Generation Starships

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by LordMunchkin

Just on a side note, how would you build a generation ship using Spaceships for TL10? Doesn't the robo-fac need component parts? Does Spaceships provide rules for building stuff out of raw materials?

I don't know about the last question, but I assume that any generation starship would need to be able to fabricate parts for all vital machines/devices. I mean, if you didn't bring a way to make needles for your generation starship, eventually you're going to be nude.

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Given both the vastness of the solar system and the threat of terrorism, someone might try to arrange to build a Generation Starship in secret. After all, given the vast volume of the solar system, a shipyard that claims to specialise in advanced low maintenace drives and deep space habitats, could probably escape notice while doing most of what it takes to build a Generation Starship.

The shipyard IS the generation ship. Having a secure R&D area isn't suspicious, you are trying to keep things secret for competitive reasons. The spacious quarters and park land for workers and customers/visitors is because you are a generous employer. The advanced life support shows off your best that you can build in a ship. Create a set of fake large orders at the right time to have all docks finishing up ships that will be useful for the trip at the same time combined with some mix of tour group, conference, liner needing emergency repairs while having a full passenger load to get you first generation on board and off you go.

[Flyndaran]

Is it overly cynical that I find the idea of extremely generous employers the biggest red flag?
Individuals are generous. And if you can zero in on who exactly is so generous, you will likely find out their true project.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Having a secure R&D area isn't suspicious.

True, but not really the point. You don't spy on a secure R&D area because it's suspicious, you spy because it's secure and secure often means interesting.

[mindstalk]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Is it overly cynical that I find the idea of extremely generous employers the biggest red flag?

Yes. They do exist: Trader Joe's, Costco, Google... Henry Ford paying his employees enough to buy the products they made, even though that didn't make sense...

Or it could be an employee-owned company, in which case splurging on themselves would be natural.

Individuals are generous. And if you can zero in on who exactly is so generous, you will likely find out their true project.

Why would you even start to suspect anything other than "we have a generous employer here"?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by mindstalk

Yes. They do exist: Trader Joe's, Costco, Google... Henry Ford paying his employees enough to buy the products they made, even though that didn't make sense...

Or it could be an employee-owned company, in which case splurging on themselves would be natural.



Why would you even start to suspect anything other than "we have a generous employer here"?

Mindstalk has several good point here Flyndaran. If you try to seem boring and ordinary, and normally interested in our privacy, where's the big red flag? Given all of the signal and noise of the THS solar system, who'd care? Hide in plain sight and they won't bother to look.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Mindstalk has several good point here Flyndaran. If you try to seem boring and ordinary, and normally interested in our privacy, where's the big red flag?

In other words:

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, given that people will spy on such a shipyard as a matter of principle, you'd be better off doing it somewhere totally boring.

Really, just be boring. However, there might be a problem of looking like a weapons manufacturing facility. It's going to be pretty hard to not look like a place that could be manufacturing WMDs.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Is it overly cynical that I find the idea of extremely generous employers the biggest red flag?
Individuals are generous. And if you can zero in on who exactly is so generous, you will likely find out their true project.

What is Google's true project?

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In other words:

Really, just be boring. However, there might be a problem of looking like a weapons manufacturing facility. It's going to be pretty hard to not look like a place that could be manufacturing WMDs.

One option (if you could pull it off) would be to recruit some appropriately-ranked and connected military personnel to your project, and let them file at least some of your project away as military R&D. Hide in plain site, so to speak. It might work.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Is it overly cynical that I find the idea of extremely generous employers the biggest red flag?

Conditionally maybe. Over-generous employers could be a red flag, depending on the circumstances, who the employer is peceived as being, and how generous they are.

For ex, if the project is supposedly something Avatar Klusterkorp or one of the big Terran megacorporations is doing, then needless generosity might very well rouse interest. OTOH, if it's supposedly a company founded and run by an eccentric trillionaire or two, then they might be assumed to have their own personal reasons for doing so.

Sometimes you can deflect attention from what you're doing by creating layers of distractions. For ex, you might have a corporation that is supposedly just a generous employer. Somebody digs into that and discovers that it's really a new cult building a secret space habitat for themselves, which is the real reason why they're being so generous about it.

Of course the 'cult' is itself disinformation to distract attention from the real project under that, but the 'isolationst cult or sect' explains why they're building the habitat section of the starship, or seems to well enough that most people wouldn't keep digging.

You'd probably want to have some other, apparently unrelated, group constructing the engines, though, because 'isolationist sect doing R&D on multi-terrawatt machines' might draw unwanted attention.