Posted by: Sematary
« on: October 10, 2015, 11:04:30 AM »When people imagine the early days of the Commonwealth and its expansion into space they generally think of a fleet with a Victory class carrier and its 20 fighters swarming around the outside, a couple Invincible class battleships, a few Dervish class escorts, and a handful of Tribal destroyers. This is mostly thanks to movies and books of the time, and even “historical” pieces made today. They are partly correct, the CE Victory was the lead ship in its class and was the pride of the fleet and at the time they were the largest ships ever built even to the point where a task group was not considered a fleet unless it had a Victory class carrier in it. But the real power projectors in the early days were three very different classes from the Victory. The Agincourt class cruiser was the core of the task groups that projected the Commonwealth’s power outside of Sol. Accompanying these cruisers were the Tribal Mod Js, which were the same as the Tribal destroyers but these had a jump engine shoved in. Before the creation of the Jump Gate Network the Agincourt task groups were the only ones who could even leave Sol and did most of the early exploration.
-Excerpt from the introduction of “The Agincourt, the Hero of Early Exploration.” By Theodore Francesca, Copyright 2184, Penguin Publishing
April 2025
Captain Stephanie Booth shook her head. 61 Cygni was the third system found by the Commonwealth Navy and so far each had a possibly habitable planet, in fact 61 Cygni –A-II was the closest to Earth yet found, but so far they were all tidally locked and lifeless. 61 Cygni-A-II took 116 days to rotate once and had no tectonic movement, there was almost no energy left anywhere in the system. Another system to mark on the maps as possibly good for future terraforming and mining. It would almost be better if the systems had just dead planets, but no they keep finding worlds that should be decent for creating life and so far nothing. This finding might be better if her task force did not take almost two weeks to get here, like Captain Shah she had ordered a slow approach to the planet to deny any life they found possible tactical knowledge about the speed of her ships. Now she finds out that she could have been here in less than 4 days. Time to go home and report.
May 2025
Naomi walked into Vice Admiral Scott’s office. The Admiral briefly looked up at her and motioned her to a seat. “Thank you for joining me here. I understand we have quite a bit to talk about today.” Emma Scott said before setting her papers aside and giving her entire attention to the scientist in front of her.
“I suppose.” Naomi said with a shrug. “I mean its not actually that much. The technology is pretty profound and the specs I will be giving to your office if you accept my proposal will be long but everything can be summarized pretty neatly.” The lack of decorum slightly rankled the Admiral but since Naomi Faulkner was not a part of the navy there wasn’t a requirement for decorum.
“I see. Why don’t you summarize it for me then?” Scott asked.
“Well, one of the problems we have had with jump engines are that for all of their usefulness they are rather large, they would be even more so without the previous advances in efficiency. For example the Tribal Mod Js are about 2,000 tons larger than the Tribals without any increase in firepower and only a tiny increase in survivability that comes from having more stuff in the ship. A jump engine large enough to allow a Victory class to jump would be so massive its considered prohibitively expensive right now. Things get a bit sloppier when you consider that due to the different strains that military ships can take as compared to commercial shipping can take military ships and commercial ships have to have different jump engines. But the one bright spot in that is that a single jump engine can currently bring two other ships along for the ride. So with that my team and I figured out a way to build a structure in which a group of ships can use to jump at a jump point. Since size is not a constraint in this device it can jump both commercial and military ships and can generate enough power to jump more than three ships at a time. Not only have we created this device but we have created a prototype that can build it that’s only 50,000 tons.”
Vice Admiral Scott thought for a few seconds nodding to herself. “Interesting. So essentially you are creating a gateway on a jump point?”
Showing more excitement than she had so far Naomi nodded vigorously and almost got up out of her seat. “Yes! Exactly! We believe that this gate can help push out how far we can expand by rendering jump engines optional.” Her excitement faded for a moment and she sat fully back down in her chair as she continued, “The only downside is at the moment our prototype takes six months to build this gate. If this is approved we have plans for a ship that is pretty much just this construction machine, engines, and crew space and while they are out proving my design my team and I can get back to work on trying to shorten the time needed to build this.”
“I see. Yes, that is acceptable for the moment. We will accept your plans and consider building your ship but if you want more than one run of the ship then you must deliver on a shorter time.”
At this Naomi actually jumped up and clasped Vice Admiral Scott’s hand in both of hers before shaking it rather harder than she had intended. “Thank you, oh thank you sir. I will do that.” With that she fairly ran out of the room.
John Penn was leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the side of his console. He was bouncing a ball against the ceiling and wall of the ship just he had for the last couple of hours. Kirk Donovan looked over at him, “Its almost lunch time.” He stated with boredom, his computer game on pause on the second screen of his console.
“Yep.” John said between bounces. “How’s it going over there? And no I don’t mean your game, I don’t care about your game.”
Kirk consulted his main screen for a second. “Nitrogen, still at 0.007 atmospheres. CO2, holding steady at 0.003 atmospheres. That is good since we haven’t touched those yet. O2 at 0.0895, looks like we are almost half way there at least as far as oxygen goes. Funny thing is right now O2 makes up 89.95% of the atmosphere.”
John nodded, “Don’t get too excited. Once O2 gets to its desired volume we have to add in this so called ‘safe greenhouse gas’ and then add in other smeg to bring O2 down to only 20% of the total. The whole fleet will be here for something like four years.”
Kirk looked at his screen a bit morosely. Even though the ships were equipped with food and recreation for deployments lasting ten years, none of them liked to be reminded of how long they would be gone. All they had for company was each other and the dead red rock they were orbiting. The good news is once the atmosphere got closer to breathable they would be able to walk on the surface and be among the first to do so.
-Excerpt from the introduction of “The Agincourt, the Hero of Early Exploration.” By Theodore Francesca, Copyright 2184, Penguin Publishing
April 2025
Captain Stephanie Booth shook her head. 61 Cygni was the third system found by the Commonwealth Navy and so far each had a possibly habitable planet, in fact 61 Cygni –A-II was the closest to Earth yet found, but so far they were all tidally locked and lifeless. 61 Cygni-A-II took 116 days to rotate once and had no tectonic movement, there was almost no energy left anywhere in the system. Another system to mark on the maps as possibly good for future terraforming and mining. It would almost be better if the systems had just dead planets, but no they keep finding worlds that should be decent for creating life and so far nothing. This finding might be better if her task force did not take almost two weeks to get here, like Captain Shah she had ordered a slow approach to the planet to deny any life they found possible tactical knowledge about the speed of her ships. Now she finds out that she could have been here in less than 4 days. Time to go home and report.
May 2025
Naomi walked into Vice Admiral Scott’s office. The Admiral briefly looked up at her and motioned her to a seat. “Thank you for joining me here. I understand we have quite a bit to talk about today.” Emma Scott said before setting her papers aside and giving her entire attention to the scientist in front of her.
“I suppose.” Naomi said with a shrug. “I mean its not actually that much. The technology is pretty profound and the specs I will be giving to your office if you accept my proposal will be long but everything can be summarized pretty neatly.” The lack of decorum slightly rankled the Admiral but since Naomi Faulkner was not a part of the navy there wasn’t a requirement for decorum.
“I see. Why don’t you summarize it for me then?” Scott asked.
“Well, one of the problems we have had with jump engines are that for all of their usefulness they are rather large, they would be even more so without the previous advances in efficiency. For example the Tribal Mod Js are about 2,000 tons larger than the Tribals without any increase in firepower and only a tiny increase in survivability that comes from having more stuff in the ship. A jump engine large enough to allow a Victory class to jump would be so massive its considered prohibitively expensive right now. Things get a bit sloppier when you consider that due to the different strains that military ships can take as compared to commercial shipping can take military ships and commercial ships have to have different jump engines. But the one bright spot in that is that a single jump engine can currently bring two other ships along for the ride. So with that my team and I figured out a way to build a structure in which a group of ships can use to jump at a jump point. Since size is not a constraint in this device it can jump both commercial and military ships and can generate enough power to jump more than three ships at a time. Not only have we created this device but we have created a prototype that can build it that’s only 50,000 tons.”
Vice Admiral Scott thought for a few seconds nodding to herself. “Interesting. So essentially you are creating a gateway on a jump point?”
Showing more excitement than she had so far Naomi nodded vigorously and almost got up out of her seat. “Yes! Exactly! We believe that this gate can help push out how far we can expand by rendering jump engines optional.” Her excitement faded for a moment and she sat fully back down in her chair as she continued, “The only downside is at the moment our prototype takes six months to build this gate. If this is approved we have plans for a ship that is pretty much just this construction machine, engines, and crew space and while they are out proving my design my team and I can get back to work on trying to shorten the time needed to build this.”
“I see. Yes, that is acceptable for the moment. We will accept your plans and consider building your ship but if you want more than one run of the ship then you must deliver on a shorter time.”
At this Naomi actually jumped up and clasped Vice Admiral Scott’s hand in both of hers before shaking it rather harder than she had intended. “Thank you, oh thank you sir. I will do that.” With that she fairly ran out of the room.
John Penn was leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the side of his console. He was bouncing a ball against the ceiling and wall of the ship just he had for the last couple of hours. Kirk Donovan looked over at him, “Its almost lunch time.” He stated with boredom, his computer game on pause on the second screen of his console.
“Yep.” John said between bounces. “How’s it going over there? And no I don’t mean your game, I don’t care about your game.”
Kirk consulted his main screen for a second. “Nitrogen, still at 0.007 atmospheres. CO2, holding steady at 0.003 atmospheres. That is good since we haven’t touched those yet. O2 at 0.0895, looks like we are almost half way there at least as far as oxygen goes. Funny thing is right now O2 makes up 89.95% of the atmosphere.”
John nodded, “Don’t get too excited. Once O2 gets to its desired volume we have to add in this so called ‘safe greenhouse gas’ and then add in other smeg to bring O2 down to only 20% of the total. The whole fleet will be here for something like four years.”
Kirk looked at his screen a bit morosely. Even though the ships were equipped with food and recreation for deployments lasting ten years, none of them liked to be reminded of how long they would be gone. All they had for company was each other and the dead red rock they were orbiting. The good news is once the atmosphere got closer to breathable they would be able to walk on the surface and be among the first to do so.