For our proper World-Making post this week, we're going to
take a few looks at how ideology and a general lack of understanding
of How Things Work can seriously screw up a scenario. The example
is this little snippet of wierdness called "Williams/Dorshimer,
Inc." by a shadowy individual who claims the name of "UpLink
Station-Boomer," brought back from the Digital Abyss by
Brother Zibblsnrt. Once upon a time, I did a long and involved
critique of this thing -- or something similar, my memory's
failing -- and lost the file. But because this is so chock-full
of cheese, I'm going to do it again for your viewing pleasure.
Stop here if you don't like the sight of blood and guts.
Everybody ready? Seatbelts fastened and tray tables stowed?
Then I'll begin:
Williams/Dorshimer, Inc is an interstellar corporation
founded on Earth during the early 1950s.
And we hit one outta the park on the first sentence!
Seriously, though, it's not entirely impossible that an interstellar/interplanetary
corporation could be founded in the 50s. A proper "pulpy"
setting (which this is not) could have heavy space industry
in the immediate post-WW2 period, or even involve WW2 battles
in space, depending on the level of pulp -- a "Lensman"-esque
or "Luftwaffe 1946 / Tigers of Terra"-equse
setting would work well here. Or, for lower levels of historical
pulp, it's not impossible that a corporation would expand offplanet
for specific purposes -- look at AT&T, or any other telecom
company. AT&T is the heir of Bell Telephone, which was founded
in the 19th Century.
Originally, it was a plastics and construction equipment
engineering concern, but with the advent of space flight,
its owners, Chase Williams and Cassidy Dorshimer, set the
goals for their company on a higher level.
Which, consdering the historical model, isn't too much of a
reach. A lot of people wanted to help out the US space program,
with reasons ranging from pure patriotism to just wanting that
sweet, sweet federal money to help their company.
Ignoring the federal ban on private corporations to
experiment with their own space programs, they secretly
and successfully sent a manned vessel to the moon, shortly
after the Apollo mission.
Now this is where we start to get silly. "UpLink"
claims that a single corporation specalising in plastics and
construction equipment could do the following:
- Design and build a single large heavy-lift rocket, or a
series of smaller missiles, capable of launching a manned
spacecraft into lunar orbit.
- Design and build support facilities capable of assembling
and launching the rocket(s) and providing ground control.
- Build a communications network capable of maintaining contact
with a manned spacecraft in lunar orbit at least 18 hours
out of every 24.
- Hire or build a recovery crew capable of retreiving the
spacecraft from anywhere it might end up on the Earth
- Hire and train a corps of pilots, scientists, and other
sundry individuals to make up flight crews.
- Do all of this without attracting the attention of the FBI
(if done inside the US) or the CIA (if done outside the US).
- Launch secretly, without attracting attention from bystanders.
- And finally, continue to have enough people making money
in the corporation's usual lines of production to keep the
cash flowing in.
This is, what we call in the buisness, a fool's game. Doing
it secretly is close enough to impossible, as the Soviets found
out back in the days of Apollo. Even with their draconian security
precautions, the US knew they were working on moon rockets even
when they publicly claimed otherwise. Keeping something this
large a secret cannot be done.
Due to its early successes, Williams/Dorshimer went
on to quietly begin mining Earth-local asteroids and meteors,
and in 1971, built it's first space station, from which
they launched probes and analysis robots to scout Mars.
Looking at this from an economic point of view, we have to
question what WDI is getting back from all this money being
spent on secret operations. Asteroid mining, while theoretically
lucrative, is competing with established industries back on
Earth, and the need for secrecy puts up all sorts of extra costs
on every pound of iron or nickel sent back. The return on investment
would be small, if not negative.
This activity did not go unnoticed, however, and Williams/Dorshimer
soon found itself "loaning" their space facilities
to various US government agencies.
Of course, having "ignored the federal ban," it's
much more likely that WDI would have its space assets confiscated
and transferred to NASA or the Defense Department, its owners
arrested, and the corporation itself broken up and nationalised.
Never people to let a bad situation get worse, Chase
and Cassidy, along with several of their most trusted staff
members, set in motion a plan to change two of their lunar
mining bases and one of their Mars bases into self-sufficient
habitats.
Now this is, again, something extremely unlikely for a single
corporation to do quietly, if at all. A basic mining base would
require lots of expansion, not just living space, but greenhouses,
power generators, water recycling facilities, etc. On Mars,
this is a little easier -- there's air (after a fashion), water
and plenty of volatiles (nitrogen, carbon, etc.) available for
use.
On the Moon, however, we run into a problem; there is nor water
on the Moon, nor is there air or any sort of volatiles that
can be used by a habitat. All these things have to come from
somewhere, which expands the problem of building self-sustaining
habitats.
Completed in early May of 1993, WDI recruited as many
of their employees as they could to man these habitats,
then declared the corporation an independant sovereign political
entity with no ties or obligations to any terrestrial governments.
Point the first: Recruiting employees and then effectively
burning their bridges back home is not a good way to ensure
worker loyalty.
Point the second: Cutting all ties with Earth will, first of
all, make trade with Earth (as WDI is the only off-Earth
corporation) that much more difficult.
Outraged, the US government attempted to seize control
of as many of WDI's assets and facilities as possible. This
came to an abrupt halt when a shuttle carrying a platoon
of US Marines was destroyed in lunar orbit by WDI designed
'communications' satellites.
This one is a favorite of mine. When I first read it, it took
me ten minutes to stop laughing. Let me sum up what's wrong
with this:
- The Space Shuttle can't reach lunar orbit.
- Even if somebody rigged the Shuttle to reach lunar orbit,
it couldn't survive the trip back.
- The Shuttle doesn't have the life-support systems needed
to keep a platoon of Marines alive for the trip to the Moon.
- The Shuttle doesn't have the room to store a platoon of
Marines, period.
- The US Marine Corps is advanced, but it's not so advanced
that it has tactics for space-based infantry maneuvers in
the year 2002, much less 1993.
- WDI "communications satellites" carrying weapons?
What possible commerical use does this have?
- So WDI waited until the Shuttle was in lunar orbit before
destroying it? Instead of hitting it while still in low orbit
or in boost phase?
Laying claim to both the Moon and Mars, WDI made
it clear that any further actions against them would be
viewed as acts of war.
And of course, the deaths of a platoon of Marines and the destruction
of a Space Shuttle don't count as acts of war by the "sovereign
political entity" WDI.
Spurred on by the United Nations, many countries began
pumping resources into building a fleet of warships to put
down the upstart corporation. This effort was delayed for
years by WDI plants in many of the manufacturing and assembly
sites for these ships' components.
Two points here. First off, this is where you see ideology
clouding the judgement of our writer. The UN here is shown as
evil and warmongering, wanting to destroy Our Heroes for the
crime of being successful and competent. This, of course, goes
pretty much against the entire concept of the United Nations
as we know it.
Secondly, one wonders how and why WDI put so many plants into
their enemies' factories while being effectively barred from
Earth. Paratroopers?
In April of 2001, when the first fleet of five warships
had been assembled in high-Earth orbit,
...not being molested or attacked by the clearly-superior WDI
forces while under construction, of course...
the Terrestrials (as WDI members had come to call them)
received a shock when they were met halfway to the moon
by a fleet of WDI warships. Outnumbered almost two to one,
the Earth fleet retreated after an initial skirmish that
left them with two heavily damage ships. The WDI fleet had
been hurt almost as badly, but had retained one vessel at
nearly full capacity, and two others still combat-worthy,
although severely damaged.
So, the score at this point is: WDI: 3 ships killed, and Earth:
7 ships killed. With the overwhelming advantage in numbers going
to WDI.
One can only assume that tactical incompetence is the only
reason the nations of Earth didn't sweep WDI's fleet away completely
and end this farce.
Realizing that Earth wasn't about to leave matters
lie, WDI began building more warships, and proceeded with
a plan to colonize the Asteroid Belt and two of Jupiter's
moons. With their war fleet interposed between Earth and
Mars, WDI felt confident that their superior access to resources
and shipbuilding facilities would hold the Terrestrial forces
at bay.
The document ends here, without explaining where the industrial
facilities to build more warships came from, where the necessary
crew for those ships came from and where the people who were
colonizing the Asteroid Belt and Jupiter came from.
All in all, this concept isn't entirely new -- the idea of
"Colonists vs. Mother Society" has been in use for
a long time in science fiction; Larry Niven does a pretty good
run of it in his early Known Space books with the UN-Belter
conflict. The problems inherent in the WDI scenario tend to
stem from "UpLink's" lack of knowledge about economics,
politics and history. If the WDI scenario had been moved upwards
anywhere from 30 to 50 years -- instead of being a secret history
of the Space Race, a future history of the second rush to space
exploration and exploitation -- and perhaps stripped of the
"black helicopter" theories about the UN (or given
some form of justification over the span of the history), it
could be a reasonably entertaining RP campaign or fictional
series. As it is, though... it's just junk.
Join us next time on "When Timelines Go Bad" when
we dissect Cyberpunk 2020!
