Blue Space
First appears in Book 2: The Dark Forest, chapter 8 (“Yet its engine lights up. We’ve observed that. When it went out for a second time, Blue Shadow wasn’t close enough to capture an image in time, so we don’t know where the light came from.”)
Appearances
What you know
Book 2: The Dark Forest
- Ch 8Blue Space survived because it had made its interior a vacuum and put everyone in space suits, so the infrasonic waves could not harm them.
- Ch 8It salvaged fuel and hardware from the dead ships, built a Stonehenge-like tomb for the 4,247 victims, then flew off into deep space, cutting all contact with the Solar System.
Book 3: Death's End
- Ch 16Was decelerating slowly toward the Solar System; after Schneider's warning it switched to full acceleration, still heading toward NH558J2, two thousand years away.
- Ch 16Cannot yet carry out dark forest deterrence; the nearest star usable as a superantenna, Barnard's Star, is three hundred years away.
- Ch 22Blue Space stopped accelerating about twenty-five years into the chase, perhaps having used all the fuel it dared spend.
- Ch 22Blue Space has no information about Gravity's fuel reserves, while Gravity knows Blue Space's fuel situation through calculation and sophon intelligence.
- Ch 24Blue Space announced its surrender at fifteen AU distance and began decelerating at maximum power, having realized it could not escape or resist.
- Ch 24The crew of Gravity regards Blue Space's crew as murderers who are no longer truly human and cannot represent humanity in space.
- Ch 36Blue Space is a militaristic, authoritarian ship that learned the dark forest nature of the universe; Earth and Trisolaris both hunt it as a threat.
- Ch 36A Blue Space shuttle with fusion drives pushed the droplets off course and decelerated them, while astronauts examined a droplet's surface.
- Ch 36Blue Space has about ten times Gravity's crew, with over twelve hundred crew aged only three to five years on average, and wields seemingly magical capabilities.
- Ch 38Blue Space has more crew than Gravity, so it discovered warped points earlier. A micrometeoroid destroyed its reactor magnetic levitation controller, but the backup shut the reactor down.
- Ch 38Was struck by increasing micrometeoroids and surrounded by drifting objects, prompting Captain Chu to order the pinnace's return.
- Ch 38Most of the crew chose to stay aboard Blue Space and Gravity rather than return to a doomed Earth, and planned to head for a new target star system.
- Ch 39After the gravitational wave broadcast, Blue Space's crew was worshipped as heroes and the suspected-murder charge was replaced with a finding of justified self-defense.
- Ch 45Public opinion turned against Blue Space, now far away, calling it a ship of devils that hijacked Gravity and doomed two worlds.
Connections
- part ofStarship Earth
- enemy ofUltimateBlue Space destroyed it in counterattack
- enemy ofGravityGravity pursues Blue Space
- enemy ofOur Lord
- has memberPark Ui-gun
- has memberReiko Akihara
- led byChu Yan
- has memberJoseph Morovich
- has memberGuan Yifan
- has memberZhuo Wen
Key moments
- Book 2 · Ch 8Blue Space destroys Ultimate Law and holds funeral
Blue Space, protected by vacuum, destroys Ultimate Law, salvages the dead ships, builds a space tomb for the victims, and departs into darkness. Bronze Age similarly destroys Quantum's crew far across the Solar System.
- Book 3 · Ch 15Recall message and confirmation
Ten days after Earth's signals stopped, Fleet Command's message ordered Bronze Age and Blue Space home. A sophon channel then confirmed it, and Bronze Age turned back.
- Book 3 · Ch 16Schneider's warning to Blue Space
During the ship handover, Schneider traps his guards, activates Bronze Age's interstellar antenna, warns Blue Space not to return, and is killed by laser fire.
- Book 3 · Ch 16Blue Space flees and Gravity pursues
Blue Space begins full acceleration away. Earth and Trisolaris see it as a shared enemy. Earth refuses a droplet strike, and Gravity with two droplet escorts pursues, fifty years from catching it.
- Book 3 · Ch 22Gravity closes in on Blue Space
After fifty years of pursuit across 1.5 light-years, Gravity approaches within three AU of Blue Space, having maintained a higher speed and outplayed it on fuel knowledge.
- Book 3 · Ch 24Blue Space surrenders
Gravity refuses Blue Space's partial surrender offer; at fifteen AU, Blue Space announces surrender and decelerates, so Gravity's crew wakes and prepares for combat.
- Book 3 · Ch 24Droplet attack on Gravity and Blue Space
Battle alarms sound as two droplets accelerate, one toward each ship. With no time to evade, Guan and West calmly accept imminent death.
- Book 3 · Ch 36Droplets miss and are found dead
Both droplets narrowly miss Gravity and Blue Space. Replays show them rusted and lifeless, deflected and slowed by a Blue Space shuttle, implying Blue Space knows how to disable droplets.
- Book 3 · Ch 36Blue Space marines capture Gravity
Hunter shoots infiltrator Park Ui-gun at the transmission control room; Blue Space marines then storm in, Hunter's heart is extracted, and Morovich's officers surrender.
- Book 3 · Ch 36Referendum on the universal broadcast
Chu Yan presents the lightspeed Trisolaran fleet and calls a vote of 1,415 people; with 943 ayes, Morovich and others add the deciding vote and the broadcast of Trisolaris's location begins.
- Book 3 · Ch 38First entry into four-dimensional space
Chu Yan leads Morovich and Guan through a warped point in Blue Space. They experience four-dimensional space, learn about warped points and the fragment, then return.
- Book 3 · Ch 38Discovery of the Ring and other objects
Telescopes inserted through warped points reveal a sealed, artificial ring and about a hundred other inactive four-dimensional objects. This is the first observation of another civilization besides Earth and Trisolaris.
- Book 3 · Ch 38Retreat from the fragment
After repeated micrometeoroid strikes, including one that nearly destroys Blue Space's reactor, Chu Yan orders both ships to decelerate and leave the fragment.
- Book 3 · Ch 38The Ring decays into three-dimensional space
The fragment shrinks and the ships exit. After twenty-two days the Ring enters three-dimensional space and decays into a one-AU line of light that becomes a dust belt. The ships collect some resources, and a council offers crews a choice to continue or return.
- Book 3 · Ch 38Hibernation ark and the two ships part ways
Only about two hundred people chose to return to the Solar System. A month later the hibernation ark set off for home while Blue Space and Gravity continued into deep space, and the fusion glow lit the dust belt as they departed.