[TML] Prototype

[Richard Aiken]

On 10/28/07, Kelly St.Clair <kellys at efn.org> wrote:
> Stop thinking so much about how airliners are built (differently every
> couple of decades) and consider instead how modern railroad gauge can be
> traced back to the width of the ruts in Roman roads, a couple of thousand
> years ago.  That's the timescale the Third Imperium runs on.

In the OTU, you may very well be correct.  And if YTU is one where the
Imperium is very strong and very pervasive - such that it is heavily
involved in the day-to-day economic life of most star-systems - then
this would almost certainly be true (canon seems undecided about how
"big" the OTU Imperium is in this particular sense).

But in my own personal TU - with it's divided-by-5 timescale - Joel's
adventure seed fits in quite well.  Things are a lot less
standardized.  But I still need to change it, since the LACK of an
overall docking standard changes the basic assumptions Joel used.
That is, a mirror-image situation exists, in which the cargo and
personnel access points of most starships are normally adaptable to a
wide variety of port standards.  The longer-ranged the particular
starship, the wider the range of "standards" to which it is adaptable.

So let's say one of the "improvements" of Joel's prototype is that its
access points are designed to mate solely with Imperial-standard
equipment.  Perhaps this is done because the vessel is originally
intended to be a transport for high-ranking Navy officers.  Perhaps
it's misplaced optimism, with the CEO assuming that all the worlds it
might visit will have Imperial starports.  Perhaps it's done simply
because some volume-gulping luxury feature needs some extra cubic
yardage - and the standard multiply-redundant docking fixtures seem an
ideal place from which such can be lifted.

Then a new Imperial District is declared.  Now there's a huge
near-virgin market right next door, one over which Imperial
"protection" has just been extended . . . but one within which
Imperial commercial regulations don't apply.  However, NOTHING there
uses Imperial standards, not even the (few and generally primitive)
starports.

Then the CEO's college-age son is caught in an "inappropriate
relationship" with the Sector Admiral's underage daughter . . . and
the tentative Naval contract is cancelled.  Shopping around for other
potential customers, the company finds that nobody's very interested
in a new vessel - no matter how spiffy - which can't dock with
installations in the new District.  The company's biggest creditor
gets wind of the difficulty and starts to press for a "viable
solution."   By the time the CEO reluctantly asks investors for more
cash, they've already begun to bail out.

And there you have it.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein