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Mister Bates posted:The four ships of the Berowra-class clear the slipways at the Interkosmos and Gateway stations and are officially commissioned into service. Due to a data entry error they're commissioned under the Earth Surveillance command; this is rectified a few hours later. Yes... a "data error." Nothing to do with Earth Surveillance command wanting to have a few spaceships to play with... Mister Bates posted:fun fact, the German navy had, by 1918, been heavily infiltrated by communist agitators, and a sailors' mutiny would trigger the German Revolution just a few months after these men were abducted The historical trivia is part of why I love this LP. 
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Feb 11, 2021 13:22
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Mister Bates posted:The Roswell-style vessel, located in the central bay, is the same shade of grey as the Roswell object itself, but unlike it has a few markings - a broad horizontal blue stripe running along its length, four white hexagons arranged in a line below the windows of what's presumably the main bridge (located near the bow), and, below that, in our first known example of alien pictorial art, a black, stylized silhouette depiction of a figure in profile, standing, proportions similar to the Roswell alien specimens, pointing forward with one hand, clutching an unidentified rod-shaped object in the other. The ship is approximately almond-shaped and about 200 meters long. The windows at the presumed-bridge, and the engine bells aft (three of them), are the only obvious openings. gently caress me is that nose art and kill tallies
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Feb 11, 2021 17:49
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Minor note: I'm not a native German speaker but I think that "Genosse" is the kind of comrade you read little red pamphlets with while "Kamerad" is the kind of comrade that's a random soldier next to you in the trench, and in the post-30's era can carry far-right connotations. Not that these dudes from 1918 would know about the Freikorps and Adolf and all that, and everyone here's military so it still makes sense.
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Feb 11, 2021 19:04
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atelier morgan posted:gently caress me is that nose art and kill tallies Alien Pinup Art The NOMAD collective fully supports preserving one of each model of our ships in an international aerospatial museum. Since this are ships we are talking about, maybe this could be a mobile museum, making trips though Earth, the Moon and Mars so more people can enjoy and learn about space travel history We also propose that we consider the alive Roswells as potential allies and friends foremost. While we acknowledge the inherent difficulties in First Contact, our ethos and raison de etre as an Interplanetary Commonwealth of Species should guide our actions
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Feb 11, 2021 19:12
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Pacho posted:Alien Pinup Art I mean... they DID have ample opportunities over the last (at least) 65 years to initiate First Contact on their own terms, and instead opted to covertly kidnap thousands of military personnel and civilians and have detained them for decades and in some cases possibly centuries. Their technology is more advanced than ours, yes, but not so incredibly advanced and beyond human comprehension they can make claim to seeing humanity as lesser animals to put in zoos. They are, at best, scientists who are exceptionally cavalier about specimen collecting, and at worst human traffickers. Barring some extraordinary mitigating circumstances, it's hard to see what these creatures have done to earn a warm welcome. I'm not saying these poor bastards hiding from kill-squads in the cryotubes should be tried in the Hague, but let's not treat this entire species as immediately friendly. Once we can establish a means of communication, they will have a lot of explaining to do. Of course, mitigating circumstances may well exist, given that this place was the site of a massacre.
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Feb 11, 2021 19:36
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Crazycryodude posted:Minor note: I'm not a native German speaker but I think that "Genosse" is the kind of comrade you read little red pamphlets with while "Kamerad" is the kind of comrade that's a random soldier next to you in the trench, and in the post-30's era can carry far-right connotations. Not that these dudes from 1918 would know about the Freikorps and Adolf and all that, and everyone here's military so it still makes sense. As a native German-speaker I was in the process of posting something similar. lthough Hans could possibly refer to our Cosmonauts as fellow communist soldiers.
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Feb 11, 2021 19:37
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Asterite34 posted:I mean... they DID have ample opportunities over the last (at least) 65 years to initiate First Contact on their own terms, and instead opted to covertly kidnap thousands of military personnel and civilians and have detained them for decades and in some cases possibly centuries. Their technology is more advanced than ours, yes, but not so incredibly advanced and beyond human comprehension they can make claim to seeing humanity as lesser animals to put in zoos. They are, at best, scientists who are exceptionally cavalier about specimen collecting, and at worst human traffickers. Barring some extraordinary mitigating circumstances, it's hard to see what these creatures have done to earn a warm welcome. It is fair to consider the extraterrestial polity these aliens belonged to as a threat, true. But these particular aliens are defacto stranded, stranded under our care and as sentinent beings we should extend the same considerations we have for citizens of non-commintern aligned polities. Also, the most pragmatic in our midst are keen to point out the material benefits if one of these aliens, as they say, flips It was also pointed out to us that the priority is, of course, the human abductees. We are talking about focus: Treat the aliens as stranded refugees and potential allies and not as prisioners of war. Also, the rescue of the abductees is a titanic, commintern encompasing endeavour while the alien contact operation would be by a much smaller and specialized XCOM team
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Feb 11, 2021 20:20
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Asterite34 posted:I mean... they DID have ample opportunities over the last (at least) 65 years to initiate First Contact on their own terms, and instead opted to covertly kidnap thousands of military personnel and civilians and have detained them for decades and in some cases possibly centuries. Their technology is more advanced than ours, yes, but not so incredibly advanced and beyond human comprehension they can make claim to seeing humanity as lesser animals to put in zoos. They are, at best, scientists who are exceptionally cavalier about specimen collecting, and at worst human traffickers. Barring some extraordinary mitigating circumstances, it's hard to see what these creatures have done to earn a warm welcome. This place isn't a zoo, it's a museum. They're preserving specimen in the very likely event that the monkeys in shoes who just figured out steam power are going to wipe themselves out with nuclear weapons in the next two centuries. And I gotta say, they weren't half-wrong.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:34
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sheep-dodger posted:This place isn't a zoo, it's a museum. They're preserving specimen in the very likely event that the monkeys in shoes who just figured out steam power are going to wipe themselves out with nuclear weapons in the next two centuries. And I gotta say, they weren't half-wrong. I mean, given the mass graves scattered around here, I don't think they have the moral high ground about OUR warlike nature. Either this was perpetrated by their own kind upon themselves, or something else slaughtered them en mass, which means they probably should be focusing on their own survival rather than putting living humans into museum specimen cabinets before...*checks notes* Kaiser Wilhelm destroys the human race.
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Feb 11, 2021 22:39
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Asterite34 posted:I mean, given the mass graves scattered around here, I don't think they have the moral high ground about OUR warlike nature. Either this was perpetrated by their own kind upon themselves, or something else slaughtered them en mass, which means they probably should be focusing on their own survival rather than putting living humans into museum specimen cabinets before...*checks notes* Kaiser Wilhelm destroys the human race. I honestly wouldn't put it past him.
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Feb 12, 2021 00:14
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My personal theory is that this was a group scouting out the area to flee from some other alien polity, and they started abducting humans to study us, possibly for conversion into a subject race of hyper-capitalists.
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Feb 12, 2021 01:02
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atelier morgan posted:gently caress me is that nose art and kill tallies Perhaps some common ground CAN be found among the stars
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Feb 12, 2021 02:50
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Once things become public—as they surely will eventually—we should take this situation as an opportunity to affirm that some traditional laws of the sea, the duty to assist vessels and persons in distress, also apply in space. I don’t know if we and the Hawaiians have worked out any such thing between us already, but if we feel bound to aid these abductees and even to treat the alien individuals as potentially friendly and eligible for our assistance, then we should affirm that this is precedent for the future. I assume UNCLOS did not happen in this timeline.
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Feb 13, 2021 02:42
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Pirate Radar posted:Once things become public—as they surely will eventually—we should take this situation as an opportunity to affirm that some traditional laws of the sea, the duty to assist vessels and persons in distress, also apply in space. I don’t know if we and the Hawaiians have worked out any such thing between us already, but if we feel bound to aid these abductees and even to treat the alien individuals as potentially friendly and eligible for our assistance, then we should affirm that this is precedent for the future. I assume UNCLOS did not happen in this timeline. UNCLOS I and II both took place before the timeline split, and I don't think UNCLOS I being enacted is out of the question, so the Convention on the High Seas is probably still in effect as generally agreed-upon naval common sense. It was signed and ratified by most of both NATO and the Comintern OTL. Personally? I think developing a UNCLOS successor would be an excellent thing to suggest at the next Committee session. Hosting the establishment of a major international treaty I can only imagine helping the Comintern's position politically, and the oceans could PROBABLY use some unified environmental help by now.
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Feb 13, 2021 06:25
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I stand corrected. So yeah, something to think about for the oceans and for space travel.
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Feb 13, 2021 07:09
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It might be worth considering the provisions of the Outer Space Treaty as a basis
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Feb 13, 2021 08:14
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atelier morgan posted:gently caress me is that nose art and kill tallies This, combined with the vast majority of the abductees being apparently military personnel, gives me the unsettling suspicion that the aliens at this facility were studying our militaries with the goal of imitating them for some reason. Hopefully I’m just being paranoid. 
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Feb 14, 2021 06:51
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Grizzwold posted:This, combined with the vast majority of the abductees being apparently military personnel, gives me the unsettling suspicion that the aliens at this facility were studying our militaries with the goal of imitating them for some reason. I mean hopefully we'll be able to tell when the aliens lost control of the facility when we get a closer look at the bodies and damage. If it lines up with Rosswell then it points to potentially studying our militaries and possibly measuring the advancement of our military technology. If it predates Rosswell, if perhaps it actually lines up with the end of WW1 and the disappearance of the Cyclops then that opens up some very interesting questions. Perhaps it wasn't just to study us, but rather it was to infiltrate human militaries for their own purposes. Maybe to study us in detail, maybe to help guide us towards specific end goals known only to the aliens. After all if a couple of months after the Cyclops disappeared it's crew was found on an isolated island off the coast of South America it probably wouldn't have been much commented on.
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Feb 14, 2021 14:09
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We should also remember that the aliens are eerily similar to us, so we shouldn't discount the possibility of a third party who fabricated an entire species for some unknown purpose. Either them... or us
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Feb 14, 2021 17:29
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Pacho posted:We should also remember that the aliens are eerily similar to us, so we shouldn't discount the possibility of a third party who fabricated an entire species for some unknown purpose. Either them... or us Dun dun duuuuuuuun fake edit: You know this might not be the only alien outpost in the Solar system, there could be other more remote bases out in the Jovian moons or Titan or something. Which isn't too urgent by itself... unless they ALSO have cryotubes full of humans that have ALSO woken up that we have no idea about. Which leads me to two questions: 1) what's the Karzelek or Skarbnik ship getting up at the moment, still surveying the leading Jupiter Trojans? Its geosurvey sensors found the Cydonia ruins initially, they might be able to find more 2) Allowing for restocking of supplies and the necessary maintenance, can the Proton and/or Electron scout ships make the trip to Jupiter? I know they have a total range of 4 billion km and supplies for 36 months, but it's still farther out than they were ever designed to go. Their mission of checking out Mars seems pretty much wrapped up, and with the base camp set up, I'm not sure how necessary they are for maintaining contact. The World Congress is not in session and this isn't a formal proposal, but if at all feasible, and not conflicting with any better assignments, I suggest that a Karzelek class surveyor, the Proton and the Electron group up, and the fleet engage in a joint survey mission of the Jovian system. We may find more alien structures, and possibly more castaways in even more dire straits than the Cyclops crew. If nothing else, we might find some nice TNE deposits, we still haven't found a good offworld source of Neutronium.
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Feb 14, 2021 20:22
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Glad you're back Mister Bates, hope you'll make a full recovery soon if you haven't yet.Asterite34 posted:fake edit: You know this might not be the only alien outpost in the Solar system, there could be other more remote bases out in the Jovian moons or Titan or something. Which isn't too urgent by itself... unless they ALSO have cryotubes full of humans that have ALSO woken up that we have no idea about. You're missing something! Our system's eleventh planet, Minerva, the most distant gas giant has three moons with a workable enough surface gravity and surface ice. Sure it's not ideal as far as infrastructure costs would go vs Mars, or even the jovians and Titan, but if it's a species that's used to colder environments already, or if they're a rich empire... What would be the point of toggling on that option if you don't use it? Hell, it showed up in the very first post. I bet there's something there. Let's send ships.
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Feb 14, 2021 20:35
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Sanev.Khan posted:Glad you're back Mister Bates, hope you'll make a full recovery soon if you haven't yet. True, but I'm not sure if we even have ships that can operate that far out, it's approx. 27 billion kilometers away. Jupiter is never more than a billion, we can reach it now. e: Heck, even Saturn is on average just barely within range of a month-long round trip. Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 20:43
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Sanev.Khan posted:Glad you're back Mister Bates, hope you'll make a full recovery soon if you haven't yet. PRANZ PROPOSES commissioning a ship with sufficient range and necessary equipment and staff to perform this survey, and proposes the name Endeavour for it when it launches.
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Feb 14, 2021 21:56
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sebmojo posted:PRANZ PROPOSES commissioning a ship with sufficient range and necessary equipment and staff to perform this survey, and proposes the name Endeavour for it when it launches. I mean, I suppose technically the Karzelek class can already manage that, it has a range of something ridiculous like 130 billion km. It'll just take about 7 months of travel time at max thrust, both ways, and all it can do is scan for TNEs. Which I guess COULD find structures, but we won't know if they're active or not.
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Feb 14, 2021 22:23
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Asterite34 posted:I mean, I suppose technically the Karzelek class can already manage that, it has a range of something ridiculous like 130 billion km. It'll just take about 7 months of travel time at max thrust, both ways, and all it can do is scan for TNEs. Which I guess COULD find structures, but we won't know if they're active or not. how close are we to something that can do it more efficiently?
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Feb 14, 2021 22:34
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Asterite34 posted:I mean, I suppose technically the Karzelek class can already manage that, it has a range of something ridiculous like 130 billion km. It'll just take about 7 months of travel time at max thrust, both ways, and all it can do is scan for TNEs. Which I guess COULD find structures, but we won't know if they're active or not. I think the Karezelek has enough supplies on board for that, and actually designing and building a new survey class might take even longer. I’m not sure since I’ve never played Aurora.
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Feb 14, 2021 23:18
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sebmojo posted:how close are we to something that can do it more efficiently?  No idea, you'd have to ask Foxfire or one of the other tech guys. Drop everything to research and prototype a next-gen high performance engine, research a new ship with a whole sensor suite and enough fuel to throw it to Minerva and back, retool a slipway, actually build the thing... at least a month or two? All I know is that while we're doing that we could at least fully scan Jupiter and accompanying moons with soon-to-be-obsolete-anyway equipment we have on hand that's currently doing either nothing or routine stuff we only hear about in bulk list format in the annual reports. Maybe Saturn too if we're lucky on the orbital approaches and everything lines up nice, but that's a stretch.
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Feb 14, 2021 23:20
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Asterite34 posted:
Oh agreed. I just think we should start tooling up to investigate the outer system too.
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Feb 14, 2021 23:27
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It's hard to do. We haven't had any hull or engine techs since launching Karzeleks (mostly been researching GLADIO-focused internal security). Minerva orbits at 20bKm out, so way too far for something fighter-sized. The circle inside Minerva's orbit is Neptune. (Minerva's orbit is 1600 years long, so the Lagrange point doesn't help getting there unless its orbital position is already close. Aurora randomizes orbit position on new game and I don't think we've ever seen a picture) The best you could do is make a Karzelek-knockoff that strips the geosurvey sensor for an active & EM sensor. Depending on sensor size, it could probably build from the same yard or only a short retool time, but it's not going to be much faster. Still 6 month travel time each way to Minerva. Last research update has us doing sigint, an economic thing that is finishing, railguns 101, and improved bureaucracy. I don't know if we picked something to do with the labs after economy finishes. I think putting them on propulsion would be nice since it's useful & that is our best scientist anyway, but we're at the powerplant end of the powerplant -> engine improvement cycle, so it'll take ~9months for just theoretical engine tech unless we pulled labs from other things. More for practical engine, then retooling, then building.
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Feb 15, 2021 00:31
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Foxfire_ posted:It's hard to do. We haven't had any hull or engine techs since launching Karzeleks (mostly been researching GLADIO-focused internal security). Minerva orbits at 20bKm out, so way too far for something fighter-sized. Crap, that's what I was afraid of. So if I'm understanding right, in the time it would take us to research even the theoretical principles of a better engine, we could design essentially a Karzelek with the gravimetric sensors stripped out and replaced with the FESTER EM/thermal sensor package, build it, and send it along with a conventional Karzelek all the way to Minerva?
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Feb 15, 2021 00:42
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Asterite34 posted:Crap, that's what I was afraid of. Perhaps we should do that, while moving towards better engines (since we'll inevitably want that at some point) so if it discovers something out there we will be fairly close to achieving a ship that can get back out there much faster?
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Feb 15, 2021 00:46
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we have no reason to believe there is anything of note out on those frozen rocks deep in the cold and dark. We should not be basing comintern-wide research and construction priorities on wildly extrapolated hunches. I could see re-tasking the existing survey vessels to prioritise the Jovian moons and, say, Titan, over the asteroid surveying they're apparently doing now. Doing a crash R&D project and dedicated ship design to maybe find other alien bases that might be in the solar system and could have people in them that in theory could be waking up and short on stuff is out of proportion. Assuming this alien base is on the most remote arse-end-of-nowhere rock we can think of to make the project even more of an expensive boondoggle isn't helping the case any.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:12
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I'd frankly consider it very unlikely we'll find anything out there. Minerva is so far out from the Sun that it can't be receiving any solar light or heat except in the most technical sense -- building anything there would be extremely unattractive except completely automated equipment, for any species remotely similar to us. And barring extreme Dan Dare speculation, the only alien species we know of ARE similar to us, so we can generally expect them to want to build and settle in the same sort of neighborhood as we would.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:28
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Asterite34 posted:So if I'm understanding right, in the time it would take us to research even the theoretical principles of a better engine, we could design essentially a Karzelek with the gravimetric sensors stripped out and replaced with the FESTER EM/thermal sensor package, build it, and send it along with a conventional Karzelek all the way to Minerva? Eyeballing a scoutship knockoff at about 4 months of build time with stuff cost about 2/3rd of a new mine. The only reason to build something would be that it doesn't cost very much since that yard is idle anyway. Making a Karzelek stop surveying for a year to go poke Minerva doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Also the idea of going to purposefully look for probably unfriendly aliens when we don't have any space guns doesn't seem wise. (I would agitate for propulsion research over the mining/sigint stuff we have queued anyway) Foxfire_ fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 01:42
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Innocent_Bystander posted:... I could see re-tasking the existing survey vessels to prioritise the Jovian moons and, say, Titan, over the asteroid surveying they're apparently doing now ... I'd support this idea, for scientific purposes at the very least! There might also be good TNE deposits if we get lucky, and we can do it with our current tech pretty easily.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:43
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Innocent_Bystander posted:Assuming this alien base is on the most remote arse-end-of-nowhere rock we can think of to make the project even more of an expensive boondoggle isn't helping the case any. "Expensive" is a bit disingenuous I feel, this is a fairly economical boondoggle for what it proposes. It's the cheapest fastest way available to survey the outer solar system. It partially uses existing mostly idle hardware, and what we need to add is largely just 4 months of lab time to put together off-the-shelf tech onto a proven design, built on a mostly unmodified slipway in an unused shipyard for less than the cost of a single mine. If you think even this is onerous, then just send a Karzelek to check by itself. Worst case scenario it answers some purely scientific questions about the outer solar system, or finds some TNE deposits we can drop an automine on when we get around to it. Best case scenario we find evidence of artificial structures and THEN can decide if comissioning a "Karzelek-B" is necessary for a follow-up mission. All we'd be wasting is time. That being said, it is true that Minerva is so cartoonishly remote that it's unlikely anything with remotely human-compatible environmental preferences would settle there, and in the scenario that we have a Cydonia situation of awake human captives waiting for rescue, even with the hypothetical fast-tracking of the expedition, everyone there will either be dead by the time we get there, or dead by the time we could DO anything about it. It can wait six months one way or another. Now, fully surveying the Inner Gas Giants with our existing fleet, THAT we can do fast and cheap.
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Feb 15, 2021 02:26
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The yards are expanding, aren't they? Why not just make a refit of the existing vessels with longer legs/more engines to get out that far
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Feb 15, 2021 02:58
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Power:weight ratio just isn't there. Even a completely impractical 10,0000 ton monstrosity that is 90% engine would still take 3 months each way. Karzelek is already 60% engine (sensors are little). The only way to go faster is to improve base engine technology (~30% improvement for next step) or to sink significant research time into a new engine that trades fuel efficiency for power (and will be immediately obsolete as soon as we do get to a base engine improvement)
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Feb 15, 2021 04:11
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The concern isn't in getting to Minerva fast, frankly six months to travel over 1 light-day is pretty good for a survey mission in my book. The problem is getting FESTER type EM and multispectral sensor arrays over there. The only independently mobile things we have that carry those are Electrons and Protons, and those won't make it even a fifth of the way there. Kerzeleks can make the trip, but those only carry gravimetric geosurvey equipment. They can see if there's alien stuff there, but they're kinda blind to if anyone's HOME or not, and that's a little bit dangerous to go poking our noses into. And sadly I don't think we can cheaply refit an existing Kerzelek by just ripping out its survey instruments and swapping in a new sensor suite. And we sure as HELL can't refit our crappy spy-satellites-turned-fighters into something that can make the trip.
Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 04:26
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And even then, shoving a box of sensors with three poor sods changing gaskets and playing cards until they go mad over there isn't very helpful if there are actually people in distress, It's more important to get to the next generation of technology so we can get something coherent out there.
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Feb 15, 2021 04:31
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