ECSNorway Wrote:2017: SBA announces the production (making use of some of the megatonnage of steel produced by Rockhounds' mining operations) of the first of the "Island 3" class of space habitats. Designed to be as self-sufficient an environment as possible, it is a 3-kilometer-long lozenge-shaped station with its own internal gravity and drive systems, manufacturing facilities, and an open residential/agricultural region with a high domed roof. The first is sold to BAT to serve as their new headquarters, orders for dozens more come in from factions and 'daneside corporations and governments.StellviaCorp orders one (at the tail-end of the first rush so they won't receive it before 2022), custom-built with a stardrive frame, a dozen Starfleet standard-issue multi-mission launchers spaced equidistant around its "equator," and astronomical, astrophysical, and other scientific instruments covering a third of the hull. They ask that the name SCSD Vision be painted on the hull.
(Three guesses what it's going to be turned into, and - considering your entry for 2018 - the first two don't count...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012