The Global Monthly - APR 2206NEW OTTOMAN EMPIRE MAKES MOONFALL!
With the sacred sling now operational, the first wave of ships were launched to the lunar surface. Built to withstand lunar impact at speed, the base components were sturdy enough to survive any ancillary fire from anti-orbital devices. From there it appeared that Ameripol changed tactics, adopting a less apologetic direct fire approach onto the landed material. "While we are disappointed by Ameripol's actions towards our material, we're not exactly surprised," said project lead. "The outer hull of what will become our base is simply impenetrable without the access codes. The sooner Ameripol stops their violent game, the sooner we can land a manned crew that can complete the base and begin work on the Lunar surface." Other experts disagreed, saying that the bombardment from Ameripol would eventually crack the hull of the base, but timescale estimates or this ranged from one to six months.
RUST BELT COMPLETES FIRST ASTEROID CATALOG!
Scanning the local asteroid groups for potential mining locations, Rust Belt prospector Dan Wilson reported that their first catalog of the asteroids close to the Earth/Moon system had been complete. "The biggest decision was deciding which rocks to prioritize in our scan. We made that decision as a group, considering proximity to Earth, and potential availability of rare alloys and fissile materials. Simple scanning bays we placed on the newly finished Iron Bridge in tandem with some 'scopes on Earth let us see what these stones actually have." It is estimated that two more catalogs would be necessary to search for all the asteroids sufficiently close to Earth, but there are expected to be diminishing returns as they already selected the ones most likely to contain ore. While the current results of the catalog remain secret, two stand-out targets are an Earth Trojan named 2133 TK42, which is reported to have a pleasant mix of iron, rare ores, fissile ores, and water ice, and a newly discovered body near Venus' L2, named 2206 GG9 which appears to be a captured comet with generous amounts of fissiles. "I didn't even consider looking at the Venusian L-points," admits Wilson, "but yeah, there it was. Great find."
AMERIPOL ASTEROID MINING PROJECT ALMOST SUCCEEDS!
A mining drone, manufactured on the lunar surface with materials shipped from Earth, was launched to an asteroid which was passing rough half-way between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Upon being asked about its design, Chief Designer Isabel Rubio said, "The probe is capable of drilling into a rocky surface and extracting rocks and ore which it can capture. From there it can spring itself off surface and later be recovered. It's designed to be compatible with shuttles currently in design to ferry material from the inner solar system to our lunar base - and this is the first step of that vision." The drone almost landed on to its target, but just nearly missed. It now remains in co-orbit around the sun with the asteroid, where it can later be recovered, but as of right now it's drifting among the asteroids, where it may one day land on one entirely intentionally.
SRA SCOUTS THE LUNAR SURFACE!
Redesigning the probes to be lighter, take quicker yet less detailed images allows for a survey of the lunar surface to be completed before the probes were destroyed in more firing control accidents on the part of Ameripol. While the moon is littered with potential mining sites, there were a dozen or so that were densely populated enough to warrant an expedition. Various areas were found with iron ore, rarer alloys, fissiles, and isotopes. "We're very happy with the information we have." said imaging lead Caleb Fowler. "The nature of this attempt meant that we would rely on quantity over quality, but I think we got everything we needed to see. While secondary testing will need to be done before we completely release our findings to the world, we hope that this will help inform the next step in peaceful lunar colonization."
ANALYSIS OF FRAGMENTS OF ALIEN COMMUNICATION BEGINS!
From what little of the alien communications have been decoded, scientists at Bifrost have already been hard at work to try to figure out what it is they are trying to communicate. "It's a daunting problem, really" said contributor Leonard Ohlson, "because we don't ever know what these communications are for. They might be for a particular device, inputs designed to be executed by a computer, a spaceship, or simply read by one of… them." Some assumptions could be made - if the signals were given off by passing shuttles, they were either signals to or from recipients on Earth. If those recipients were not machines, then the signals might be something humans could understand. Under those parameters, one conclusion was drawn: the signal seemed to entail "desperation" and "escalation". It would be difficult to make more progress without a larger sample size or a better understanding of what any particular signal was for or what device or people it was sent to, it was hard to make more specific progress - but the work that had been done here would lay the groundwork for future decoding.
PUNJABI GOVERNMENT BOUGHT OUT!
Promises of a new space economy to bolster what little they had left after the war were shattered on the destruction of their lunar probe. With no money left to play debtor, riots in the streets as laborers and contractors for the government found they would not be paid. In dire straits, the government had no choice but to sell the country and its resources to reclusive shipping magnate Sahadeva Devadhikar. "It's a shame that financial mismanagement led the country into the ruin it had found itself in, but the lunar missions weren't a bad idea. What was the Punjabi Autonomous Zone will now be a subsidiary of Arrowhead Shipping and Receiving, and it will be run with the business-like efficiency that the people deserve."
TOSHIRO SUPERCOMPUTER FACES BUGS AND CRASHES!
Frustration abound as the experts in the IETC run into repeated issues with the Toshiro Supercomupter, including crashes and freezes. "It's not surprising to struggle with a one-of-a-kind piece of machinery. It's a learning process…" said Umeda Tokutomi. "But we know the problem isn't large scale - it passed all the benchmarks we could throw at it on its completion, and there was no permanent damage done to it as a result of these set-backs. We've backed up our progress diligently, so we are making progress. It's just slower than we would like. " Finger pointing between different teams as to responsibility in delays made it difficult to get a follow-up response, so we decided to ask the Toshiro Supercomputer about struggles with its application. "I don't know, maybe just build a Toshiro Supercomputer Supercomputer to calculate out how I operate." IETC did not respond to this recommendation.
LEAKED INFO ABOUT ALIEN ESPIONAGE ON EARTH!
Various intelligence sources from various nations and corporations across the globe corroborated a story regarding alien infiltration into their institutions. As impossible as this sounds, the sources were credible and varied - and as such it was felt that this story needed to be shared. The sources insisted on sharing what they knew on the terms of anonymity.
While each of them noticed some suspicious activity, it was only when they were able to share what they experienced with one another that some trends became clear. First, aliens were able to reach areas of high security clearance, but there is no recorded video of any alien entity reaching these areas. This means they were either able to disguise themselves as a human with security clearances, or they found humans with security clearances to work for them. Second, it appeared that the aliens focus was on rocketry or nuclear weaponry - suspicious activity principally occurred at space headquarters and military bases with nuclear weaponry. Third, some projects involving research in these fields appeared to make incredible breakthroughs by relatively unknown scientists who either had little history in the field, would later have no recollection of making these breakthroughs, or both. This implies that research in these fields is being aided by extraterrestrials.
It is now May 2206.
(srry for slow, as always if you have any questions plz ask
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Topic: Reach for the Skies, a nation game of diplomacy, research, and aliens (Read 3818 times)