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Landing to offer aid in response to a distress signal is not only the right thing to do in case help is needed right the hell now but there's no way you put a handful of trained explorers on a ship you design to be able to land on a planetary surface at need and then immediately tell them not to do that when it comes up. It'd be crippling to the morale of the whole organization if we establish disinterested non-interference as the preferred policy in the face of the unknown.
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Dec 15, 2020 23:35
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Antilles posted:Mister Bates, what's the estimated ETA for when we can ferry over a fully equipped X-COM team (that is, time until all relevant research is completed, all necessary training/construction is done, and transit/deployment time to Mars)? If we set it to absolute priority #1, how much time can we shave off that? Pacho posted:If there's people in these base, either human or alien, they must be greeted with hails and handshakes, not bullets. I understand the need for protecting our research team and welcome comitee with a crack team of xcom operatives, but let's not send and army unless they start shooting first  This is a situation to exercise caution, certainly. There may be living aliens there and this is the closest thing they have to being able to communicate with us, for whatever reason. However,Mister Bates posted:Or you could do it with a team equipped with the best gear and training you have right now in a couple weeks. This is the most viable, IMO. Have the team respond in kind and see what happens while spooling up an emergency mission.
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Dec 15, 2020 23:37
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I support radio signaling them back and sending a decent xenostudies team/welcoming comitee in a couple of weeks, unless something serious is going on like they are about to run out of air in two days, in which case yeah, go all in
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Dec 15, 2020 23:40
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Purely hypothetically, would nuking it from orbit be an option?
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Dec 15, 2020 23:51
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Due to the developing Martian situation, the shiprwights present the following ship. Previously considered unviable, the current situation has shifted things somewhat. code:
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Dec 16, 2020 00:02
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Aside from new earthside scanning priorities, obviously yes I'm also throwing my vote behind an immediate landing followed by some form of rescue attempt.
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Dec 16, 2020 00:04
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GunnerJ posted:Purely hypothetically, would nuking it from orbit be an option? Always. Even without any missile boats surely we have access to someone smart enough to push a warhead out the airlock while on an impact trajectory.
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Dec 16, 2020 00:06
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Veloxyll posted:Due to the developing Martian situation, the shiprwights present the following ship. Previously considered unviable, the current situation has shifted things somewhat. The NOMADs are happy that the ingenious shipwrights are working on large capacity vessels
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Dec 16, 2020 00:30
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It occurs to me that, in terms of archaeology, we don't have to worry about contaminating the site if a bunch of random Navy guys have been squatting in an alien shanty town since the fuckin' Wilson administration. On the other hand, it might be a boon that locals have been there for possibly several generations getting intimately acquainted with all that alien stuff in advance of us even sending a science team.
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Dec 16, 2020 00:48
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I'd also support sending a trained team within a few weeks, but also trying to establish radio communications from orbit. If there are humans down there, we need to talk with them to find out what their situation is!
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Dec 16, 2020 00:53
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Make radio contact ASAP, and start working to be able to send the fullteam in a few weeks. We may have to move local resources before then if they are in immediate humanitarian emergency, but if they have lasted for decades a few weeks before we can send the full team should be OK. We won't know until we talk to them and get more information though.
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Dec 16, 2020 03:15
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Mister Bates posted:Over half of the structures are cold and dead, ambient temperature, clearly abandoned or destroyed. Many are not. The site is dotted with the mottled red and orange of active heat signatures - most of them small, weak, and intermittent, and some of them in structures that are largely destroyed. There are two exceptions. Reading back over this (particularly the bit I’ve underlined) and the original description of the ruins on Page 13 of this thread, I’m wondering if we can tell from the imagery we’ve collected whether the currently ruined state of the complex is consistent with what you’d expect from air/space bombardment using explosives, potentially nuclear ones? Also now that I’ve asked that question a second one occurs to me: does my ship have, uh, a Geiger counter?
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Dec 16, 2020 04:24
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The People's Republic of California agrees with the call to immediately respond while readying a mission within a few weeks. If we need to send aid sooner we can, but after all this time it's unlikely to be necessary. And if any are concerned about such minor affairs, after their misdeeds privates Orr and May have been reassigned to Fort Hunter Ligget, where they are working with the Salinan peoples to improve local infrastructure for the tribe.
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Dec 16, 2020 09:25
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As a representative of some nation or another: do not respond and do not treat this as a “humanitarian crisis” or “we have to respond to this distress signal immediately!” This is a 60 year old signal from a US destroyer. It either: Keeps a while longer while we figure poo poo out. Or Is not what it seems. (Unless it seems like a trap which it is)
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Dec 16, 2020 10:31
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OK, comrades. This is officially weird. What do we currently know: There are structures on Mars, they generate power and possibly contain a human-compatible atmosphere. A possible, and I stress this fact, possible sighting of an alien flying object. All we have is a sighting of a shape being spotted in highly degraded visual conditions. A morse-signal claiming to come from a ship lost during the tail-end of WWI originating from the ruins mentioned above. whereas we have a bunch of questions: Was the ship transported to Mars, the crew and passengers miraculously survived, presumably by being transported to a pressurized room with an oxygen atmosphere, survived for 60 years on a hostile planet while continuing to send a distress-signal? After all this time a second generation must have taken over, the original crew and passengers must be well over 80 now. Most ship-to-ship communication happens over medium frequency, which they knew wouldn't penetrate Earth's atmosphere (this frequency-band was chosen precisely because it is reflected of the ionosphere). Why do they keep sending such a signal? Why not saying 'Help, survivors of USS Cyclops stranded on Mars.' or something similar, which gives someone not in orbit at least a clue about what has happened? Are they kept on display in some kind of zoo, and managed to cobble up a primitive transmitter (a spark-gap transmitter is fairly easy to build and a possible signal-man would be versed in construction and operation of such a device)? Why didn't a radio-telescope in Lunagrad picked this up? After all, we are able to probe a frequency-band previously inaccessibly to astronomy. This is a trap. Think about it. Aliens sank USS Cyclops on purpose or by accident, recorded the emergency message and are now broadcasting it as a lure, as we begin to probe their installation.
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Dec 16, 2020 21:37
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Yeah it's not worded like some third or fourth generation descendants in an alien zoo sending a.... morse code signal from the radio transmitter they built in their zoo? It's worded like a ship broadcasting a distress call on Earth in 1918, likely because it's a recording of a ship broadcasting a distress call on Earth in 1918. I can't imagine that if there are humans alive there right now that they would word a message like that and broadcast it to ??? with ??? in the hopes that ???
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Dec 16, 2020 21:56
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But why would aliens choose to sit around sending that message to trap us? They have the technology to strike at us on Earth or Luna, and have had that capability for quite some time. If they want to hurt us they can reach us easily, they don't need to lure us.
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Dec 16, 2020 21:59
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Even if it is a trap/weird thing, we're not going to ignore it. So I support poking it in increasingly obvious ways until something happens. Radio signal from earth => radio signal from one of the ships => flyby from one of the ships => ship some dudes from earth to stomp around outside => dig into the structures
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Dec 16, 2020 22:03
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It's possible they don't know they're on Mars?
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Dec 16, 2020 22:03
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I don't think it's bait for a trap but some weird alien bullshit, I don't know why they're broadcasting a loop of a distress call from decades ago but I think it's what they're doing. Kinda by definition we can't assume to have any idea what their motivations or thought process are like. They're alien, inherently different from humans, projecting our own logic onto them is dangerous. That's not to say they're inherently enemies of course, just inherently different, we can get over differences with enough time and information. Neither of which we have right now, though.
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Dec 16, 2020 22:05
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Crazycryodude posted:Yeah it's not worded like some third or fourth generation descendants in an alien zoo sending a.... morse code signal from the radio transmitter they built in their zoo? It's worded like a ship broadcasting a distress call on Earth in 1918, likely because it's a recording of a ship broadcasting a distress call on Earth in 1918. I can't imagine that if there are humans alive there right now that they would word a message like that and broadcast it to ??? with ??? in the hopes that ??? Yeah, but how would a ship from 1918 be able to continually broadcast a recorded distress signal for 60 years? They could have a phonograph or phonogram to record it, sure but that would also be pretty odd to find on a waship carrying ores, no? Also, even if they made a recording, power to sustain and maintain the ship that long would be necessary to broadcast that message. I don't think the sailers would be mining for coal all that time, nevermind the supplies tools and knowledge to keep that ship running.
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Dec 16, 2020 22:49
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Pirate Radar posted:Reading back over this (particularly the bit I’ve underlined) and the original description of the ruins on Page 13 of this thread, I’m wondering if we can tell from the imagery we’ve collected whether the currently ruined state of the complex is consistent with what you’d expect from air/space bombardment using explosives, potentially nuclear ones? The damage is not consistent with any natural process, and is too irregular for deliberate demolition to be a probable explanation. Several debris fields around ruined structures show the characteristic star pattern consistent with debris being ejected from a pressurized space via explosive decompression. A few have been reduced to near-craters. The area between them is pocked with small craters and pieces of scattered debris. If these were human buildings, on Earth, the logical interpretation of the picture you have available would be to call this a battlefield. There is, however, no evidence of strategic-scale nuclear bombardment. That having been said, it's still Mars, so double-check the integrity of your suit's radiation shielding and ensure all Geiger counters and dosimeters are fully functional before any EVA operations. Even if there are no nukes down there you're still going to be catching rads like you were standing in the Fulda Gap. Grizzwold posted:I don't know if it's come up in the thread before, but just how much of our expeditions' results are being made public, if anything? Mostly w/rt the roswell craft and mars. The existence of the Roswell craft and much of its technical specifications were published in academic journals and are freely accessible, as is a paper on the corpses contained within which I have not yet posted (it may become relevant soon so I will be posting it before long). Trans-Newtonian principles are common knowledge now and TN-based technology has spread outside the Comintern, though you got a significant head start. There are a few specific things which remain confidential and were not included in the public paper - in particular, the presence of what were probably weapons and battle damage was omitted from the original paper for security reasons. There's nothing stopping you from choosing to release that tidbit of information at any time if you deem it appropriate; within Comintern government and defense circles the unredacted contents of the paper are an almost comically open secret anyway. MOSA operations are generally very public by necessity - there is, currently, no stealth in space; launches to orbit cannot be disguised, ships and stations in orbit can be readily observed by telescope, and, while we can encrypt radio transmissions to prevent people from listening in on the contents, it is very difficult to send a radio message from space back to Earth without other people being able to at least know it's happening. Unless MOSA leadership deems information to pose a potential security threat, it is generally unclassified and technically available to the public. How widely that information is actually disseminated can vary a lot, though - the Barsoom UFO footage has still not been released even though it is technically unclassified, for example, by the simple expedient of postponing its release indefinitely for 'scientific review'. This is all currently being done on a basically ad-hoc basis and there's not much official policy set in stone for how information transparency is supposed to work with regards to the international space program. March 25 1982, continued Every cosmonaut must learn Morse code as part of their training on radio operation, it's pretty standard - but there's a difference between 'I once learned Morse code' and 'I know Morse code'. Cosmonaut Williams, an avid amateur radio enthusiast, ends up with the pencil and pad of paper, and the transmitter. In addition to being able to understand the code very well, she also has extensive knowledge of both current and obsolete shorthand. The message from Cydonia ends, and there is silence for about half a minute, before it starts up again. It seems to be the same message at first, reinforcing the idea that it's a loop - but then, after the source identifies itself, it's quite a bit different. It's again largely abbreviated, but when fully spelled out reads as "WE KNOW YOU ARE UP THERE WE CAN SEE YOU PLEASE BE LISTENING." followed by a very long string of repeated 'SOS SOS SOS DE USS CYCLOPS'. Well, not a recording, then - and, apparently, aimed at us specifically. Ganthony asks the ship's first officer, "Would someone down there be able to see us up here?" He shrugs. "Well, it's just after dusk there, the sky is very clear since that dust storm dissipated, we're in a very low orbit....yes, absolutely. With the naked eye we'd appear as a dim dot. With a decent telescope they'd be able to see us in pretty good detail - although not for long, we'd be moving across the sky pretty quickly. In fact, we'll pass below the horizon again in just about a minute." Ah, speaking of which - Ganthony makes a quick judgement call. "Helm, burn for station keeping, I want us holding a position directly over that radio source. Comms, signal the Proton to do the same." This would not have been possible with conventional materials, as it requires the ship to completely kill its orbital velocity and then just hover over a fixed point - but with highly efficient TN engines, it's fairly trivial, so long as you're fine wasting the fuel. The source itself - visible on one of the display screens - is located on or in the southern half of the Face. It is, perhaps not coincidentally, roughly coterminous with the location of what the geosurvey identified as a large mass of conventional metals within a void. "Williams, tell our new friends you can hear them and have received their message." She begins to tap out the response. The crew at Mission Control on Ascension are hearing all this now, which means it happened eight-ish minutes ago. It is immediately followed by a terse message that additional updates follow. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Dec 16, 2020 |
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Dec 16, 2020 23:31
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Goddamn nailbiter this, loving it 
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Dec 16, 2020 23:53
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Okay, so looks like they took the initiative and answered our question before we asked it; they're probably NOT a recording. They also probably haven't just been sending this message constantly for 60 years, they've been scanning the sky looking for contacts, possibly by naked eye or telescope. They might have been transmitting this message since we sent those first geosurvey flybys and we missed it by not looking for it. I'm not sure what sort of radio equipment they have down there, maybe salvaged stuff from the Cyclops or crappy spark-gap transmitter made on-site or alien stuff or whatever, but it might be weak enough that we wouldn't pick it up unless doing a TNE-tech broad EM scan of the area. Wild hypothesis time: They were brought here by whoever built all this stuff in 1918,as test subjects or slaves or zoo specimens or whatever, and whoever built it got hosed up by someone ELSE between then and now, possibly in connection to whatever conflict left us the Roswell Object. The base was shelled, left derelict, and these poor bastards have had the run of the place ever since, stranded and watching for anyone to show up. 'Course, if the place was attacked from space, it's slightly weird for them to broadcast openly to any space object they can't identify as friendly... e: Or it's aliens crank calling us, but if so they're showing better grasp of human communication than just parroting back contextless old Morse code distress signals. That's interesting all by itself. Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Dec 17, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 00:10
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HiHo ChiRho posted:Yeah, but how would a ship from 1918 be able to continually broadcast a recorded distress signal for 60 years? They could have a phonograph or phonogram to record it, sure but that would also be pretty odd to find on a waship carrying ores, no? Oh I mean the aliens are looping the distress call they recorded back in 1918, not that the human crew somehow still is
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Dec 17, 2020 01:31
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Hmm, assuming there 1) humans inside the ruined alien colony and 2) they're not in immediate distress, I'm thinking we should do the following: immediately build enough Infrastructure to represent a research base with additional hab units, medical bays and vehicle bays, ship it over to Mars with X-COM and other specialist personnel, and drop it down somewhere outside the ruined colony but close enough the scientists can drive rovers there and back again with enough daylight left over to get some work done. Once settled priority 1 is rescuing the trapped humans and bring them back to the research outpost for a thorough checkup, extensive quarantine and a very detailed debriefing. Priority 2 would be doing preliminary work for the eventual xenoarchaeological team. Man, so many things to do and so little time to do it... getting to the bottom of this mystery with the USS Cyclops, exploring the ruins, dealing with GLADIO, work on unifying the planet, fixing the damages of the great war and uplift the people to a just and equal society... we sure do have our work cut out for us.
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Dec 17, 2020 02:03
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Mister Bates posted:The source itself - visible on one of the display screens - is located on or in the southern half of the Face. It is, perhaps not coincidentally, roughly coterminous with the location of what the geosurvey identified as a large mass of conventional metals within a void. ...son of a bitch, there WAS a large mass of distinctly conventional metal inside the Face, I checked back on the first survey. That could actually be the Cyclops itself.  Also as an aside, we gotta remember to turn these sensors on the North Sea one of these days. North Sea's cold water, nuclear submarines are hot metal, and we have sensors that can see metal and thermal signatures through martian regolith.
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Dec 17, 2020 02:12
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Crazycryodude posted:Oh I mean the aliens are looping the distress call they recorded back in 1918, not that the human crew somehow still is Well moot because of the last mini update, since it's clearly not a loop but someone actually communicating with us. However, if it is aliens, it's very weird for them to impersonate a lost naval vessel from over 50 years. It could have done a multitude of messages, with a variety of different formats, so why use an archaic language and delivery system when they clearly didn't have to?
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Dec 17, 2020 02:40
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Ohhhhh man I can't wait to hear the responseAntilles posted:Hmm, assuming there 1) humans inside the ruined alien colony and 2) they're not in immediate distress, I'm thinking we should do the following: immediately build enough Infrastructure to represent a research base with additional hab units, medical bays and vehicle bays, ship it over to Mars with X-COM and other specialist personnel, and drop it down somewhere outside the ruined colony but close enough the scientists can drive rovers there and back again with enough daylight left over to get some work done. Once settled priority 1 is rescuing the trapped humans and bring them back to the research outpost for a thorough checkup, extensive quarantine and a very detailed debriefing. Priority 2 would be doing preliminary work for the eventual xenoarchaeological team. This seems a good approach to me as well!
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Dec 17, 2020 03:04
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Hard to guess what we’ll find down there. What if the aliens have been watching Earth for millions of years and taking things when they feel like it? For all we know we’ll go knocking and a velociraptor will open the door.
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Dec 17, 2020 03:19
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March 25 1982, around 9AM Ascension Standard Time The main monitor at Ascension's primary mission control center is dedicated to incoming text from Electron-B. The Director, and the Commander of X-COM, are present, as are as many other people as can cram in there. The Standing Committee of the People's Congress has been alerted just in case an emergency session needs to be called. A summary of messages between the ship and Mars begins to appear, periodically updating. Electron-B: MESSAGE RECEIVED CYCLOPS WE HEAR YOU THIS IS CSV ELECTRON-B Mars Contact: THANK GOD. THANK GOD IN HEAVEN. Mars Contact: DIDN'T EXPECT THAT TO WORK. THANK GOD. Mars Contact: HUMAN? This is followed by a message direct to Ascension from the Electron-B, clarifying that they assumed the contact was asking if they were human. Electron-B: WE ARE HUMAN. MY NAME IS ALEX WILLIAMS AND I'M FROM GLASGOW. WHO ARE YOU CYCLOPS? another message: we figured that a more personal touch might help Mars Contact: COTTON FRANCIS E US NAVY TRANSMITTING FROM USS CYCLOPS AC-4 IN SOME KIND OF GIANT DRYDOCK ON WHAT WE THINK IS MARS A quick search of the Internetwork by an idle technician at Mission Control confirms that a man of that name was on the crew manifest for the ship, rating Chief Electrician, assignment radio operator. If that is in fact who is on the other side of the radio we're talking to a 90 year old man. Mars Contact: DID THEY BRING YOU HERE TOO? another message which is simply '!!! PLEASE ADVISE' Electron-B: CLARIFY 'THEY' PLEASE CYCLOPS
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Dec 17, 2020 03:58
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr87nJVKdu0
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Dec 17, 2020 04:08
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Huh Ok what the gently caress
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Dec 17, 2020 04:58
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Either time jump or they were in some sort of stasis for decades until the stasis system broke down (around the Roswell incident?). I'd suggest mentioning that earth has changed since the cyclops was lost (don't mention how many years), that we have spacefaring tech and are here under our own volition for exploration purposes and that we need a status update on them and potential hostiles if we need to do a rescue mission
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Dec 17, 2020 05:07
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Uh oh!
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Dec 17, 2020 05:07
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Oh god, we're gonna have to explain a LOT of history in the coming days aren't we
zanni fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Dec 17, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 05:22
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zanni posted:Oh god, we're gonna have to explain a LOT of history in the coming days aren't we Say, guys, you remember those United States and Czarist Russia and that whole "War to End All Wars" thing? Well, the thing is...ehehe... *tugs on shirt collar*
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Dec 17, 2020 05:29
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Asterite34 posted:Say, guys, you remember those United States and Czarist Russia and that whole "War to End All Wars" thing? Well, the thing is...ehehe... *tugs on shirt collar* Well, the good news is we finally ran out of wars! Edit - Also, if you told a bunch of time travelling sailors from 1918 that socialists eventually took over the world they'd probably just nod and say "makes sense." Terrifying Effigies fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Dec 17, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 05:49
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Terrifying Effigies posted:Well, the good news is we finally ran out of wars! That's what they were saying 10 years after the first last war too though
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Dec 17, 2020 06:09
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There is almost nothing on the Cydonia Proton--as we have begun calling the ship designated Proton-B 001 among ourselves--that is older than me. Senior Engineer Kosciuszko, the senior of the two engineers caring for the M109 nuclear thermal engine, is older than I am, as is our senior sensor operator, Senior Technician Rosario. They are both graduates of their technical schools rather than officers commissioned into the command track like myself. The other crew--the two pilots and the junior engineers and technicians under Kosciuszko and Rosario--are younger, and all of the equipment is new. Well, except for precisely one dozen pieces of it. What is new is not just new. It is revolutionary. I think of the ship like a beetle with its exoskeleton, and indeed, most of the structure is external rather than internal. It is made of a metal that has, within my lifetime, changed our estimations of what is possible. The key parts of the engine that hammered us into Martian orbit at eleven hundred and thirty kilometers a second are built of similar metals, and of course, the FESTER-01 array that is the center of our mission uses trans-Newtonian elements in its highly sensitive receiver and powerful computers. The machine is a marvel of engineering. It weighs more than a tank platoon. Once its central dish has unfurled itself it can listen for infrared emissions from the depths of space, or pass over part of a world and look for pinpoint heat sources. Even the buttons and switches on its controls are made of a totally new plastic, shiny, strong, and lightweight. It outputs information to a bank of CRT monitors which can be switched through different display modes, so that an operator can see what the machine “sees” in reddish tones, or view statistical readouts of the distance and intensity of the thermal sources detected by the machine. Those monitors have shown us that there is something hot on the Martian surface, or many somethings. I watched over Rosario’s shoulder as the information came in. Many of the heat sources were intermittent. “Here,” I said, tapping my finger against the glass at a line of on-and-off heat sources coming from structures near the Pyramid, “why do you think they’re doing that?” “Could be a repeated process, like an industrial assembly line.” Rosario answered. Then she continued the thought: “Or maybe a sort of safety valve for waste heat. Like at an oil refinery.” “Would that be so regular?” I looked around. Without thrust we had no gravity, so I was holding on to a metal ring that popped out of the sensor console, floating next to Rosario’s chair. Every member of my crew was there; the other seats on the ship’s circular command deck were fully occupied, save for the one I’d pushed myself out of to float over to the sensor console, and those who couldn’t get seats were floating near the ceiling. No one had wanted to miss the moment we reached the Red Planet and began scanning. My eyes went “up” from my perspective and found Alstrom, one of Rosario’s technicians. He was craning his neck to see the screens in the sensor panel, though for him they were upside down. “Comrade Alstrom, you worked at a refinery. Are those fires on the flare towers regular?” He shrugged. “Sometimes, Comrade Officer. Sometimes not. But who knows? I don’t think there’s an oil refinery down there.” I had to admit that he had a point. We were getting a lot of information just from the FESTER arrays, but not enough to quickly tell what was going on. It was all being beamed back to Earth, of course, and the analysts there would be able to go over it for as long as they wanted. But if we wanted to understand more, we would have to bring one of the ships down and suit up. And there was no way to predict what would be waiting for us. I thought again about the locker in the equipment storage module that held the only twelve pieces of equipment that were completely familiar, a dozen machines made of perfectly ordinary mundane metal that we had carried in our wondrous spaceship all the way to the frontiers of human experience. Machines we might carry to encounter an extraterrestrial intelligence. I had checked them all before we set out and, out of curiosity, looked up the serial numbers. They were all from the same batch, from the Izhevsk production line in the early 1950s. Probably they had sat in a crate until someone sent them to Ascension Island. They had sent us to meet Martians with Makarov nine-millimeter pistols.
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Dec 17, 2020 08:28
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