the satelite is an armless human torso, heavily cybernetically altered to be able to survive in space-survive being the bare minimum here, as it's skin is dried and cracked from extended exposure to vacuum and cosmic radiation. Its eyes are held open by wire, feeding and breathing tubes puncture it's throat, leaving it's teeth to chatter noiselessly in space it's constant agony keeping a small portion of its otherwise occupied brain at the optimal chemical balance required to process complicated telemetry data that the rest of the brain interprets as painful pinpricks to it's nonexistent extremities.

It provides a steady and continuous telemetry data on a single monitor that is only occasionally paid attention to. Punctuated occasionally by insistences that it was framed, 'do you know who I am's, and occasional complaints that it's nose is itchy.

There are a number of satellites described in 40k, and all of them have been manned, cathedral or flower like space stations.

Just saying

SJ

Yes, but that doesn't disclude a small expendable device for specific short term uses. If an imperial light cruiser arrives in a previously uncharted system and wants to investigate an inhabited planet, it's certainly go to have some unmanned probes available, rather than throwing a space station at it.

All Ork satellites are just a mix of failed and successful missile launches carrying a mix of payloads that orkz just believe is sending them intel. In reality, their intel is just there psychic powers telling them were to go to find the next fight.

I am sure they got the idea by spying on imperials doing it

The Imperium does not use computers, so no unmanned craft. They might use Servo Skulls to guide curtain functions, but even then that craft would be crewed. In the Imperium, a recon sat is a spaceship, and comm sat is a small city.

SJ

If a temp comms design for a short campaign or mission.

It could be more on lines of a large box with a servitor wired into process, a small plasma reactor inside for power, probblt not perfectly sheilded but servitor. Who cares.

Lots of brass and wires n such but mostly a simple relay satilite.
Big ish dish, high geo stationary orbit that merely acts as a spot to bounce communications round a continent.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
The Imperium does not use computers, so no unmanned craft. They might use Servo Skulls to guide curtain functions, but even then that craft would be crewed. In the Imperium, a recon sat is a spaceship, and comm sat is a small city.

SJ

It is called a Cogitator.



"Computers" exist in the Imperium. They control lots of things. But are more bulky and appear lower tech to our own. Imagine them Like the Fallout computers except they are more powerful than our current computers.

Small Satellites can be done. But are more akin to giant versions of a Servo Skull than anything. So a metal bulky box with skulls, heavy bolts holding it together and is more of a small shrine than a antenna array.

Beyond that its Space Stations and the like or defense platforms.

Artificial gravity is maintained by a circle of servitors cycling powering a generator or simply running a large hamsterwheel

Seems there's a Servo Skull running your cogitator. I rest my point.

SJ

It's a bit (a lot) dated, but this is a good start

https://youtu.be/stZV5SxzLf4?t=547

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Seems there's a Servo Skull running your cogitator. I rest my point.

SJ

What? A servo-skull is a cogitator. What do you think is inside, a human brain?

 amanita wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Seems there's a Servo Skull running your cogitator. I rest my point.

SJ

What? A servo-skull is a cogitator. What do you think is inside, a human brain?

Do you seriously not know what a Servo Skull is? Servo Skulls are the skulls of humans, with the brain still present, augmented and preserved for use in any system that requires computation. The Imperium doesn't use computers, they use repurposed human brains.

SJ

Yes, I do.

It's servos, housed in a skull - hence the name. It may have organic components, but it is still a computer. Regardless, you can't really say servo-skulls constitute a 'crew' because they aren't people.

Source for that absolute position?

They don't use self-aware artificial intelligences, but that's not the same as "no computers". It's not quite Dune.

"Servo-skulls represent the honoured remains of valued Imperial servants and Tech-Priests who continue their service even after death. The skull is carefully cleansed and engraved, then fitted with a machine spirit to guide its actions, and tiny grav platings to sustain it in flight."

From Dark Heresy 2nd edition. It's the skull of a human, but not necessarily the brain of that human inside.

There's also the Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius from Codex Astra Militarum. Again, not Tyberius' actual brain. The robots of the Cult Mechanicus are also not controlled by human brains.

The Imperium does use human brains as computers - in servitors, for example - but not exclusively.

"Machine spirits" are organic brains. We even get a very detailed description of the one used in combat automatons in the novel The First Heretic. In effect, its cloned brain tissue in a self sustaining housing trained to handle specific tasks. The Machine spirit housed inside a servo skull is an organic brain.

On "computers", a computer is a person or device that completes mathematical equations. We don't really see this in 40k. We do see quite a lot of technology ranging from manually turned gearing to quantum holography, but we rarely see actual computers as we know them. We do see organic neural tissue being used in place of solid state electronics, though. Technology in 40k is either a sealed black box or a work of steampunk mechanics.

SJ