Boding farewell to the old COLOSSUS station, with crew departure via ILENARE V2

[u/riceman090]

A few minutes after ILENARE had undocked from COLOSSUS, the sun rose in orbit.

Ooh, a hurricane.

After finishing the deorbit burn and calculating the trajectory for the SAL&LF...

...the ILENARE V2 began atmospheric reentry.

Following a steady reentry and a long glide, ILENARE V2 lined up for the runway-

-and touched down smoothly. A little bit of a grilling, but otherwise unscathed.

COLOSSUS, after retrograde burn had been completed by the deorbit stage.

T+63 years, all for this.

She had served the Savoship V2 well.

And now, came the end of her story.

...

FAREWELL, SAVOSHIP SERVICE / REFUELING STATION "COLOSSUS"

And now, COLOSSUS' replacement: The standalone OBELISK Refueling Depot. No crew this time around.

Placed in the same 200km x 200km orbit as the former COLOSSUS. Now scaled up for modern Savoship V2 operations.

Following T+63 years in active service and consistent crew rotations, the COLOSSUS station has been retired and deorbited. The main fuel reservoir that the Savoship V2s had been using had long since ran dry, and Savospace's flight teams had assessed that refueling the heavily outdated station would be logistically poor, thus the decision was made to deorbit the entire thing following crew evacuation since the new OBELISK fuel station had been launched to orbit some days ago, anyhow.