26th March 2035
The second Deng Xiaoping floats free of its drydock and joins its sister in delivering goods to Titan.

6th June 2035
The last two Offshore Horizons are scrapped. UC survey capability is now in a hiatus while the research into the next generation of shipping continues.

11th July 2035
The last veins of Boronide were mined out today by TerraFirma LLC., making it the third TN element that has been completely mined out.  Eventually it’s planned to mine out the asteroid belt and then Luna, especially since Luna contains over a million tons of Duranium at 0.8 accessibility.

28th August 2035
The 14th Mobile Infantry Battalion completed its training today. UC has tried to quell any premature fears by releasing the statement that “…we shall train a brigade of infantry to defend Terra’s people against any and all forms of aggression.” Several government analysts suspect that those battalions are primarily being built to provide security for UC personnel and assets in the event of a coup. In other news, Wong Heung-Soo, a mid-level official in the Japanese cabinet, was found dead. The case was quickly closed and the official statement explained his death was the result of an “…unexpected heart attack.”

Warmonger! I protest the militarization of space.

June 18th, 2034
In a press conference that shook the world, Zatapatique formally resigned his position as head of the UC, along with many of the Board. With so many suddenly leaving the company, Havear, UC's Director of Research and Development, took the reigns of the company. Upon formally being recognized, Havear told the world of the Battle of Credit Suisse and that humanity had made first contact with demonstrably hostile aliens. Under cover of the resulting uproar and after a damning internal report on the situation, Havear radically adjusts schedules. Construction of the construction factories, fuel refineries, commercial spaceports, nearly a dozen mass drivers, and the financial centers Zatapatique had hoped would solidify his grip on power were cancelled, or in the case of partially completed installations, ordered to finish it then shut down without beginning work on further construction. Over the next few weeks the industrial infrastructure of Earth will be retooled to provide additional mines which will be shipped to Titan as they (and hopefully the hulls to carry them) complete. Additional ordnance factories will have to be constructed to keep pace with Havear's planned munitions construction program, and the research lab construction will continue at it's assigned 15% of total capacity. Perhaps the wildest departure was in Havear's own familiar field of research, where he cancelled all active projects before consolidating the most important research avenues. Paulette Zatapatique-Bonald, a CP specialist, was tasked with delevoping the "Pyrodyne Systems 10-ton Launch System", a missile launcher that can throw a 10-ton missile every 60 seconds. Rurik Bogdanov from the Sensors department was working to increase the efficiency of active targetting systems, and Luc Buffet was working on increasing the capacitor recharge rate for a planned planetary defense grid, and fuel usage for more efficient engines of all types.

June 30th, 2034
Ansibles aboard the lifepods of the two geological survey ships destroyed in Credit Suisse finally shut down for the last time, marking the end of the lifepods endurance. An official period of mourning is put into effect for Capitaine de fregate Edith Zatapatique, who kept her survivors together and let each of them compose final messages to their families.

Still June 15, 2034

While the board meeting in Geneva is still going on behind closed doors, Bill Bannister of the Washington Post has just posted a blog entry accusing Jean-Claude Zatapatique, almighty CEO of United Earth Holding LLC, of insider trading, shameless nepotism and wasting more than 50 billion dollars of the company's money. According to documents obtained by the Post, the thirty high-tech research stations "Zappa" has had built over the past nine years are actually prefabricated office blocks. Ninety-eight floors high and costing UE more than three billion each, these giant cubicle containers were to be shipped to Mars Investment Park and assembled there to provide office space for several financial service companies from the Caiman Islands and Switzerland. MarsIP is headed by Zatapatique's wife, Marine, who is the sister of Pierre Leclair, UE's director of Earth operations.

The documents, apparently leaked by an inside source, detail how Zatapatique pushed for the construction of these financial centers and ordered subordinates to conceal their actual purpose. Then in December last year, during space trials of the new Deng Xiaoping freighters, it turned out that these office blocks cannot be transported into space at all - the frames, built for the low gravity of Mars, are too delicate to withstand the acceleration during take-off and the untested composite wall sheets will quickly deteriorate and fall apart when hit by cosmic radiation.

Zatapatique's lawyers in New York immediately issued a statement saying that "our client has always acted in good faith and in the best interest of the company's shareholders, and that includes all of humanity."

While it is true that 181 of the 208 nations on Earth (209 if you still count Tonga) have bought shares in United Earth through the United Nation's Space Development Fund, UNSDF controls only 31% of the stock, the remainder being owned by various companies in the Caiman islands and Switzerland. The UNSDF has, however, contributed the money for over 80% of UE's expenditures, and the agency is headed by Jean-Paul Bonald, husband of Paulette Zatapatique-Bonald, a leading researcher for UE's Jump gate project and youngest daugther of the CEO.

"It would take the biggest supercomputing cluster a hundred years to untangle the financial web Zappa has woven", a financial analyst for CitiSpace said. "But that is child's play compared to untangling the personal connections holding the biggest company on Earth together."

June 15, 2034

00:34 AM @UESpaceFun: OffEx1 - Apprchng CS A-7. big boring gas ball. prtty colors tho

00:51 AM @UESpaceFun: OffEx1 - sensr#1 +2 show pulsating signl in bow quadrnt. frckng malfction, but in both??

01:41 AM @UESpaceFun: OffEx1 - dbl checkd evrythng. pulsating sigs till their. freakin sht

02:00 AM @UESpaceFun: OffEx1 - actives its a frecing active!!! itsalive!!! omg

02:04 AM @UESpaceFun: OffEx1 - ths freakin thng comming rght at US!!!!!

02:05 AM @UESpaceFun: OffEx1 - sht shtsht smeg

02:12 AM @UESpaceFun: This channel is undergoing routine maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later.

June 2033

UE is getting serious about developing the solar system. The company's R&D department today unveiled plans for a the Benjamin Franklin class of astrographical survey ships. The Ben Franklins are equipped with a powerful laser system that is designed to measure the distance between two planetary bodies with an accuracy of less than one tenth of an inch. This is a necessary precondition for installing mass drivers later, massive magnetic accelerators which will hurl huge packets of valuable minerals to Earth.

Benjamin Franklin class Science Vessel    3,300 tons     321 Crew     279 BP      TCS 66  TH 200  EM 0
3030 km/s     Armour 3-19     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 9
Maint Life 5.24 Years     MSP 106    AFR 43%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 6    5YR 97    Max Repair 22 MSP

ACME Senator 40 (5)    Power 40    Fuel Use 100%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 54.5 billion km   (208 days at full power)

Northrop 10cm C1 Visible Light Scientific Laser (3)    Range 60,000km     TS: 3030 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 2    ROF 15        3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Nakatomi Precision Array S12 30-5000 (1)    Max Range: 60,000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     83 67 50 33 17 0 0 0 0 0
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1.05 (1)     Total Power Output 3.15    Armour 0    Exp 7%

This design is classed as a purely scientific vessel for maintenance purposes.

The Franklins are scheduled to be built from 2035 onwards and will be complemented by the Russian-designed Projekt 902B, a new class of scientific probe-launching vessels.

Meanwhile, the King of Tonga thanked UE for an interest-free 50-year loan which will allow the now submerged kingdom the construction of giant floating rafts out of plastic particles siphoned off of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is expected that at least 150 such rafts, each about the size of an aircraft carrier, are needed to house all 60,000 Tonganese who have been unable to find a new home after all pacific rim countries denied them asylum. Both Amnesty International and Greenpeace applauded the generous gesture.

(Fast forward to November 2029. As the first player I'm not adhering to the five-year term limit because all I did so far was mostly clicking the 30-day button a few times).

The final results of the great solar survey have been announced today. While the far-away Kuiper asteroid belt might still hold a surprise or two, only few planets (or bodies, as the astronomers say) contain significant amounts of TN minerals. Some duranium could be obtained on the moon, and while massive amounts of resources have been discovered on Venus, Saudi experts say that exploiting them would not be economical for at least fifty years without massive investment in production technology. Only Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, holds enough minerals to fuel Earth's industry in the decades to come.

The question of resource depletion has become a political wedge issue lately, as some geologists apparently believe that proven reserves of TN minerals on Earth might last only for another 20-40 years, which would endanger the entire global TN industry, as well as the share price of UE. Kaleem al-Yamani, UE's director of cosmo-geology and exploration, said that no shortages of any kind are forseeable and that the 21st century would mark only the beginning of a bright new future. Critics point out, however, that apart from small deposits of Sorium in Greenland, no TN resources have been discovered in the past four years, that UE has lately closed all its tritanium mines in Peru and New Zealand and that asteroid mining is physically impossible.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/stranded-resources/