If anyone knows anything about the UESC Marathon, then you'd know it's a giant moon turned into a space station. Officially, it was Deimos, one of the two moons of Mars that was converted. However, take a look at this picture: [url]http://www.dudeman.net/spacedog/planets/mars/phobos-deimos.jpg[/url] Now compare one of the two moons (Pictured above) to the Marathon itself, pictured here: [url]http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/marathongame/images/3/3c/The_Marathon.png[/url] (Sorry about the small size, I can't get any other official version) You could probably make the connection pretty easily, the top moon is Marathon. This is wrong. The top moon is actually Phobos, the bottom moon is Deimos, what the UESC Marathon is claimed to be converted from. The UESC looks just like Phobos though, this contradiction is too great to simply pass off easily. Before you go off saying "It's the Marathon story, shut up", I'm not talking about the story. If the story says it was converted from Deimos, so be it. I'm talking about the uncertain knowledge behind the labeling of such story. Why does this contradiction occur? Marathon was, after all, created in 1994 when just finding such tidbits of knowledge wasn't as easy as it is today. Perhaps whoever wrote the story made a mistake. They also had the distance to Tau Ceti wrong, so I suspect their available astronomical data was not that great. Now is a time for scientific data. Here's the facts: Phobos is in a lower orbit than Deimos, making it harder to reach escape velocity. So using Deimos as a conversion makes more sense, because it would less more energy to reach escape velocity due to its high orbit. This only makes the Phobos conversion less likely, for good measure of course. It is also suggested that Phobos might actually be hollow. Sounds perfect for a space station, yes? Way back in the 50s and 60s, the orbit of Phobos lead many scientists to believe that it was indeed hollow. Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, did a study on the secular acceleration of the orbital patterns of Phobos in 1958. This showed that Phobos was incredibly light, and one calculation yielded a hollow iron sphere 16 kilometres (9.9 miles) across but less than 6 cm thick. Unfortunately, many data errors were found in Shklovsky's calculations, and the theory was trashed. Recently though, mapping by the Mars Express probe and subsequent volume calculations do suggest the possible presence of vast caverns within the moon and indicate that it is not a solid chunk of rock but a porous body instead. Even if it isn't exactly hollow, wouldn't an incredibly pourous substance be easier to destruct than a solid one? Any comments expressing your love and hate are appreciated, feel free to challenge any one of the above theories with your own expertise. [Edited on 05.15.2010 2:09 AM PDT]