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** The next couple or so posts will be summary-style, covering the year and a half of details that I lost. **
November 2081 - March 2082
On November 11 2081 ESF Alpha jumped out to the Barnard's Star system after a successful scout by Explorer 1. They were not heard from for the rest of the year, nor were they expected to be. Nobody had any real idea how long it would take to scout a system, and doubtless it would vary depending on the system, but it was assumed a few weeks would definitely not be enough.
SPACE rang in the new year in 2082 with a bit of political debate. Well, more than a bit actually. Gross colonial population had finally reached 10% of the total, and a significant political force they were becoming. Previous proposals to move factories, research labs, etc. to the colonies had never gotten anywhere largely because they were simply wasteful. Earth is a fairly central location in Sol, and why ship more personnel and equipment all over the system than necessary? This time however, the colonials had found an issue with a legitimate argument behind it -- sort of. Their proposal gave birth to the Clemson Controversy.
The Clemson was a proposed tug ship, using tractor beam technology that SPACE has had for a a while now but not used. The proposed ship would be capable of hauling the P&A Group SY, responsible for Long Beach harvesters, to Titan. There it would be closer to Saturn's massive harvesting operation for purposes of refitting, building new ships, etc. Time and fuel would be saved. All of this was very good in theory, but deflected eventually by the fact that Titan was about a million short of the three million workers needed to operate the shipyard. The bigger issue of the colonies would not go away though: they have 10% of the population and only 1.5% of the lucrative TN industrial jobs, those in maintenance facilities and mines on Titan and Europa. The shipyards, factories, and research labs, by far the biggest employers, had 100% of their operations on earth and the colonialists are increasingly unhappy about. Naturally the Earth Firsters love it and want to keep it that way.
Director Riley Awad soon proved that, like most politicians, he paid little head to Hesitations 5:18("all those who remain on the fence shall receive splinters"). He straddled the issue and reinstituted the 2% Initiative. This time however, it would be directed towards terraforming installations. A 3-4 year timeline would be required for each installation, delivered to the colonies as a way for them to both have higher-paying high-tech TN jobs and improve the living conditions at the same time. From SPACE's point of view, it also provided a dry run on establishing best practices for terraforming ahead of the eventual need for them in colonization efforts.
The spring would provide another challenge. On March 9 the last of the Ticonderogas were finished on the moons of Jupiter, and the positive elements of the vision put forward 17 years previous by India Rakes in terms of bases throughout Sol were completed. Of course these bases were also basically two decades old technology wise at this point, and the Alaskas on Earth certainly remain SPACE's best, perhaps only, chance at repelling an alien attack should it ever come. So much has changed that when the redesigns eventually came, it proved far cheaper to build new bases than refit the old ones. Director Awad put SPACE on a path to build new updated bases by 2100, a path that requires about a fifth of Earth's industry for the first several years of that effort. The biggest takeaway from the redesign is that defending humanity is going to require a staggeringly increasing amount of resources in the future. SPACE is really starting to feel the pinch in terms of needing to get colonization beyond Sol going in order to bring in more resources. It isn't that painful yet, but it will get progressively more so as time goes on. Earth's industrial base has not expanded in a long time, and won't be doing so anytime in the near future due to the navy's ravenous and ever-growing need for resources, duranium espescially. The only way out is to find more.
Alaska 82 Missile Base
Size: 22.7kt(53.7 kt)
Crew: 709(1025)
Armament: 25 Defender 76 Missile Launchers, 250 missile capacity(previously 400 missiles, same launchers), half standard and half higher-payload P versions; 4 CIWS 79 Batteries(18 CIWS I)
Sensors: 2 each thermal, EM, and active grav military-grade standard
Armor: 10 layers composite(10 layers duranium)
Troop Capacity: 1 brigade(same)
Cost: 3.53m(4.51m)
The big reduction in CIWS is due to the previous amount being considered extravagantly large. Hopefully we won't ever have to find out if that's correct. Otherwhise the sensors are both much better and much smaller, the missiles faster and more powerful, and the cost down quite a bit as well.
Ticonderoga 82 Sensor Base
Size: 3.7 kt(2.95 kt)
Crew: 24(16)
Armament: 1 CIWS 79 Battery
Sensors: Mark IV Commercial variants
Armor: 8 layers composite(5 layers duranium)
Troop Capacity: 1 battalion(same)
Cost: 198k
Other than upgraded sensors, the main difference is thicker armor and the needed addition of a CIWS battery. Any kind of massed attack would still be a problem, really anything other than an armed scout ship. In that case the support of the fleet would be needed. It's more about the appearance of safety than actual safety.
The necessity of building these bases meant that other priorities like mine expansion, research labs, etc. had to receive reduced priority.
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