New World UnionBoard

Free Jovian Republic wrote:

_{As the large cavern was explored, the group would've noticed grooves in all the tunnels, a labyrinth of lines and circles that looked like some sort of glyphs. The lines had some resemblence to Gem glyphs but were continuous instead of separated into different glyphs. It was likely some ancient form of Gem language, but it couldn't be possible that the Gems also stole the language of this mystery civilization, could it?}

_{Meanwhile, further analysis of the strange sphere in the center of the tower revealed that it wasn't really a slipspace drive, but some sort of generator that used slipspace technology to somehow generate power. The methodology of how it did this wasn't fully understood though, and the usage of a slipspace drive for a power source was likely way beyond the Gems. However even in a dormant state, the generator was producing enough power to sustain several sizable ships for years.}

_{There wasn't much to say about orbital scans of the wreck. The vessel measured about a kilometer long and had a largely geometric shape, being long, thin, and angular. The skin of the vessel, unlike the tower, was completely smooth and featureless, save for the gaping hole in its side. Despite the hole, there wasn't a single way to really scan the inside of the ship from orbit. It'd seem that, like the tower, a team would have to physically explore the vessel. All attempts to communicate the tower team via radio were in vain, as communications continued to fail to penetrate the tower.}

Fusion began reading over the glyphs and running them through his dictionary of the modern format of them to try and figure out just what was being said by the glyphs. They could be anything stories, a warning or, instructions of some kind. Atom meanwhile was still looking over the ftl drives.

"Sir Scaple and his team are making it down for the investigation of the downed derelict," said a tech.

"Very good are the escorts trailing them," Thundercraker said as stood looking over the rest of the reports from the ship's crew.

"Yes sir, two squadrons of seekers are following behind Scaples shuttle down to the ship below.

"Good. Send some teams to go down in after Trantulas the silence from them is worrying. So I want a team to check on them," said Thundercraker.

*poke* Xotrayjan

_{THE INDIA COMMISSION}

_{At number ten Downing Street, Prime Minister Lady Marlborough stood behind a polished mahogany lectern where flanking her were two distinguished guests; her colleagues the Prime Minister of Ceylon and the Prime Minister of British Malaya. There was a serious atmosphere, the weight of the discussion that had just taken place behind closed doors evident on their furrowed brows and the thoughtful expressions of the three realm government heads.}

_{With a nod of acknowledgement from her fellow Prime Ministers, she gently cleared her throat as she prepared to address the assembled press inside the room.}

_{"Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow citizens of the Empire." she began, her voice carrying the authority and gravitas befitting her position. "Thank you for joining me. I have been speaking with my Imperial colleagues about a pressing matter that demands our collective attention: the situation in India. As we all know, the situation in India grows ever more desperate. For many years now, His Majesty's many Government's as well as his loyal Subjects across all His Realms, have done much to try and alleviate the suffering the people of India have been subjected to. However in more recent years and months, the ever growing examples of escalating tensions and unrest we see and hear about on the news are becoming unbearable to allow to continue. And I say this as one of the few people who have seen the full scale of this unrest, and not just the already dreadful things we all see on our screens in the evening. As the elected representatives of the people of the Empire, it is our duty to confront these challeneges head-on and to uphold our collective principles of justice, compassion and unity."}

_{Turning to her colleagues, the Prime Ministers of Ceylon and British Malaya, Lady Marlborough nodded in acknowledgment before returning her focus to the assembled press.}

_{"It is to that end, I have engaged in discussions with my Imperial counterparts and, together, we have resolved to take decisive action." she declared, her words resonating with determination. "We will mobilise our resources, coordinate our efforts, and work tirelessly to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding in India." Emphasizing the importance of collaboration and solidarity, Lady Marlborough concluded her address with a call to action. "In the coming weeks, I urge all citizens of the Empire to stand united in support of our shared values and commitment to justice." she proclaimed, her gaze sweeping across the room. "Together, we will confront the challenges before us and strive to build a brighter future for all."}

_{With that, Prime Minister Lady Marlborough stepped back from the lectern, her resolve unwavering as she prepared to lead the Empire through the turbulent times ahead.}

^{Relatively Broke}

^{Bern, Switzerland. For two years Manfred Schreiber has been trying to get Union Head Noah Caito of the aerospace industries and the Treasury Board to cooperate with his new plan. Since 1996, the Hermes program, the Commune’s only connection to the world beyond Earth’s atmosphere, has been unchanged and underfunded.}

^{Having been made the head of the Kommunale Luft- und Raumfahrtgesellschaft (KLR) in 2055, he had overseen the reconstruction of the launch facilities needed for operation of the Hermes, alongside reforming the deal and agreements necessary to maintain the shuttle. However, even then it struck him just how limited the KLR was in its ability to explore worlds beyond low-earth orbit. The Commune had nowhere near the economic resources required for deep space exploration, but he reckoned that they had fallen dangerously behind. LEO was no longer an unfamiliar territory, it hadn’t been for decades, and yet not one of his colleagues was willing to travel beyond it.}

^{In early 2060, he came to the stark realisation that there was no reason the KLR couldn’t manage a trip to the Earth’s nearest neighbour: the Moon. It was during preliminary studies he also realised that there was no need for a completely new launch vehicle to get there. All he needed was to refit the Hermes with systems necessary to generate greater delta-v, while not completely redesigning the shuttle. His solution was relatively straight forward, plasma propulsion. That however left a list of complications included but not limited to; Refitting the fuel tanks to hold a more gaseous fuel, finding or creating a large enough supply of argon or xenon, and most vitally finding the funding for prototypes.}

^{The refitting of the Hermes's fuel tanks was simple enough. Even without refits the tank walls had been built thick enough to safely store the gases, the only change required was a couple additional layers of insulation to prevent boil off. It was when it came to designing the plasma engines that things came to a grinding halt. 3D simulators and CAD drawings would only get things so far, but the funding simply wasn’t there. He contemplated grounding Hermes entirely to squirrel away enough funding, but the cost of maintaining the shuttle and the lack of public perception would only do more harm than good. Two years later, he still hadn’t managed to overcome this issue.}

^{Stepping away from his office, Schreiber makes his way towards the local tram stop. Catching one of the iconic red vehicles, he takes it all the way to the outskirts of the Old City. Hopping off, he makes his way into the glowing hustle and bustle of the mediaeval time capsule. Turning onto Kramgasse 49, he arrives outside of his preferred coffee and rösti spot: Einsteinhaus. It’s gentle quiet is a nice shift from the world surrounding it, and he’s been cooped up for far too long. Sitting down, he watches as a waiter makes their way over, and he then proceeds to order his usual; a black coffee and a Bern rösti hold the onion. As he sits peacefully, mulling about in his thoughts, he can’t help but notice who’s sitting two tables away from him. Milo Iwerks.}

^{Iwerks had been elected as Prime Unionist in 2045, having become popular for his leadership of defence efforts during the war, alongside his work throughout the war to assure the safety of the Commune’s future, mainly via the repurposing of old aerial bunkers and disused silos. In a way he had become the face of Swiss resilience, a refusal to go out quietly, and the people loved him. Pre-war he had already been serving as the UH for the Hospitality Unions, having proven capable of quickly brokering arrangements and contracts with fuss. This alongside his post-war image led to an unsurprising landslide in the pentennial elections, propelling him to the highest office of the entire country overnight.}

^{His ability to broker favourable deals continued to be a skill; postwar reconstruction would’ve been severely delayed if it wasn’t for his ability to appeal to both sides of any given dispute (in most cases, the construction unions and the Treasury Board). However, by 2062, the strain of the office was clearly eating at him. He’d been playing as an intermediary for nearly two decades, and it hadn’t done well for his appearance. What had once been a bright, poster-esque face, had grown fatigued and grey with time. Additionally not helping his ageing any was the fact he’d been trudging through hell trying to resuscitate the economy. Tourism hadn’t ballooned back to its pre-war proportions, and with the Continentals making the Rhine prohibitively expensive, the country was losing nearly a third of its economic output. It was simply unsustainable. The Commune was suffering, and her people were bearing the worst of it.}

^{And now Schreiber, a man who believed he had the solution to everything, sat all of twenty-two feet away from him.}

_{To clarify as to why the two hadn’t met for a meeting: Iwerks has been trying to cook up an economic miracle, and the KLR wasn’t seen as a solution mainly as Schreiber cared more for exploration then finaces, leading to no real communication between the Conference and the KLR. Schrieber's swing towards advertising this as an economic resource will come in the follow up. Also, for those curious, Continentals is the Swiss nickname for the EU}

| Emerald Station, 663 km Above The Amazon, Outer Atmosphere

-

A slow-moving vessel comes into view above Earth having completed a successful journey spanning several months. It's operating semi-autonomously thanks to an AI-based navigation computer, modified specifically for the now accomplished mission. The ship carries with it the prize of a century, a "small" asteroid the size of half an American football field, wrapped in a web of cables and restraints to keep it tied to its school bus-sized hauler. Several additional ships piloted by organic workers are sent from the station to assist in safely transporting the cargo to the station. The event is broadcasted all throughout the Verdant Republic from Boa Vista to the nation's capital in Novo Manaus, the efforts of the government to discover alternative means of resource extraction finally bearing fruit.

Citizens in the country's many public squares erupt in cheers and celebration as the autonomous ship "Pioneer" detaches from the asteroid to dock, leaving the other ships to begin the process of harvesting its metallic contents. It'll take several weeks to fully deconstruct the asteroid given the country's entry-level space capabilities, but the fact that such a feat as asteroid mining had been achieved at all inspires hope in the young nation's leadership at the prospect of advanced interstellar operations. As Operation "Stone Throw" draws to a close, a new era in Amazonian history begins with the formal establishment of the Verdant Asteroid Mining Industry.

What to do. What to do.

Kandosii wrote:

warcrimes.

Tempting but against who? After all the RPs I got going on are taking millennium to finish.
*Cough* Xotrayjan and Cradon Accord*cough*
I mean I could go and blow something up but well I feel that'll only take care of the boredom for maybe a day or two.

_{Our Beautiful Blue and White Home}

^{The American Federation was beautiful from orbit. Below the shuttle was one of the world’s largest powers, it was matched perhaps only by the British and Leithanians. It, or perhaps more specifically, it’s predecessor, had single handedly seen man conqueror another world. Though not a planet, the steps taken by an Ohioan from Wapakoneta had proven to the world that man was not doomed to remain on Earth. The moon was the gateway drug to the heavens, a drug even the Commune couldn’t help but eventually become addicted to.}

^{Floating comfortably in the cabin, Harri Kobel gently sighs as he pours over his charts. While the S-IVB recovery had been planned at least two weeks in advance of the launch, the eggheads back in Geneva had left it on him to figure out the delivery method. Hermes wasn’t really intended to return fully laden to Delley-Portalban. The runway was just about long enough when Hermes was dead low on fuel, but it wasn’t intended for full weight returns. Because of the upgrades she’d received, she had more loitering time, but at the end of the day, she was still a space shuttle: Great for gliding, terrible for flying. Additionally, giving people a rapid suntan (or rapid onset skin cancer) wasn’t exactly an option, which meant wherever they’d land this thing, it’d have to be an unpowered glide descent.}

^{To Kobel’s fortune however, was the knowledge that the infrastructure for NASA’s Shuttles still existed in the Federation. While the Shuttle Landing Facility would perhaps be the most photogenic, it was hardly an option. At 15,000 feet long, it was a gamble on if the much larger, and much heavier, Hermes would be able to come to a stop, especially considering its lack of a drogue chute. White Sands was another potential option, a classic abort option with more or less infinite space. 35,000 feet of runway to come to a complete stop was more than sufficient by Kobel’s guess. Trouble with that, it was in the middle of nowhere New Mexico and he doubted the Amis would like the Swiss overflying a missile testing range. Additionally, as far as he knew, the runways hadn’t actually been used since STS-3, which left their maintenance status too risky to gamble on.}

^{This left one obvious answer: Edwards Air Force Base. The Rogers Lakebed runways were more than sufficient in length, with runway 17/35 nearly spanning 40,000 feet. No infrastructure or people (void the servicemen on base) in danger of being squished by a botched landing, mother earth as the runway, and more open area in case of an overrun. It was more than ideal. However, one thing still remained to be done: Actually contacting the Amis and asking for a landing slot. Kobel however was well aware that he had the social skills of a marmot. This left the responsibility on the mission commander, Waldo Portmann.}

^{In spite of his thick accent, Portmann was delighted at an opportunity to toy with a new batch of ground controllers. Delley-Portalban had long been a symphony of groans whenever he came onto coms, so he was delighted that he could pester someone new. Gently adjusting the radio until he overheard what he presumed to be the ATC at Edwards, he gently spoke into the transmitter.}

^{”Hermes to Edwards, we’d like to report that we’ve strategically transferred some of your old equipment to an alternate location, but the boys back in Geneva felt so bad we’d reckon we ought to return it to your folks. Requesting status of Runway 17/35 at Rogers and approval to begin orbital descent procedures.”}

_Mentions
The Unified American Federation

_{Title is part of an Alan Bean quote, and Portmann’s lines use an old gag (take the first letters of where he mentions moving equipment, and you’ll get a synonym for purloin).}

I'm kind of thinking I need to think my gun choices I mean sure they are cheap but theres one problem metal and cold doesn't mix not that anyone would be idiotic to have any uncovered skin here in antarctic.

Glorious Scythia wrote:

Our AM companies would love to develop specialized gun models for usage in your environment. They could all be yours… For the right price.

I mean we don't exactly have money here most goods are bartered between cities or, are planned out shipments. Its a very much so a you have this and I have that so I'll trade you that for this.