History Lesson 04

2010 to 2020

This decade will be remembered for the exploration missions, the first trips Humans made out of the solar systems. ( The first we made willingly and with our own ships. ) The media liked to portray this as a heroic leap into the unknown. In reality a lot of data had been provided by the Arcadia’s AI, although it was 100,000 years out of date.We did know more or less what we would find at the nearby stars. 

The First FTL Ship

The first star ship was the Vinland, built in orbit, next to the Gate Way station. Their primary hull was a cylinder about 100ft long and 20 wide.  The Hyper Field Generators were mounted in external rings, above the Gravity Control Units. They provided access to the H-1 band (speeds just around light) and the H-3 band (speeds around 1 LY / week) It had a crew of 4 with a single escape shuttle, berthed beneath the rather small habitable section. Almost all of the ship was equipment and storage tanks. As safety was a huge factor, there were 2 back up systems for every primary.  

The ship was not made for exploration, but as a test platform for the FTL technology. Never the less it would have the honor of being the first ship to travel to another star. The Vinland did tests in and around the solar system for over a year before its first mission out to Alpha Centauri in 2013.

The mission took 5 weeks to reach Alpha Centauri, spend 1 week there, then made the 5 week return to Earth.  For 3 months the world waited in eager anticipation of the success of this first voyage.  

The Rangers.  

During this time designs for the true exploration ship were being set down.  

The Ranger class began construction in 2014, after all the data from the Vinland's first mission was analyzed.  The ships would be 220 ft long with a main body width of 45 ft and a wingspan of 155 ft. They would use many of the same basic components as the Vinland, with the notable addition of a pair of fusion rocket engines and a lifting body for atmospheric flight. Unlike the test ship, the Rangers were expected to land on planets and do some survey work there.  

The Rangers had a flight team of 6 and a mission team of 4, with 2 escape pods and 1 shuttle craft.  Onboard cargo was rather limited, but it did hold 2 SSL cargo pods, giving it a lot of versatility. Also it was better armed than the Vinland, with 8 point defense guns and 2 missile bays. Although the bays were more for drones than for missile weapons.  

The Great Debate.
During the Vinland mission the debate over Ranger deployment began, before the ships were even fully designed. Although each was made to be as safe as possible, the truth was that help simply would not arrive in time if any problem did occur.  By the time a ship was declared overdue and a rescue mission actually arrived  months or more would likely have passed.
The time factor drove many people to suggest scouting missions be done with pairs of ships. However this idea was eventually voted down by a narrow margin in the UN-EDC.

Exploring the neighborhood.  

Range 1 returned to Alpha Centauri in 2015, starting the official scouting of the galaxy. 

Soon a dozen Ranger M1 scouts were on missions, followed by Ranger M2 survey ships, which were outfitted for more lengthy detailed research. Then came the M2-E to set up the permanent outposts, these were stripped down cargo hauling Rangers, called Establishers.  

 

With the small basic outpost requiring 12 cargo pods, a single ship would need to make 4 trips for setup, so usually a pair of M2-E ships worked together.  1 command-kitchen pod, 1 utility pod, 1 air & water tank pod, 1 gym-recreation pod, 2 crew pods, 2 science-medical pods, 2 cargo-garage pods, 1 hydroponic farm pod, 1 food storage pod. By using bunk beds the outpost has a max capacity of 16 crew. Although they were called permanent posts, they were not independent. They were required to be functional for 1 year without resupply. But the EDF sent a supply ship every 6 months. 

From 2015 to 2020, many of the 150 stars with in the 20 light year range of Sol were investigated. Of them 15 had systems with earth-like planets and another 50 had planets or large moons that could be of some use. The rest were brown or red dwarf stars with just a few asteroids or nothing at all. 

By order of the UN-EDC, no colonization would take place yet. Only small survey outposts were to be established. The exception being the secret base at Epsilon Eridani, 10 light years from Earth.