Chapter One: The History of the DSOR

In the last half of the twentieth century, there were those that warned that earth would soon run out of oil and petrolium resources. But, given the current rate of usage and the amount of fossil fuels, the prospect seemed highly unlikely. Instead, it was calculated that earth had a supply large enough to last it for the next several hundred years, and so the matter remained, virtually untouched.
Mankind achieved spaceflight and for the first time in history, men really did go to the moon. Better techniques in astronomy also led to the discovery of what most of the planets were made of. Man had even sent probes to Mars, detecting water. By the year 2000, Jupiter and Saturn and the farther out planet were examined in detail never thought possible just one hundred years earlier.
Near the end of the twenty-first century, man had begun the process of colonizing the moon. The first almost-self-supporting space station was opened to the public; for those that had the large ammount of cash required.
In the middle to late twenty-second century, spaceflight took a new turn as Buck Warner, a German physicist, discovered how to focus a beam of gravity in one direction and to a certain distance. Using magnetics and light, Warner managed to 'scrunch' space like a slinky recoiling after being expanded, or like a spring as weight is put upon it; for one could not 'fold' space, as is often presented in poplar science fiction stories. With a device like this, one could drastically shorten the times needed to fly from earth to the moon: Or to Mars.
Together with a team of people, Warner made improvements upon the device. He and his people became known as the Graviton people. And shortly after, the project itself gained the name "The Graviton Project". It is unknown now who, if anyone single person, is responsible for the labelling, but the name stuck and shortly before he died, Warner made the name his official team name.

For another sixty years, the gravity device idea was worked on and reworked into a fully functional device. The only problem was that in order to attain the great distances, it required a large power supply. Less of a power supply would work for a shorter distance -from New York City to Washington D.C. or Atlanta- but, no conventional power supply known at that time was sufficient to create a magnetic field stable enough to focus the gravity beam a great distance.
The problem was that, like a gun, the beam had to be aimed and 'fired'; however, like a gun, accuracy in aiming was not perfect after the beam had traveled so far. Natural forces began to take effect and cause the beam to go off course -only a litte at first, but that was magnified exponentially as the distance grew. This 'cut-off' point was known as the X-Point. The device worked well enough, however, to shuttle people and other stuff to and from the space station and Luna, which is what most people started calling the moon.
And it wasn't for another six and a half years, until Amber Watson joined the Graviton Project, that a crucial discovery was made regarding how the device focused gravity and magnetics. It was discovered that the laser chamber, which provided most of the power to the device, could be shortened, if done correctly; thus reducing the time needed to create a laser beam and resulting in a more powerful magnetic field and tighter focus of the graviton beam.
The resulting accuracy in aiming the device made doing so past the X- Point possible for the first time. For the first time, people could travel to Mars inside of one month: And to Pluto inside of one year. The ability to transport astronomy equipment out to the edge of the solar system, combined with sattelites already out there, led to the discovery of several other planets and solar systems.

Then people woke up one day and realised that earth was, indeed, running out of fossil fuels. And, so it came to be, that at the end of the twenty- second century, men sent out scouting parties for planets with compatable fuel sources. And many were found.
Many companies began working on plans for deep space mineral drilling and transport. And most of them went broke before they even got off the ground, pardon the pun. And among the remaining five companies that did manage to make deep space mining vessels, Solar Ore and Minerals soon established itself as a leader. This was due mostly to the fact that SOaM had already all but cornered the market at gathering minerals from planets in the Sol system.
SOaM had gotten permission to mine Mars, and even its two moons. And Venus was next on their target list. And there were rumors that they would have a way to mine Mercury -yes, Mercury- within the next century or two.
Almost a year after they left, most scout ships came back and reported where there were planets with compatable sources of energy. Of the five companies building deep space oil rigs -or DSORs- SOaM, LiteOIL, and Esshomes DS Transport received contracts and sent out a combined total of twenty three DSORs: Only eleven of which were destined to return.
Five centuries later, spacerigging was still going strong and mankind was already drilling on close to one hundred planets.