The Chronicle of the GUNs

[Aajowa (OP)]

Hey! I've never documented or written fiction for an Aurora play-through before, but I thought i'd give it a go because the plays I've been making lately have been getting increasingly difficult to track and this might keep me motivated to remember which tanker fleet vanished vs.  was absorbed, or why (a) ship is transferred to (b) task group and etc.  This play-through attempts to act as a single organisation within humanity, as a result it is smaller than you might expect.

SETUP

The year is 2025.  After a promising decade of spaceflight rebirth; the second space race comes crashing to the ground alongside the aging ISS and crew alongside dozens more satellites, after unknown sabotage.
There is no shortage of blame, with wild accusations of nations attempting to supplant global order, to false-flag operations, to magnetic or even alien interference. 
Details are lacking, but after worldwide communications were suddenly cut on July 11th 06:34 (GMT), it is understood that an unknown satellite impacted the ISS at 06:36 (GMT), and brought the station down over a populated strip from Croatia to Montenegro - and with dozens more of humanities satellites falling all over the Western world.

Blame initially focused on China eventually shifted to grief, after absence of evidence and a compelling counterpoint that communications disruption and economic impact brought them no benefit and resulted in the highest single death toll of any country regardless of lack of debris impact.

With the worlds mourning growing dimmer and recovery accelerating, focus shifted on securing the globes remaining communications arrays and ensuring space would continue to be developed, under more stringent and centralized management.  This would ensure humanities future without recreating the sword of Damocles above human worlds.

As a result of growing concern of a repeat event, the United Nations voted to create a supranational union to represent humanities plethora of interests, terrestrial and otherwise.  The union would consist of all member states that voted to the affirmative.  The charter of this Grand Union of Nations would:

     i) Responsibly run elements of civil administration within all seven continents without
        preference or bias;
     ii) Arbitrate inter-national arguments using fair judicial proceedings, and interfere with
         member nations attempting to illegally secede or invade others;
     iii) Coordinate and manage interplanetary colonization or exploitation in a sustainable
          manner;
     iv) Operate institutes of learning, training, and research to ensure scientific progress is
          funded and maintained, and;
     v) Supplant SETI, and coordinate scientific and diplomatic efforts with alien races if
         discovered.

The Grand Union of Nations was formally established Monday, the 31st of October 2039, but did not begin administration until Sunday, the 1st of January 2040.  This log serves as the Chronicle of the GUNs.


Starting Parameters will be displayed below, but here's personal/flavour limitations:
1) Maximum ship size will be racial armour tech level x 500 tonnes, both to limit size creep and scale to what would be IMO realistic at given eras of spaceflight.  To scale, when complete the ISS will weigh ~420 tonnes - Smaller than some fighters despite being football-field sized (I know solar panels pad that size, but still)
2) Limiting ship weapons to railgun only.  In part because of research limitations as shown below, and in part because I'm loving the recent railgun volley size customisation options.  Ship-boarding is fine, but with research on the back burner it likely won't be feasible.
3) Limiting to naval shipyards/ships only.  Because pain is pleasure, and maintenance hurts.
4) Retiring ships that have served for 30 years or more.  Exceptions will be made for 'famous' ships that have made a case for preservation in orbit of Earth as a sort of museum piece.
5) Though using a conventional start, SM mode will be used to give TN, geological survey sensors, and a handful of basic ground unit designs.  It's an odd way to set that up, but I don't know beforehand exactly how much RP it would cost and I don't want to have any spare.  SM will also be used to snip out the starting spaceport, because we won't be using it for years yet and removing it is not an option even in conventional starts.
6) All military ships must be single-ship-jump capable, or not jump capable at all with the RP being these are warp drives rather than wormhole-generating jump drives.

Game starting state is attached (hopefully).  I suppose I need an imgur account to embed pictures?


Welcome to GUNs, let's have some FUNs

[Aajowa (OP)]

"smeg", thought Evie Lloyd.  Around her, the new years celebrations were kicking off.  In her office however, the buzzing alarms and confetti were an unwelcome annoyance.  Born 2020, Evie had grown up during all eight waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and between the Great Social Distance (GSD) of the 20's and her overbearingly academic Mother, she had never stood a chance to grow accustomed to the social world.  Rather - she was happiest behind a desk, particularly this brand-new number; Sleek, monochrome, and all glass and polymer-It represented her almost total authority here despite still smelling like a "Wet-plastic fart", per her Fathers description.
Described as "Career-oriented" by her few friends, and "A stone-cold bitch" by almost everyone else, she had graduated Summa cum laude in the first cohort of 'gUNI' as its' youngest participant and was rewarded with entry to the advanced leadership program of the Grand Union of Nations.
Fighting against men and women twice her age and tenfold her experience, she alone had come up top and was offered this most prestigious posi-
-BEEP. . . BEEP. . . BEEP
-tion.
"Gods what an annoying sound.  Why is the volume so high?" she thought.
Using a touchscreen built in to her desk to her left, she poked the alarm to stop, her finger leaving a small smudge on its' pristine surface.  She was well aware already of the date and time.  It was midnight.  She had officially just assumed control of this organisation, and the organisation had just assumed control of a wide series of portfolios roughly comparable to a small nation.
BEEP. . . BEEP. . . BE-bip!

By her own estimate, the departments she now managed were understaffed by almost a third.  Despite now overseeing a globe-spanning conglomerate of academies, factories, refineries, and mines, the powers-that-were had understaffed the union by a whopping 2. 3 million personnel.  She would rectify that with wideband recruitment campaigns, and balance the additional cost by diverting currently stockpiled funds and resources to the Financial Services Department (FSD) Investment Division, and send a few extra staff to spruik the organisation to the Appropriation Committee of the UN.  Now where was Eve?

Eve Flynn, scientific extraordinaire and now certified missile-monkey, was currently gorging on vegan party pies in the common room down the hall with her staff.  Despite being midnight at the office, every staffmember was present for this momentous occasion.  It wasn't only a new year and decade, it was a new era and they were at its' helm.  Within ten minutes, all celebration was to cease and they would have a forty-minute briefing.  Tomorrow they would arrive at 08:30 to begin the first official work day (on a Sunday, of all things!).

Evie viewed the common room through her in-built computer screen and allowed herself to ponder.  Eve and Evie had been friendly rivals at gUNI, and both had graduated top of their respective classes.  Eve was one of the few people who saw Evie as a person, and one of the fewer who'd call her "career-oriented".  Mostly, Evie knew Eve just liked to blow things up - this would be mentioned in the briefing later.  For now though, Evie watched the party on one screen and blew on her party kazoo.  She'd have nine minutes now until the briefing, and set her eyes to her right - onscreen, a detailed treatise quantifying the merits of interdepartmental collaboration was very much food for thought, and would only take eight minutes to read.



I apologise if I mix up Evie and Eve.  41 name themes and who-knows how many thousands of options but it seems RNG has picked Eve and Eve-with-an-i for us.  On the plus side they're both easy to RP as academically gifted career women, even if Eve is a little strange and Evie a little. . . "career-oriented".

[Aajowa (OP)]

"Welcome, everyone" announced Evie as newcomers crowded in to her office.

Almost sixty people in total would be attending this meeting in person, and almost two thousand more across the globe were watching from their own office screens.

Beginning with what she thought was a quite rousing speech about the new dawn approaching humanity (10 minutes), Evie offered a brief synopsis of the organisations goals and history (15 minutes), a prolonged enticement of the multitude of departments to collaborate with one another with a very convincing statistical breakdown (5 minutes), and finally tied together the organisations goals with a realistic target that she would later personally request Eve Flynn develop - An autonomous satellite capable of determining the mineral composition of asteroids from a distance, in order to launch future scientific or even commercial endeavors.
This would require a very substantial rocket launch system, a robust supply chain, and an investment of billions of dollars.
It would also require Eve design a missile (albeit one that didn't explode), which would surely help her departments' morale after months of pure administrative activity.

With these specifications, Evie dismissed the large crowd with dull glazed-over eyes, and looked at her clock, realising it was almost 1:30 in the morning.  She must have talked a little too enthusiastically about coordination and the history of her departments.  Whoops.

As her final action of the evening, Evie sent through a few emails - One to begin the process of identifying launch pad areas for the eventual survey satellites, one to commit to training one cohort of full-time paid peacekeepers, one to Eve to remind her of the rockets' specifications, and one to her mother to rebut her concerns that her speech and meeting would be a failure.  This was a very successful morning, all things considered.

[Aajowa (OP)]

2040-2050
January 01 2040 -
Evie Lloyd had a tremendous effect on the moral and operations of the Grand Union of Nations.  Her advocates cite her inaugural flurry of activity as the strongest series of actions the GUN had ever seen.  Her detractors maintain that within her first month, she had lost 63 million USD to administrative reshuffling, scientific tests, manufacturing expenses, and military training on an unnecessary cohort of peacekeepers.  Her strongest detractors speculated her to be naive at best, and deranged and dangerous at worst.

Within the halls of the UN and doubtless elsewhere in the world there was no shortage of debate on whether the Grand Union would secure enough funding to offer all the solutions it had promised, or whether it would prove a disastrously costly failure.
Regardless, motion had been set and inertia had been overcome, and Administrator Lloyd's vision began to take shape as old industrial hubs within GUN jurisdictions sprang back to life, and world-regarded manufacturing and financial centers emerged from donated city blocks like mushrooms after a storm.
With over 50,000 recruits joining the organisation per month, carefully guided development, and Administrator Lloyd's curation - within a few months the GUN deficit had shrunk to a third.  Lloyd's detractors were quick to note that without defeating the deficit within two years, the GUN would simply run out of money.

May 30 2040-
Eve Flynn, covered in black soot and cursing with her assistants with regards to the whereabouts of that 'damn 10mm ratchet', walked to the computer terminal that would display whether or not the nest of wires and sensors was correctly reading its' own signals.  Nodding to the electrical development head standing aside her, she enabled him to press one of the four oversized buttons attached to the spaghetti-esq tangle in front of them.  Flickering on, the screen televised a few thousand scrolling lines of code before reaching its' conclusion - It worked, though a small internal sensor detected a metallic intrusion and switched off per its' safety override.  Eve looked at her assistant, isolated the power supply, and sent him to dive among the brambles.  She'd be getting that ratchet back no matter how long it took.

On conference call between Evie - ('sorry', she thought to herself, It's 'Administrator Lloyd' now) and a handful of delegates, Eve announced it would take three months or so to develop a compatible rocket system to launch the satellites to targeted bodies of the solar system.  With a range of over ten billion kilometers, there would be for the first time no place too far to survey.  The only conceivable problem would be getting the rocket to space to be launched by a dedicated guidance system orbiting the planet.

October 22 2040 -
Administrator Evie Lloyd received two bits of good news on October 22nd.  The first was that Eve had submitted the final draft of her 'Flynn Booster Rocket', which would carry a geo-survey satellite in to orbit of any interplanetary body Eevie or future administrators chose.  The second was that bean counters noted a transient net positive balance to the GUN of 1 Million USD, the first monthly surplus in the organisations' history.

Knowing full-well that it was impossible to keep the surplus up at current rates of expenditure, Administrator Lloyd called in Declan Green, fellow gUNI graduate and head of the Sensor Research science division.  Cutting the R&D budget by 25%, Evie tasked Declan Green with creating a sensor capable of detecting the gravitational pull of an object.  'Grav Sensors' would allow firing the autonomous Flynn Rockets to bodies without human intervention or piloting. 
Coordinating three quarters of the UN's research centers from his own center in Michigan USA, Mr.  Green would spend the next several years developing this cutting-edge technology while Administrator Lloyd continued ensuring funding and supplies for the GUN, and developing a more robust portfolio that wouldn't see her scrounging for sponsors.

August 18 2041 -
Sunday morning, Administrator Lloyd woke with one thing on her mind, and one thing only - For all her plans for the GUN, the organisation was still losing millions per month.  In order to preserve the reserve of funding the organisation was bestowed with, she would have to gain a surplus by any means necessary.  Furiously typing on her iPad 12, she arranged three emails - Firstly, mothballing one more research center.  Secondly, suspending the production of maintenance supplies and fuel until further notice, and thirdly diverting manpower and resources to expand the financial hubs the GUN had established under the first days of her leadership.  By months end, the GUN was back in the black, with a modest 3 million USD from UN contributions per month entering the treasury.  At leisure, the two research centers (one in Hamburg, Germany and one in Gaolu, China) could be filled to boost output.

November 16 2041 -
Within the nation of Nigeria, when the city of Abuja was planned and declared the new capital some fifty years earlier, a vast portion of jobs and government funding vanished from Lagos.  In the first days of Evie's tenure as Administrator, she had begun funding the purchase and redevelopment of the better part of a square kilometre within Lagos.  Promising to bring between fifty and two hundred thousand manufacturing jobs to the city, and more through flow-on effects, the project garnered special attention from the President of Nigeria themselves, permission was granted to use a substantial part of Apapa port for UN manufacturing activity.
As of November 16, Stage 1 of 4 of this development was completed, and the manufacturing district of Apapa began in earnest, roughly doubling UN production capacity.  Immediately, Apapa began distributing construction components that would be shipped to Administrator Lloyd's next project - A substantial greenfield development and financial hub within Uruguay.

June 03 2044 -
Administrator Lloyd was not an especially cautious nor reckless person.  After several stable years of a small, trickling inflow of capital the GUN had accrued almost a third of a billion USD, and it was high time that some risks were taken.  Having pondered its' merits and dangers, she'd taken the liberty of typing this email several times already over the course of many months.  Today, she submitted the email to the GUN internal server and officially reopened Gaolu's research division. 
Mothballed employees working on other projects could now resume working on the gravitational experiments deep belowground, alongside Mr.  Greens' existing coordinated experiments.  Though not permanent, it would be able to run for at least a year, and greatly aid progress of the automated Geological survey satellites that would soon blossom through the solar system.
Sensing bean-counter interference, Administrator Lloyd reminded the accounting division that the upcoming 16-million-USD monthly deficit was to be expected, and even disregarded as being temporary.

June 28 2045 -
Administrator Lloyd received almost sixteen thousand emails today on her external account.  Most were spam, many were irrelevant, and only a dozen-and-a-half made it to her attention.  Of this only two were of note - The first, that donuts in the break room of a small manufacturing center in Austin, Texas had attracted the attentions a very large and angry wasp and that the resulting YouTube(2) video had begun to go viral.  The second, that her old-time nemesis from gUNI had died.  Both made her smile.

She also received two emails on her internal account - The first being that the GUN was ten months from bankruptcy unless a research division was shuttered again, and the other affirming that after half a decade of dedicated recruitment campaigns the GUN had finally overcome its' worker deficit.
Deciding the loss (Closed now to 15,000,000/month) was not of extraordinary danger, Evie decided to hold off on shuttering Gaolu until new years.  and decided to watch the wasp video one last time before leaving for the day.

July 18 2047 -
Anticipating celebration, administrator Lloyd had flown out on Monday for a Thursday day-long celebration in Lagos.  After the better part of a decade, the creation of a substantial manufacturing center in Nigeria had finished its' fourth stage, and the factory complex created over two hundred thousand jobs.  With all these factories still producing materials to create the first true financial hub in Uruguay, the GUNs financial outlook would surely soon lift.  As a matter of security, Evie authorised the creation of a second Peace Corps to guard the manufacturing district - word had reached the GUN of local unrest caused by such a large influx of industry.  Though these rumors were likely just nay-saying, the President of Nigeria authorised the stationing of this 185-man garrison, and ensured that Lagos would continue to welcome local GUN investment for the foreseeable future.  Administrator Lloyd acknowledged the subtext, and began quietly drafting several greenfield developments within her head, to be announced later.

Meanwhile against her better judgement, Evie took the moment as an opportunity to seek approval from local governments across all six other current major GUN locations to host peacekeeping and security forces.  With three approvals, Evie authorised three new stationings and brought UN permanent armed forces to 925 full-time peacekeepers, acting predominately as security guards and local law enforcement.

August 01 2047 -
Under advice from senior staffers of the United Nations, and sitting members of the cabinet of the supranational Grand Union of Nations, Evie had elected years ago to delegate a small amount of time to returning to gUNI.  In order to maintain a cutting edge of skill and continue developing further, Evie continued her education from the moment she graduated.
As of August 01 2047, she was now qualified to lead shipbuilding operations and operations of this nature once commenced would benefit under her advanced leadership.

Alone in her office, she sat looking at her new certification hung proudly on the wall.  Tracing the smooth glass of her still-quite-dashing desk, she daydreamed about the future until as always another alarm snapped her back in to reality.  If it weren't for the tone, volume, and arrogant chirpiness of the alarm to her left, she'd find its' consistency quite comforting.  Still looking away at her doctorate, and with a mild contempt, she punched the part of the screen that acknowledges the alarm and silences the program - and got back to work.

31 December 2049 -
The decade is coming to a close.  New years eve 2049 happened to be on a Friday, but there were no celebrations to be had for Evie.  With a decade of her tenure gone, she would soon have to argue her case for reelection.  With tantalizing updates from the now Doctor Declan Green regarding gravitational sensors, and with GUN funding as tight as ever-Evie felt stuck in a rut and needed something bold to argue her case.  She did not spend her life to this point to form the prelude of someone elses story, and every hour she'd spent dedicated to study or practice would, should, could not be in vain.  She just needed to think of something that could excite her.  But what?

Looking over her at her wall, she realised she just needed to think bigger.






Thanks for reading this far! First decade of a relatively slow playthrough.  I hope you all enjoyed my nonsense.  Active Grav Sensor Strength 10 is ~6 months away, at which point it'll be time to design the orbital stations that will launch interplanetary geosurvey satellites (IE Eve Flynn's explosionless missiles).  Financial centers are halfway done, and with construction centers on repeat, industry will soon start to snowball until population constraints kick in.  I just want enough income for all those research centers to run! I'd have started again in a normal playthrough after a year to adjust the numbers, but i'd already committed to the writing the AAR, whoopsie!

Here is: Dr.  Declan Green, Evie at decades-end, and the state of our nascent supranational federation as of the start of the decade.

Let me know if there's something you'd like me to change up in the story or suggestions to whatever.  I'm still looking to make an imgur account so I can embed images so it's not so. . . textblocky

[Aajowa (OP)]

July 02 2050 -
Doctor Green was ecstatic.  He and his team had finally made it possible to detect an object by way of gravitational waves - without kilometre-long interferometers like LIGO, and had even managed to detect the gravitational impact of orbiting bodies in Sol.  Sure, its' range was orders of magnitude less than the static models of old, but it was also smaller by that same margin and presented infinitely more opportunity.  Within hours, Doctor Green had spitballed a dozen applications and began arranging the next sequence of tests to apply its' design to automated rocket guidance systems.

Back in Evie's office, convincing the powers that be to retain her had been suprisingly easy, and she had won hearts and funding necessary to begin the next phase - Obtaining land and building a facility capable of distributing Flynn-class rockets to orbit for interplanetary dispersal.  The site had been narrowed down to arid strips of land in either central Australia, or the old Texan launch sites leftover from private spaceflight contractors in earlier decades.  The choice was easy, given its' existing infrastructure.  With a flourish, she signed off to begin the refit - which would take several years yet.  Following this was a doubling of the production capacity of the Lagos construction factories, with soon almost a half-million people now working under its' management scheme.

January 02 2051 -
After six months, Doctor Green was exhausted, yet continued to work - Having just completed a state-of-the-art guidance system for interplanetary satellite launches, it was now time for his team to pick up the penultimate stage of his contribution to the project, by developing a system that could interface with the guidance system and launch these satellites without knocking itself out of orbit.

After that, convincing Administrator Lloyd to stake her reputation and career on Green's team and expertise seemed even more difficult.  For all the billions she'd funneled to his research network, there was no guarantee she would adopt the Green Rocket Control System or the Geo-satellite Launch System for her system-wide survey project.

November 28 2052 -
At the conclusion of Doctor Green's involvement with the geological survey project within the Sol system, Administrator Lloyd laughed.  Not with great heart, nor without emotion, but with precisely the warmth to ensure him that she would indeed be staking her entire career upon his life's work.  Evie stared at him via commlink, and smiled - Doctor Green would receive funding sufficient to continue his work until retirement, but only after her project of focus was complete.
Returning to the matter at hand, Administrator Lloyd viewed progress of her infrastructure spending - Within a year the construction factories of Lagos would be complete, and a few years later so too would be the ordinance transfer facilities to load these first-gen satellites.  The launch systems would be fine for this first generation of spaceflight, but next generations would be different and would require vastly different technology.  Calling via satellite link, she requested scientist He Lin Wu of Gaolu's recently reactivated scientific institute - With his expertise in material composition, they could quite possibly make space-faring ships of a size even greater than the disastrous former ISS.

September 14 2055
With great enthusiasm, He Lin Wu informed Administrator Lloyd of his new advanced composite armour - Lighter than conventional steel plating, it offered both protection from solar radiation and a more flexible loadout.  Moreover; his team had offered to design plates to replace the Lloyd-classes existing steel structure, allowing it an extraordinary weight reduction of 56%, bringing it to a mere 176 tonnes.

All of this was good news to Administrator Lloyd, whos continuing deficit of 2,000,000 USD per month and delay in bringing back the Boco Chica launch facilities were having a toll, and feeding online criticism of substantial mismanagement.
At some point and somehow I've paused the construction activity, and i'm not looking to save scum.  Administrative bungle? Corruption? A rogue robotic Elon Musk, haunting the site and frustrating attempts to bring it back to a serviceable state? Who knows!

November 2, 2057 -
Officially thirteen months before the completion of the rocket relaunching site in Boca Chica, Administrator Lloyd authorised the construction of not one, but two Lloyd class orbit launch platforms.  With each being less than half of its' original weight, small alterations to the aeronautical factories enabled both to be adequately built launched for comparable cost and time.  Evie was ecstatic, and marked down the 1st of January 2059 as the day that would change spaceflight.
In anticipation, a department-wide email blast was sent to the Rocketry Division, requesting twenty four total rockets be ready by that date.  This would allow twelve consecutive launches in January alone, enough to begin the survey of each planet that she had promised to deliver by the close of the decade.

After the completion of the Lloyd-class platforms, she would need to redouble efforts to secure a net surplus for the GUN, as the financial crunch continued to hinder humanities plans.

January 01 2059
Live from Boca Chica, the six astronauts selected to enter space for the first time in almost two decades waited.  Sitting in two groups of three, they nervously waited to enter each groups' house-sized shuttle.  The tests had been run, the lights had gone green, and no fewer than a thousand scientists, experts, and bureaucrats had been placated to enable this moment.
Alerted by the intercom that their moment had come, each trio entered what would be their home for the next week.  Without further ado (though with almost twenty years of it behind them), both crews simultaneously began their launch proceedings.  With the world watching, many had argued the dangers of launching both at the same time.  Administrator Lloyd would have no delays.  She had one year and one year only to survey the system before decades end, it would not be wasted for protocol.

After almost ten minutes of flight, information began beaming back to the surface, and the launches were deemed a success.  With a wave of champagne now flowing across the world- administrator Lloyd allowed herself a moment to smile, before ordering the four already-mounted rockets launched at predefined orbits over Venus.  Each day for the next week would see four new rockets launched to meet the interplanetary platforms, and fired with haste towards new planets.

Under supervision of the Union of Nations Exploration Command (UNEC), The twin orbital launch platforms of UNEC 0001 - Lloyd and UNEC 0002 - Flynn waited mere kilometres from one another.  In a few moments, they would launch the first survey satellites to orbit another body within Sol.

With a crackling order given, the Lieutenant Commander Josse Smekens directed personnel aboard both platforms to fire - and with a grand yet silent shudder, one truck-sized rocket from each team vanished to the void.  Within weeks, they would reach orbit and begin recording detailed geological information.  Eventually if anything of note was found, they would beam these records back to Earth.  Smekens breathed a sigh of relief at this first successful firing towards Venus, and awaited the next command.

Back on Terra Firma - anticipating further exploration, Evie authorised the manufacture of another fourty rockets.  This would be an interesting year ahead.

January 8 2059 -
The expended modules of the Flynn and Lloyd crackled with red-hot friction as they descended through the atmosphere, en-route to a splashdown in the pacific.  Having launched between them two dozen interplanetary rockets, they had come to the end of their useful life and been decommissioned
Deleted taskgroup.  For unknown reasons their deployment has been ticking up despite orbiting the population - presumably due to either the lack of either spaceport/a hangar/engines? The first seems strange to me given that fighters can enter/exit gravity, and the last seems strange because they got in to orbit without them anyway.
Could anyone clarify why these fighters are considered deployed in orbit of Earth?

With rockets en-route to all solid planets of the solar system, the scientists and geologists of the Exploration Command (UNEC) began waiting patiently for results, and began urging on Administrator Lloyd to prepare more launch platforms and geo-survey rockets at her earliest convenience.

Administor Lloyd knew this was an unlikely proposition; with a per-launch cost of roughly thirteen million USD, it was simply not feasible until expansion of the financial hubs in Uruguay and Malaysia were completed.  She had finally begun GUN expansion in to the solar system however, and know that she alone had been responsible for what is now two dozen human constructs flying silently through the void.



Anyone wondering how my elections work; I flip a coin for reelection.  If heads, she wins.  If tails, I select the three best candidates and choose the one with the highest political reliability for RP popularity reasons.

[Aajowa (OP)]

I figured out the deployment counter - It resets to zero every construction cycle or something similar.  Next fighters will remain up as long as necessary

01 February 2060 -
Administrator Lloyd had once again secured reelection, no doubt due to her convincing flurry of interplanetary transits which were now beaming back information from their respective bodies.  With a new decade begun, she determined the best way to resume launch operations was to expand financial streams - Instructing worldwide construction operations to begin a South-East Asian financial hub that would generate an up to an additional 25 Million USD/month.  To support this, additional mines through the Western half of Australia would be established with governmental permission.

Febuary 12 2063 -
Due to rising concerns surrounding substantial greenfield developments throughout the globe, Administrator Lloyd began authorising the first of what would be an additional three peacekeeping corps.  This would ensure continued security of GUN assets, as well as keep local law enforcement well-supported.  The total number of full-time security personnel within the GUN was 1450.  Though her detractors maintained this number was insufficient to protect humanities' interests in the event of local unrest, such situations had remained mercifully non-extant.

March 09 2066 -
Administrator Evie had yet to receive any affirmations from the few dozen drones scattered throughout the solar system, and the chorus of voices wishing to redouble the effort was only growing over time.  With satellites already prebuilt, it was time to relaunch orbital platforms that would allow the eyes of humanity to gave upon the remaining bodies and noteworthy moons of Sol.  How convenient then, that this would reignite excitement immediately before the decennial election period.  This was a time of relative financial stability and growth for the GUN, and a risk in this matter would surely be of limited impact.

November 23, 2068 -
With the launch of two new Lloyd orbital platforms, the UNEC once again began probing the bodies of the Sol system with unrelenting haste.  Within a month, all fourty geosurvey satellites stockpiled had been used, and orders to create dozens more were written by Administer Lloyd with what her detractors called relentless disregard for funds or duty. 
In the minds of those loyal to the long-serving Administrator however, this was a long-due reward.  With a brief shuttering of research experiments - and the longer-term impacts of earlier investments becoming a grindingly-slow reality, it was now feasible to allow this second tranche of exploration expenses. 
Noting growing resentment regarding the perceived lack of security, Administrator Lloyd requested training of an additional two peacekeeper corps to be bundled amongst the exploration announcements.  Though she could scarcely afford them, dulling the accusations of her detractors would be necessary to gain reelection.

December 15 2068 -
With great relief came the receipt of a data cache from four satellites orbiting Luna that when combined, formed Earths' collective geological lunar expedition.  Celebration ensued in this proof that the decades-long 'First wave' of exploration was a success.  Unworthy of the grandeur of this news was its' content - The moon was barren.
Horrified scientists had seen Earths' great mineral bounty and assumed that all bodies must be somewhat endowed, and some fringe voices stated that minerals of trans-newtonian property were exclusively the result of eons of activity that could only have occurred on Earth.  Moderates would state that perhaps in the event that formed Luna, these 'TN' minerals were sequestered by Earth and that other bodies would prove bountiful.  In truth, no one knew what the results of the remaining survey would be.
Resigning herself to her office to conference with the leading scientists and geologists of the globe, raging discussion formed as to how an entire celestial body could be bereft of useful material.  Administrator Lloyd knew that with her latest flurry of satellite launches, she needed some good news if GUN, and her political career, were to stand a chance.

March 16 2069
Ending a period of relative radio silence amongst the solar system, bandwidths began chattering, then blazing with data beamed back from a half dozen points in the solar system at once.  Unexpectedly, satellites sent out mere months ago were reporting a combined mineral lode of hundreds of thousands of tonnes from comets nearest to Earth.  With such a sudden and strong validation of her geological survey program, Administrator Lloyd noted a prominent silence among the mineral-naysayers that had decried her as having wasted billions on nothing of substance.
With a small, hardy core of conspiracy theorists calling this data dump a hoax, the Administrator enticed some of the more wild fans to present any evidence of 'Manufactured data' or 'TN-materials-being impossible'.  Evie waited now with gripping anticipation, to see if there would be any positive data from the main bodies of the solar system.

[Aajowa (OP)]

Ahhh man, I lost power nine years in to the next decade.  Welp, time to redo this.   Evie didn't win the coin flip last playthrough, but I decided to roll it all again rather than try repeating the same decade of gameplay/hours of typing.  Let's go Administrator Lloyd!
This ended up being all RP though.  I know nuclearslurpee gets unfathomably deep in to the RP and politics and I love him for it (death to the Bellepheron Class and all of its' advocates) but is this too much RP for not enough gameplay? We're still not even in space proper

To most, it came as little surprise that incumbent Evie Lloyd had won an otherwise fiercely contested election.  With extraterrestrial mineral data validating her chosen course of action, a grand surplus delivered, and industrial capacity growing by the day - her detractors had few points to argue on beyond criticism of her handling of domestic terrorism and allegations of national favoritism.  With millions of dedicated scientists, tens of millions of productive public servants, and the nations of the superstate in boom - it was time for long-dreamt plans to be announced.  Born in science fiction and sculpted by her dreams, the object of her desire would soon be made real.  Humanity could have it all if only they would continue her support.

Within the Grand Hall of Representatives, the combined political rabble of almost a hundred nations sat, holding for the decennial speech that had become quite the tradition within the Grand Union.  Countless voices filled the spacious auditorium with diplomatic formality and vapid pleasantries while elected officials, their guests, and a legion of translators held countless conversations amongst themselves.  Patiently standing afront the squalls of conversation, Evie waited for the din to subside.


"Ladies and Gentlemen", she spoke - her voice amplified threefold beyond the squall.  Ripples of conversation ensued as translators began their work.

"After almost a third of a century, you have all been so patient to allow us to continue our work.  Many of us had yet to begin our political careers when this movement began, and yet we stand together even now.  To those who's candidates were not victorious - I thank you for voting with your conscience, and I hope to do you proud in their stead.  Your kindness in allowing our work to continue - directly or otherwise - is appreciated beyond what my words can express".

"If I may," she paused "I'd like to return this kindness by telling you all a story.  A story of both fact, and fiction.  A story that occurred thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of years ago - All of them at once, yet only one of them at all.  A story of our Adam; our Eve - without whom we would not be standing here today.  This is the story of Aeve, and this is the story of the First Step. "

Evie took a deep breath and a sip of water, and began telling the story that she had so long been retelling to herself.

"On this day, whether it be the brightest day or darkest night, we find ourselves.  Amongst trees long-since gone, amidst a field now built or buried and at the surface of a primeval ocean, we meet Aeve.  Aeve looks just like us, perhaps shorter, perhaps hairier, and perhaps nothing like us at all.  Aeve stands, or swims, or lies on their back and it is like this that we meet them.
Craning their primitive vertebrae, Aeve looks up.  Neither searching for food, nor scanning for predators.  Aeve simply looks up, and for the first time notices the stars.  A smattering amongst the clouds; one twinkling light lasting in defiance of a coming dawn; perhaps a dazzling display of constellations we today wouldn't even recognize

Does this gaze last a moment? an instant? an hour? During this gaze, Aeve watches the stars - dancing for them and only them amongst all the world".

Evie took a moment to sip a glass of water, and allowed the translators to continue their work of disseminating her message.  Without them, she was making noise every bit as pointlessly as the diplomats before her had been only moments earlier.

"And this moment, ladies and gentlemen, comes to an end.  Aeve returns their gaze to the world, and after moments or hours begins to move again.  Whether swimming or walking, Aeve takes their first step, back again in the 'real world'.  This step began a journey - A journey first to discover, then understand, then reach the bodies and stars of this universe.  Every child of Aeve, every one of their descendants up to and including us has been on this journey.  Every step our ancestors have taken has gotten us closer to the stars, the planets, and the adventures of the universe, and with but a few final steps we will reach the destination of all humanity - a trillion daydreams met by infinite stars, holding every adventure within".

Evie had admittedly been thinking of that moment a lot lately - having dreamed it up once as a youth and having held it within her secretly for decades.  It sounded so childish once, but the reality of a humanity beyond Earth had become so increasingly plausible that it seemed impossible now to avoid.  Perhaps this is the boundless optimism earlier space-enthusiasts had felt during the First and Second space races prior to the Great Crash of 2025.

Holding for an unexpected applause, Evie had to wait but one more moment to release her life-long ambition.  Evie described to the crowd her plan to build a surface-to-space transit system and an unprecedented astronautical port, which would allow cost-effective transfer of people and cargo to orbit.  As airports and seaports opened up the world horizontally, the first-ever 'spaceport' would open up to humanity the universe itself.  With the world in front of her through seat or screen, she revealed her final plan - The creation of an orbital shipbuilding facility capable of creating the spacefaring vessels that would allow any qualified and willing person to become their own Armstrong, Carver, or Macarthur.  With her televised speech beaming across the world, she and her jubilant supporters looked forward to beginning the projects that would forever mark mankind.

Within the crowd was a man solemn amidst the revelry.  A man standing incredulously amidst his supporters, barely able to suppress one of the coughing fits that had for so long haunted him.  How could these delegates have voted for her, her flowery speeches, and her naive optimism? The Grand Union needed an unrelentingly-powerful economic base and military security more than it needed words and self-confessed daydreams.  Even now, populist politicians the world across scapegoated the GUN for the problems of their state - threatening to withdraw as suited their whims - and with tensions between authoritarian Eastern nations and the liberal West on the rise, the threat of a schism cleaving the Union apart were growing.
Without either neutralizing the threat of secession or disintegration, or overwhelming the projects' expense  this would a white elephant that would doom mankind's attempts at spacefaring until long after his Grandchildren were dead.  The mineral wealth of a hundred million celestial bodies ought be the domain of humanity, and every habitable world to be discovered and colonized would reduce poverty and suffering across all mankind.  If he were to live long enough to see the very dreams Administrator Lloyd kept talking about, Conor Hicks would have to replace her.

[Aajowa (OP)]

January 1 2070 -
Immediately following her inaugural speech, Administrator Evie Lloyd committed fully to diverting industrial resources towards these new projects. While the dual industrial and financial centers she had guided in Lagos would support the next stage of humanities ambitions, it would be well-insufficient in its' present state to either construct or fund these mega-projects. Having faced two decades of baseless accusation regarding corruption regarding Nigerian/GUN development contracts, it would be necessary to build a sequence of factories of unprecedented size - Somewhere warm-weather, with agreeable living standards and existing local infrastructure, and with a substantial existing port.
With an estimated quarter-million workers necessary to keep that factory in production, she instructed her new secretary Kg Zami Myo to head a team to determine the most willing and practical nations and sites. With papers signed and resources released already, Zami would be vested with power to approve or decline the location propositions of this facility if and when a site was chosen, with only a perfunctory signing off from Evie.

With her now-tangible goal of developing a system of interplanetary transport, Evie also began sending invitations to dozens of members of the globes military leadership. If there was to be a new dimension of commercial and military naval command, a recruitment drive begun too early was far better than too late.
Finally before closing all commlinks and videos for the day, she sent a final email to He Win Lu, savior of the Lloyd-class launch platform. It would be necessary to continue research on armour sheathes and plating for any eventual space-born vessels. The mission profile for ships would change significantly with the removal of atmospheric activity, and it would be necessary for armour to develop alongside it.

April 1 2070 -
As was becoming tradition, a new wave of small satellites were launched from the ageing Lloyd-class launch platforms. Within days, three dozen more of Eve Flynns' mainstay survey rockets were sent out to the aether. Having received permission to source targets of their own rather than rely on old command chains, Lieutenant Commander Konjit Li'ol took delight in targeting comets that had escaped earlier notice due to their long orbits and distant location. Many of the latest bodies would beam back information within months, given their small size.
Konjit considered whether to send a wave of satellites to bolster GUN mineral exploration on the major bodies - With substantially more data still being crunched by their autonomous AI cores, it was anybodies guess whether additional survey satellites would be of any assistance, or indeed whether the results would be back by decades end. Surely though, the fabled Flynn rockets final stage could feasibly be replaced by a new generation of satellites with a far more substantial complement of survey equipment.

As the Lloyd-class shuddered at the next waves' launch, Konjit pondered the longevity of the platform she was stationed on. A relic of the late 50s, they were the spark that led her down the path of astronavigational study at gUNI. Born in '41, the Lieutenant Commander Konjit had watched their initial construction and launches during her final years in highschool, and within her they'd created an unquenchable passion. Feeling the launch through every beam and surface, Konjit still held wonder for each launch and began the next step of the launch sequence.
Each launch of such a substantial payload interrupted their velocity by up to several kilometers per second, and she would now have to adjust with its' small and largely powerless side-mounted thrusters. With that task taken care of though, Konjit returned to the crew entertainment screen - she and her two crewmates were in a linked, 3-v-3 game against their sibling platform and their turn was beginning.

August 27 2070 -
Smiling, Administrator Lloyd received news of the receipt of a new mineral data packet from the Sol-spanning Geographical survey. Officially the newly-surveyed Wild comet was now the third most geologically-valuable body within the solar system, beaten by only the Comas Sola comet, and Earth itself. With more satellites reaching moons and bodies missed in earlier years, data continued to flow from even the smallest Solar objects.
Earths' mineral contents were now mostly eclipsed by the comets of the system. Evie knew that despite the early Lunar setback, soon it would be known that there were deposits on other planets that would dwarf even Earths' generous reserves. Amidst mixed opinions on the matter, her plans to develop humanity to a multi-planet species hinged on those planets being worth colonising. To secure support in creating the ships of humanities future, Evie needed a geological win.

January 03 2073 -
In continuation of a disappointing series or results; the combined moons of Earth and Mars, and the entirety of Mercury had come up barren. Devoid of nonconventional geology, it would be unlikely substantial human presence would ever eventuate on these convenient local bodies. Though hope for Martian colonisation continued, it was beginning to look increasingly unlikely that human habitation within the inner system would be a wise decision.
Geophysicists were agast, unsure whether or not conventional models of the formation of Earth were correct. If all the large observed bodies of the Solar system were bereft of this geology, how was it possible that Earth was somehow held all these blessings?

Administrator Lloyd had long been funding an unconventional laboratory within Myanmar, with U Myo Htun continuing research into the potential for trans-system transit. On the back burner now for decades, she grappled with whether or not to cut his funds to redouble focus on Sol's affairs, or to double it in search of more verdant extra-solar fields. Amidst a growing concern about the pattern of the last four major body surveys, Evie decided that for now, the course would be maintained while more data was received.

July 02 2073 -
Recieving word from Secretary Zami that construction of the Irish megafactory was complete, Evie authorised redoubling of construction efforts to build the first human orbital shipyard. At the behest of the heads of staff of the still-forming naval High Command, she also moved to cut scientist Htun's involvement with the still-fictional FTL research project. His ability to visualise the dynamic stresses of intersystem transit on drive components would be useful for a much closer-to-home project - Heading the research team attempting to create a new generation of hydrocarbon-powered interplanetary engines. With dedication and priority funding, it would be feasible to create an efficient, powerful engine prior to completion of the shipyard that would build these vessels.

Konjit Li'ol was ecstatic. After years of on-and-off rostering aboard the 'Flynn' launch platform, she had been promoted to Commander. This meant she would be qualified through service to begin naval training for eventual interplanetary vessels. She began to imagine herself at the helm of a ship, steering towards planets she could only see via telescope. Smiling still, she wondered if she would miss the Flynn, and whether or not she would work with and of her former crewmates again. Cramped, aging, and coming to a state of obsolescence, she was glad to have served the Flynn, and wished its' new Officer Karina Brandt the best before departing back to Earth.

September 25 2074 -
A small transmission from the outer system began feeding data to the terrestrial satellite web. Bouncing from one to another, the signal was met with elation and relief. The survey of Uranus had been completed by its' diligent and ageing satellite array. 'The Herschels' as they were known, were four satellites nicknamed William, John, Issak, and Anna. Dutifully, they had scanned the entirety of the body with a resolution of within one square meter. Holding this data and using the most advanced predictive algorithms, the Herschels had finished their namesakes' study and determined Uranus contained over seventy-three times the amount of Sorium as Earth.

With a margin of error of less than 1%, the Herschel family had determined there to be over slightly under fourty-one million tonnes of the exotic material - enough to make well over eighty billion litres of starship fuel. Though the solid bodies of the Solar system had thus remained barren, the comets and now gas giants of Sol appeared rife with opportunity. Having finished their decades-long task, the four satellites began to enter the atmosphere of Uranus - each gathering and sending their final atmospheric readings before going silent.

Having heard the news and still concerned about the lack of rocky planet readings amidst the celebration, Administrator Lloyd poked and prodded her administrative staff to find ways to divert more resources to the mega-project shipyard. Within hours construction efforts were increased by 7.2%, and even Evie allowed herself to celebrate.


August 10 2077 -
U Myo Htun had had more than enough of these shenanigans. He was not just bright, he was a genius. That administrator may keep showering him with praise but she continued to swap his funds and tasks like a woman-gone-mad, wasting his abilities and endangering his academic legacy. Not one year had gone by in his two decades of service without her mothballing him for some months, or now sending him on some godforsaken project to redesign the combustion engines that had been delivering payloads to orbit since the 1960s. In exchange for being given a modicum of funding security, he'd agreed to oversee this project. After wrangling teams of graduates and sorting out the technical specifications, he had finally completed the new 'Htun'-class interplanetary booster. Sending the files to his overseer (some overly enthusiastic secretary introducing herself as Zami), he briefly drafted his resignation before instead directly informing Administrator Lloyd that the job was done, and he expected his new team to continue assisting his work on the Grand Warp Theory.

With receipt of the new Myo Htun engines, the Department of Naval Design reconfigured their prototypes and reran their simulations, and soon returned good news to Administrator Lloyd - The new 'Discovery' class exploration ship would be ready as soon as shipyard construction was authorised; it needed only her signature. With a build time of approximately a year, the namesake Discovery would be ready on the current schedule by midyear 2069.

Evie was concerned. The expense of running all the political wheelings-and-dealings for those who supported her in her aspirations was beginning to grow like a cancer. With Wu, Green, and now Myo Htun all receiving substantial scientific grants for their own areas of interest, there was simply no money left for the other necessities of growth. To support the new naval expenses the Grand Union would soon be incurring, it seemed necessary to expand the GUNs control over the global financial system.

May 27 2078 -
Invisible to the naked eye during daylight, nightime stargazers of Earth had come to recognise the small, bright dot moving above them. Almost like a comet, the speck moved across the horizon every 90-or-so minutes, and could be seen from everywhere in the world less the polar regions. This most significant, moving speck was finally fully operational. Linked to a hundred launch sites spread across the globe, the dot was the combined effort of the entire human race. Property of the United Nations Exploration Command, or UNEC, the shipyard was officially christened 'UNEC Shipyard 01' at 9:31:40 GST, May 27th 2078.

Speaking at the opening ceremony within a small conference room aboard the megaproject, Rear Admiral Gregiore Couture spoke to a crowd of thousands watching from miles below, all across the globe. A friendly man of admittedly few words, the speech was over in less than a minute. With a smile and the push of a button, systems were engaged for the laying of the yards' first ever hull. Somewhere below, Evie Lloyd viewed the short transmission with a teary eye. After fourty years her dream had begun to come true, and soon the Discovery would herald a new era of spaceflight.

Drawing now-unused industrial capacity from building the station, she now moved to finish its' surrounding infrastructure. With many of its' orbital components assembled and with ground connection sites underway, the first astroport would be finished in late 2081, allowing free movement between Earth and Space.

July 26 2078 -
July 26 2078 was a day that saw the instantaneous silencing of the bulk of Administrator Lloyd's more vocal detractors. Beaming live from two pairs of twin martian satellites, receipt of the geological findings of Mars cemented it as presently the most resource-abundant body in the solar system. Eclipsing Uranus in both deposit volume and variety, Mars possessed deposits of three Trans-Newtonian materials.

Over eleven million tonnes of Corbomite only a small distance under the surface, almost fifteen million tonnes of Sorium at a moderately-accessible depth, and twenty-two million tonnes of Gallicite, buried deep within the core. With this final validation, Administrator Lloyd had convinced the waiting world that there was indeed sound reason to expand beyond humanities' terrestrial boundary. With the last of their final message transmitted, the autonomous satellites changed course to impact the Meridiani Planum, to rest not too distantly from the lost Opportunity Rover.

With the structure of the very first Discovery class ship growing within the shipyard of UNEC, the future seemed bright. In recognition of the twilight of the program, the two venerable Lloyd-class launch complexes were sent out of orbit, to burn up over the Pacific.

November 28 2078 -
Commander Li'ol sat at the helm of the Discovery. The third spacefaring vessel she had ever been on, she noted the contrast between the sleek, new interior of the Discovery against her last command position aboard the Flynn. Too small to host a dedicated bridge, the Discovery instead had an unpartitioned control space nestled between the common room and one of the auxilliary oxygen scrubber systems. From here, she could engage each of the ships modules, while also keeping watch over the twenty five other members of her crew. Hand-picked by Administrator Lloyd, it was her job to keep both the twenty GUN crewmembers and the five directly-sourced international astronauts from eachothers throats for up to four years.

While largely more spacious than a Lloyd, and an order of magnitude moreso than the old ISS, it was impossible to how even these well-disciplined men and women would react given the intense proximity they were to maintain. Looking to the split crew that would operate with her this shift, she instructed them to engage the engines and depart the ringed shipyard surrounding them. Surrounding the ship and crew were the tiny forms of several thousand yardworkers celebrating the launch from aboard the yard itself.

Though specks to one another at a distance of several hundred feet, both teams waved furiously at one another through any window or viewing platform they could find. Not visible to either crew were the hundreds of thousands watching from streaming services and telescopes across the world beneath. The workers seized the celebration while they could; within a day, the last of the construction detritus would be cleared and the months-long process would begin anew.

June 01 2079 -
With the decade drawing to a close, Administrator Lloyd knew she had to make the most of the photo opportunity presented by the launch of the second Discovery class vessel. The 'UNEC 0004 - Adventure'. Boarding a flight to orbit for the first time, Evie for the very first time witnessed the result of her works with her own eyes.  Nestled within the arms of the vast shipyard was the ship she had spent so many hours dreaming of. Watching from a viewing platform in the Lead Shipwrights office, she felt a vibration as the ship departed to a modest fanfare - The launching of these ships would one day be routine, and would fail to attract attention from anyone other than the most die-hard space fans. For now though, she felt wonderment at the sight.

Ensuring the opportunity was not wasted, she held a private meeting with the construction supervisor. She and the GUN had been driven to the very brink of bankruptcy by these projects, and if funding for his generous salary was to continue he would have to better his performance - Each Discovery was simultaneously an expense the GUN could not afford, while also being a diplomatic and cultural asset the GUN could not afford to lose.
Waving off the young and enthusiastic Lieutenant Dario Hume before he departed to take the helm of the Adventure, Evie wondered if there would be a future for him if the GUNs financial disarray was not put in check. Quietly, she ordered that the third of the sister Discovery ships be the last, for now.

September 29 2079 -
Lieutenant Dario Hume was happy, and so was his crew. All twenty-six of them were the first human crew to detect elusive trans-newtonian elements offworld. Lt. Hume couldn't hide his pride to have beaten Commander Konjit Li'ol to have found a deposit first, especially given her substantial head start. In celebration, the Adventure sent a request to rename the asteroid from 9969 Braille to Dario 1. It wouldn't be accepted of course, but in this moment of triumph anything was possible.

Back on Earth, Administrator Evie Lloyd was in crisis. Earth could maintain three Discovery class ships with proper rotation. However, the system of transport threatened to collapse without furhter development - development she could neither afford nor delay. With her fifth election coming up, she needed for the GUN and herself to appear stronger than neutronium as support for th-*= wheezing Conor Hicks continued to grow. Delays had pushed the opening of the astroport back to early 2082, and her critics continued to doubt if the budget would even hold out to the 2083-84 financial year, when the GUN was predicted to be back in good financial health.

Commander Konjit had been bored for some time now. Having spent ten months and a day further away from home than any human had ever been, she and her crew had been chasing what they had begun to call 'ghosts' in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids with the borderline-magic mineral deposits that even the brightest geophysicists couldn't prove existed. Receiving news that the cocky Lieutenant Hume had beaten her crew in finding their shared target, and even requesting they rename a celestial body after him was precisely enough to reignite her competitive side.

Stopping herself from transmitting a less-than-gracious message to her new rival, she instead chose to think positive - There were ghosts here to amidst the debris, and come hell or high water she and her crew would find them first.

[El Pip]

As always I shudder slightly at the challenge of a conventional start, though I suppose it does make the achievements all the more rewarding when they finally come.

At the moment a fleet of asteroid miners looks the way to go, though given the limitation on military only shipyards that's not going to be possible for quite some time. I wonder how GUN will resolve that problem when the time comes.

[Aajowa (OP)]

Administrator Lloyd has won four of five election rerolls, with the exception being the first crashed 2070 play. I would have tried giving her more RP decades ago if i'd known she'd still be here now. She's now my longest-serving democratic leader for any play-through, if only by a power trip. Hey El Pip!

January 27 2080 -
Evie Lloyd rejoiced. She had won the election, and won by such a margin that Conor Hicks withdrew to retirement immediately after results were released. The Hicks political movement had taught her that the sensation of security was every bit as important as sensations of hope, and she instructed her cabinet that the first order of business after rectifying the GUN financial sheets would be increasing military research, and doubling staff of the Peace Corps at a minimum. Calling her old gUNI friend Eve Flynn, Administrator Lloyd requested a meeting to discuss the relevance of ballistic technology for naval defense.

April 26 2080
The friendly rivalry between the young Dario Hume and his senior Konjit Li'ol had developed somewhat over the last few months upon Konjit learning that Lieutenant Commander Dario been granted his renaming request (Braille 9969 Dario 1 being the first TN-composite asteroid ever discovered). Scrawny and often awkward, Dario was in Konjit's opinion the perfect target to pester, and begun what would become months of trash-talk.

Taking any opportunity to fluster her competition and at behest of her crew, months of mock fighting, sarcasm and critique flew both ways through the Solar void between the sister ships. Every empty asteroid would spur another round of teasing, and both crews and their leaders worked all the harder for it. Communications were delayed by some hours, so there was never a heated exchange for them to have. After months of public trash-talk had become some soft and private flirting. Dario and Konjit had found themselves both infuriated and infatuated by one another and with a promotion for Lt. Com. Dario being discussed by naval command, it was Konjit's recommendation and reference that saw him promoted to her equal.

Now both Commanders of the Grand Union, both Dario and Konjit were intensely concerned with just two things. Firstly, beating the other in finding the next 'ghost'. Secondly, they would Censored! for their entire inter-deployment period in some thirty-odd months. GUN protocol forbade shipboard romance, but outside the confines of the void GUN naval personnel were still human, and permitted to act as such.

June 25 2080 -
The UNEC 0005 launched to mild celebration, several hundred kilometres above a Category 4 typhoon. Known as the Innovation, the third sister ship had been delayed several months by administrative bungle. Though Administrator Lloyd dearly wished to attend the celebration of the Innovation, the destruction the storm was doing to GUN assets required her somber, undivided attention. Headed by Lieutenant Commander Park Jae-Min, the Innovation would not continue the task of her sister ships in the asteroid belt. Rather, the Innovation would head to the Jovian moons and other small bodies, scanning stragglers while the venerable autonomous satellite network continued to do its work.

About six hundred million miles away from the Administrators' main concerns, the Discovery had a major problem. Only one and a half years in to its' work, a poorly-connected duranium plate detached and cut through a crucial nexus of wiring within its' primary geological sensor - the resulting short blew fuses and wiring across the ship, requiring Konjit and crew to scrounge and raid almost the ships entire supply of spare materials. With all systems still functional if not somewhat jerry-rigged, Commander Konjit made the decision to return to Earth for refit after the current scan, prior to any further accidents that could leave the first-ever true spaceship dead in the water. With an estimated 160% supply of material at hand to fix any unlikely engine troubles, her confidence assuaged the doubts of her crush-cross-competitor.

Acknowledged by both, yet spoken by neither was the fact that the refit would alter Konjit's planetside schedule, and they would not have the opportunity to personally meet. Spacefaring naval personnel live under tyranny of distance. Forced to miss births, sicknesses, funerals, and all Earths events' in between.

July 21 2081
With the Discovery in refit on Earth and with Captain Emma von Rosenheim retiring, Dario Hume received an entirely unexpected offer. Fifteen months after his Konjit-assisted promotion, he received the chance to take her vacancy. As the current most-famous explorer of the day, it appeared he was in demand back home. By taking Captaincy, he would be of too high a rank to remain aboard the Adventure, and would have to head back to Earth early.
Back to Konjit.

Having just finished a survey of Eurynome, Captain Hume issued orders to alter course from Vanadis to Earth, to refit and meet the woman of his infatuation. He would of course be gracious in acknowledging he was her senior, and would certainly tease her one bit. In truth, with her seventeen years older, serving seventeen years longer, and responsible for the majority of the original survey satellites of the Solar system he wondered just how she could have been passed over for promotion. As acknowledgement from his crew confirmed their new direction, he began feeling nervous over their eventual meeting, dread slowly following.

October 18 2081
After two months together on good old-fashioned ground, Konjit and Dario sat together in a park midway through what was locally Spring. Surrounded by spring wildflowers and lawn bordered by large trees, they were only a few miles from the tertiary transit hub of Administrator Lloyd's fabled spaceport. Having spent yet another day together, Konjit received a buzz on her iPhone XXii. Naval rostering had determined the crew to be sufficiently rested from their deployment, and had been scheduled to resume normal ground-based duties the following week. Within months, the combination of refit-completion and the opening of the new port would surely see her depart for up to another four years. Sensing a need to make the most of it, she huddled closer to him amidst the bloom.

15 February 2081
The day after valentines day 2081 marked the grand opening of the global spaceport. With the combined opening ceremonies of transit hubs across the globe, the first influx of cargo and passenger-laden shuttles launched. Each of the thousand shuttles now in operation would allow travel or delivery in hours what would have previously taken days or months. Konjit and Dario knew this would be the last few days they would have together, and planned to make the most of it.

Thousands of miles away, Administrator Lloyd reshuffled the industrial priorities of the GUN. With cargo and people transfers now economically feasible, it was would soon be time to generate designs for the first off-world freighters and ferries. These ships would enable humanities expansion amidst the Solar system, though admittedly they would have no current destination. Evie began to attend a scheduled series of meetings to determine the feasibility and options for any potential extraterrestrial colony.

With Luna so close, it was possible that it would serve as a test bed for humanities colonization efforts. With Luna being an object of human fascination for so many millennia, its' colonization would increase awareness, public sentiment, and excitement for future space expansion. Its' sole drawback was the absence of trans-newtonian elements. These elements had cemented Mars in the industrial forefront, and would be greatly used against any pro-lunar argument. In addition, its' small size would only enable a GUN presence of several million colonists - an undersized colony without true purpose. The final argument from the anti-lunar side were that any colony or industrial activity would detract from the primordial beauty of the Moon, and that lights and industrial pollution would befoul humanities' collective property.

More distant and more fierce, Mars presented an entirely different opportunity. With vast sandstorms, high radiation, and the possibility of marsquakes, it was entirely feasible that any colony would be destroyed through catastrophe, or would never develop due to logistical concern and cost. With half the Earths' size yet no oceans, there would be vastly many more sites to choose from and its' capacity for development would surely represent that. With almost three dozen million GUN colonists amidst scores from other nations, Mars would become a boon to all humanity. With its' rich deposits of three of the eleven currently-discovered Trans-Newtonian materials, it also presented an opportunity for extraction and geological study.



With consensus not reached and with further debate about the social and political implications of becoming a multi-planet species, Administrator Lloyd decided to create a new naval and administrative command. The United Nations Colonial Command [UNCC] would determine the most suitable course of action, and would later manage the logistical elements of these interplanetary developments.

February 5 2084 -
Chatter amidst the solar system was briefly interrupted by the chirps of several almost-forgotten satellites. The sister satellites over Titan had finally completed their mission and determined that under the dense clouds of nitrogen and methane, the moon was the third-most bountiful body surveyed in the solar system. With vast quantities of Uridium and Corundium, it appeared feasible that perhaps one of Earths first colonies would orbit amidst the rings of Saturn. Millions of miles away, the news was relayed to the three sister ships of the Discovery class, causing many mixed feelings. After years, Dario 1 remained the only ghost discovered, and thus far the belt continued to prove itself barren.

For now, venerable drones continued to work in tandem with their living counterparts to try and discover all that there was to find in the Solar system.

July 4 2084 -
And with the silent search broken for a moment, a message came from Exploration Corps 02. Formerly commanded by Dario Hume, the Adventure had found the second-ever asteroid to contain trans-newtonian material. Konjit was sure to ignore any earth-sent messages from Captain Hume regarding the Adventures' 2:0 lead over the Discovery, and congratulated the Adventures' crew and Lt. Commander Kimba over their find.

Still stationed over Ganymede, the Innovation requested both kindly shut up as they had yet to leave the moon since beginning deployment, and by tonnage of minerals discovered rather than instances of minerals, they would surely yet win the contest.

March 1 2085 -
Finally able to offer a proper response, Lieutenant Commander Kimba allowed her crew to type the next message. Quite short, they had quite diplomatically agreed to the simple  message:

      '3:0:0'

Uproar ensued for hours as her sister ships composed their response, as the Adventure continued a winning streak that made news headlines.

April 30 2085 -
And another message was sent

      '4:0:0'

With such a streak, it was no longer a surprise that gamblers back on earth had become embedded in the action. Though Administrator Lloyd would by no means be using her insider knowledge of fleet movements to determine the most likely next winner, she simply couldn't resist placing a quiet $100 bet on the Innovation being next to discover a body, and a smaller $50 bet on the Discovery. She'd always liked an underdog, and at any rate there were very favorable odds on both by this point, as the growing fame of the Adventure had begun to influence bookmakers the globe across.

August 28 2085 -
And with patience, diligence, and the opportunity to finally oust the Adventure's confidence came Commander Konjit's news - On the final asteroid before returning for a months-overdue refit, there were exactly 20,000 tonnes of Tritanium of the asteroid Adelheid. Triumphantly, Konjit began plotting the course back to Earth with an ahead message of

      'Got one. 4:1'.

Already en-route for refit aboard the Innovation, Lieutenant Commander Menard maintained that scanning asteroids was childs-play, and returning to the moons of Jupiter would yet yield mineral riches.

Being only thirty months in to their latest deployment and with supplies to last, Kimba and crew was eager to continue working without competition - Getting a 5:1:0 before the others returned would see them return to Earth as champions.

October 22 2086 -
Schmoozing for years, Dario Hume had become quite popular amongst naval command. With the venerable Admiral Couture retiring, the twenty-eight year old had been hand-picked for promotion. He was now de-facto head of humanities' navy, and could assign, task, and promote whomever he wished. While the crew of the Innovation left departed from Earth after their latest overhaul, Admiral Hume sent a private message to Commander Konjit. He and she were on equal footing in the history books, having both discovered important TN deposits. If she wished, he would grant her a higher position to remain on Earth indefinitely.

Turns out I missed Dario's promotion to Rear Admiral (Lower half) in January 2086. Whoops!

Febuary 19 2087 -
Commander Konjit had decided to return to Earth after her current deployment. With permission granted, she would serve from Headquarters rather than offworld. With that in mind, her discovery of the second-in-a-row mineral deposit came as a welcome surprise. With her main rivals of the Adventure soon scheduled to be overhauled for many months, she only needed a few lucky breaks to return as 'Number One'.
In announcing her discovery she included a small and veiled joke towards Dario. Given that she had now discovered more asteroids than the fabled Admiral Hume, would it not be fitting to rename '46 Hestia' the 'Konjit 2'?

May 20 2087 -
And with news sites blaring information, the famous Commander Konjit had narrowed the gap to 3:4. With her intial renaming request declined due to there not being a 'Konjit 1', Hestia had been renamed Konjit to honour its' surveyor.

With a second deposit discovered, the chance was now here for her to seize the day over Admiral Dario and his insignificant rock, the 'Dario 1'. Taking the high ground however, Konjit decided against submitting a renaming request and instead allowed her crew a good-natured taunt towards the Adventure's crew - who were still stuck paralyzed in overhaul.

November 16 2087 -
And with the Adventure having set back out the month earlier, Commander Konjit was amidst intense competition. With yet another rock discovered (her third), Konjit's Discovery and Kimba's Adventure were neck-and-neck at 4:4. Eyes were on the rival sisters, as news organisations and bookmakers alike continued reporting the celestial competition.

Watching this from above a small and quiet moon of Saturn, Lt. Commander Menard lamented her distant duty. Without a single deposit discovered over these minor moons thus far, it appeared the Innovation stood no chance of victory. Quietly however, she had won good money on a bet on Commander Konjit some years back, and had put those winnings on Konjit discovering the next mineral deposit.

June 14 2088 -
And with the survey of Kassandra complete, Commander Konjit pulled in to first place. At 5:4:0, the Discovery had finally overtaken the Adventure as humanity's preeminent survey ship. With good money flowing to punters all across the system, Konjit decided it would be best to not just return to Earth after deployment, but to retire altogether. The last few years had been the most wonderful closure to the last few decades, having all started with the launch of the ancient Lloyd-class platforms. Also considering retirement was administrator Evie. Coming up to a half-century of service, she had decided to gracefully retire. With her dreams complete, there would be new a new administrator come 2090.

10 January 2089 -
Within a short order, Monday had hosted two very mixed events for Exploration Command. Firstly, the decade-old equipment aboard the Discovery had given up the ghost and required substantial repair. In contrast, the oft-forgotten Innovation had discovered its' first noteworthy moon. Orbiting Saturn, Enceladus hosted over three hundred and sixty thousand tonnes of TN materials. With five known kinds present, this would be the widest-variety concentration yet discovered outside Earth.

Lt. Commander Menard proudly announced that by weight, the Innovation was now in a firm lead in the competition. Responding independently from across the asteroid belt, both the Discovery and the Adventure returned an identical message:

      '5:4:1'

With simultaneous damage to the Discovery and Commander Konjit's upcoming retirement, in addition to the highly disputed 'tonnage victory' of the Innovation, the three rivals agreed to announcing an amicable draw. Each commanding officer and crew however, knew in their heart of hearts that they had won the contest.`

December 31 2089 -
In the dawn light over Italy, a shuttle approached. Ferrying passengers from the orbital port above to a repurposed airport in L'Aquila. Descending through the atmosphere, Konjit Li'ol began to wonder about life after service. Having smuggled a peach-sized space-rock back through customs, she planned her New Years. Being a modest celebrity astronaut and hero of the GUN, she had managed to convince a jeweler nearby her to see her today. Though normally closed for NYE, the elderly jeweler would work all day to turn the stone from a streaky charred lump to two unique, polished, and unadorned rings.

With a GUN New Years Eve party and retirement celebration coming up, Konjit knew she needed to meet a certain man during the night party. By evenings' end, the famous explorer Konjit and the esteemed Admiral Hume would finally be engaged.

Addressing the members of GUN one last time as Administrator, Evie Lloyd bid them farewell and the best. With her lifelong dreams fulfilled at 71, she would watch from retirement as humanity began to make the most of what she had built them.

[Aajowa (OP)]

Ahh, I forgot to re-add attachments after closing the tab. Below is just the final screenshots of Evie and Konjit.

[Garfunkel]

If you upload the screenshots to Imgur, you can then use the IMG tags to put the pictures into the body of the post. You can either use the picture button or type out [ IMG ] and [ /IMG ] around the URL of the image. Remember to include the .jpg at the end! And of course, without the empty spaces I had to leave there.

[Aajowa (OP)]

30 January 2090 -
Addressing the crowd for the first time, new administrator Dobiegniew Koziol ordered a change of pace for the GUN. Never against stretching the truth, he declared that the "obvious" attack over sixty-five years ago that formed the GUN could reoccur and cripple humanity. Playing on fear, Administrator Koziol incited those listening to doubt their neighbors' intentions and to trust only the Union. Administrator Koziol would make a safe, secure Earth with only their modest contributions. It would only take a substantialminor tax-hike and a simple three-step program.

The first step would be the tripling of the GUN armed forces. After that, it would be expanded again as finance allowed. The second step would be investing substantial finance towards naval research. Simple and effective, both of these would secure GUN borders and keep any future insurrection in line. With his inaugural ceremony complete, Administrator Koziol headed to the office he would spend at least the next ten years in.

Entering the Office of the Administrator for the very first time, Koziol found it wanting. Tired, dated, and devoid of much more than an old retro-40s desk and some shelving, the new Administrator ordered refurbishment to begin within the month. With campaigning done, Administrator Koziol met with his advisory staff and determined that the best way for him to win again would be to prove himself Administrator Lloyd's superior. Quietly, he began drafting methods to build a new naval shipyard, even larger than Lloyds.

August 23 2091 -
Under command of Lieutenant Mads Holgersen, the Adventure reported distress back to Earth. As was the case with most Discovery class ships, accelerations and deceleration had once again detached a geological survey sensor plate. Without notice, the ship suffered immense electrical damage in the short, and did not have sufficient supplies to recover. Limping back to Earth, the Adventure would require significant repair at UNEC Shipyard 01.
What they did not realize was that orbiting several kilometres behind the fabled mega-structure, a new multi-armed shipyard was taking form.

Only a skeleton thus far, it was not visible from the ground without a telescope. Chasing the UNEC like a predator, it presently was little more than steel and duranium, and lacked the bright spark of the UNECs many lights. Within the decade however, Administrator Koziol would have it operational, and easily double the size of its' predecessor. More modular in design, it would also have the capacity to host multiple construction yards and was specifically planned to be a far more potent legacy.

September 11 2093 -
With sadness came the retirement of famed propulsion scientist U Myo Htun. Crucial in developing the Myo Htun engines that powered the Discovery fleet, U Myo Htun had remained gainfully employed within the GUNs Department of Power and Propulsion. Though considered odd for risking his academic legacy on trans-system travel, he had gained respect through the Unions' academic and political circles. An oddly energetic renegade, his somehow both rich and poor family would benefit from spending more time with him in retirement. Without him, the DPP would surely be set back in its' efforts.

November 30 2093 -
Lieutenant Commander Murumba Mwai was having a wonderful time lately. He had received command of the Discovery and found traces of trans-newtonian minerals in the asteroid belt all within his first month off-world. Already unpopular amongst his ship, his leadership style had been in question from his first week. Not in question now though were his results.

Though he dreamed of command over a true warship like those Administrator Koziol kept promising, news from Earth was that military research had stalled with the retirement of Eve Flynn. After an adventure in the meanwhile, Lt. Commander Mwai would continue his track through the asteroid belt. Though his request to rename his first asteroid after himself was declined, he had instructed the crew to call it 'Mwai Rock', regardless.

April 28 2096
The result of almost over a third of a centuries' work, the forth-final collection of Satellites beamed back their report from over the skies of Venus. With only satellites above Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto remaining, the Flynn class rocket now a dwindling species.

As was so often the case, the report contained no mention of trans-newtonian material. Though rich in many other desirable elements, GUN-sponsored mining would not occur on the second body of Sol. Secretly, Administrator Koziol was relieved. Besides Earth, only one major body between Sol and Jupiter had these elusive elements. With receipt of this data, the decision was made easily that the colonisation effort would begin at the turn of the century, and bring mankind to Mars. Preparations would begin

Febuary 22 2097 -
With the first stage of his new shipyard complete, Administrator Koziol signed off on its' expansion. With the monster-sized construct fully ready by November, he would need the engineering team working to design the new freighters to pull overtime shifts for at least the next half-year. If the yard was to begin construction on the new Koziol class freighters upon completion, there would need to be significant changes to Koziol designs. With the most advanced, pure duranium hulls they would be at their structural limits, but by midyear 2098 these freighters would start shipping around the clock. With cargo holds brimming with pre-fabricated colonial infrastructure, mining equipment, and assembly machines, there would be a substantial settlement prior to humans ever even stepping foot upon the red planet.

Releasing basic technical specs of the upcoming ships would prove a mistake however. Anticipating that the release would add to excitement over the eventual martian colony, critics instead saw the Koziol as having far too cramped a maintenance module and fuel nacelles of insufficient size for any safe transit other than between Earth and Mars. In addition, its' speed and fuel efficiency had gone down by a large margin when contrasted against the famed Discovery class. Rebuking practical concerns (while ignoring environmental worries), Administrator Koziol stated that the upcoming Koziol class would be capable of travelling up to two billion kilometres before having to refuel, and could thus feasibly reach as far as Jupiter and return without needing an in-group tanker to refuel them. Sacrificing longevity and onboard services for cargo capacity, the Koziol class would be a functional if uncomfortable mainstay of the Union for some years to come.

August 26 2097 -
With the controversy that surrounded the Koziol class, Administrator Koziol required good news. Though the colony would be laid per his schedule, public sentiment had shifted against him as the world continued to contrast him against the idealistic Administrator Lloyd. Determining that part of surpassing her would include replacing her legacy ships, Administrator Koziol began a flurry of ordinance:

Firstly, three new Discovery ships were ordered. Each launch of the mothballed exploration vessels had heralded new appreciation for the Unions' efforts thus far, and matching her constructions would surely improve his position. Commissioned in 2078-2080,  the three original ships were becoming increasingly dated and preempting their eventual decommissioning would paint him during the elections as a forward-thinking legacy builder.

Secondly, two new multi-faceted science centers would be opened to increase the width and depth of the Unions' research. One would be dedicated to the study of wealth and markets, and headed by renowned economist Noah Rogiers. The second would continue the decades-long pet project of the Lloyd administration, researching seemingly-impossible faster-than-light travel. With any discovery in this field, credit would go to Administrator Koziol for discovering what Administrator Lloyd could not. If FTL-engines could be created, it was possible they could open up the solar system to Humanity. Even less likely, it had been hypothesized that even other star systems could be accessed using the long-fabled tech. Though the Administrator personally believed it far-fetched, the theory continued to be un-provable one way or the other.

November 24 2097
On Mars and rougher than intended, the first shuttle of the Koziol hit the ground on the summit caldera of Elysium Mons. Controlled remotely by a nervous member of its' trained-yet-inexperienced crew, the large shuttle would make a several trips over the course of an hour to drop prefabricated infrastructure within a relatively sheltered impact crater on the summits' North-West. With several other of these vessels behind, the spotty shuttle nicknamed 'Ladybird' began unloading procedures for the first time.

A site sheltered from the predominant winds by the caldera's large North-Western ridge, the summit would eventually become host for the majority of Martian Union activity. From a list proposed by experts the world across, the site was chosen out of a dozen potential destinations. Between dense local ore deposits in the stable igneous stone helping initial development, rich corbomite to the West, and with wild plans to terraform Mars in the very far future, the raised volcanic platform would form an ideal mountain or island-capital, far above the plains or seas.

While the nations of Earth would eventually follow in colonizing Mars, the Elysium Quadrangle and its' two dominant shield volcanoes would be sole domain of the Union. With the poll to determine its' name overruled (because nobody respectable would move to a city called Marsy McMarsFace, the overwhelming winner), the province and city of 'Elysium' would eventually become home to over thirty million.

July 5 2099 -
With the construction of eight Earth-to-Mars Freighters completed, and with the final addition to the Discovery fleet underway, Administrator Koziol reprimanded staff at the Department of Logistics. Tasked with creating a method of inducing two hundred people in to a safe and reversible coma for interplanetary transport had thus far yielded no results. Infuriated, Administrator Koziol stated that their funding would be cut and their academic careers ended if results were not given in time for Martian colonization.

With another total eight more Koziol freighters yet to be delivered by the giant, underfunded 'UNCC Shipyard 01',  the refit for new as-yet-unfinished colony ships could not begin. Quietly, the Administrator thought to himself that in the event of transportation being feasible, there were now several people who might just find themselves marooned on Mars if their attitude and progress did not improve.

More pressing though; to support the growing navy there would need to be a diversion of funds and industry to allow for better fleet support. The last few years had been steadily eating into the national fuel reserve, and with the burn rate increasing it did not seem capable of lasting much longer. Not much time after that, so too would the various ship maintenance facilities on Earth reach their breaking point.

Thanks Garfunkel! The four-image limit was becoming a minor problem, with each decade becoming more filled in with gameplay rather than part-for-padding-part-for-fun roleplay

[Aajowa (OP)]

A test of the imgr embedded pictures? I didn't include Murumba Mwai in last post because he had the good sense to retire within a decade of being posted aboard the Discovery. Good riddance, he seemed like a bit of a weenie.




Ooh yes yes, embedded pictures. I intend to abuse the snot out of this.

[El Pip]

A conventional military-spec freighter. It was just as painful as I feared.

The second generation of GUN leaders are failing to match up to their predecessors. Mwai seems far worse than the first batch of Discovery captains, while Koziol does seem a bit unstable and an egomaniac (naming ships after yourself is never a good sign). Fingers crossed the election does not goes his way.