Guide talk:TAU

Outline

• Political situation & impetus for mission
  • NASA sought to conduct its own manned mission part from the ISA, as an extension of its historical role in space firsts; however, the technical proficiency required for some subsystems (including propulsion & cryogenics) necessitated international crew agreements with several partner nations (inc: UK, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, Italy, & Ukraine).
  • WA member France took exception from being slighted from the mission and joined with China & india in vocally denouncements of the mission.
  • Chinese & Greenpeace subs engaged in sabotage missions against TAU mission components.
  • NASA utilized future CAS member states Chad, Ganon, and Sao Tome in launching components and support into orbit for assembly, which opened the mission up to sabotage when China and Greenpeace both made successful attempts to sabotage components via submarine insertion.
  • Russia allegedly successfully stole experimental EM field generators meant to provide microcollision protection for the 5 vessels in a daring covert raid on the orbital assembly facility.
• Engineering description
  • primary boost—from Earth orbit to just past the Kuiper belt—provided by the fusion-powered thruster mounted between the four fission-powered thrusters, an operational test of the much more efficient reactor.
  • whip antennae measured the fine-structure constant
  • radiators & safe space
  • centrifugal habitat compartment
  • cryosleep compartment
• Missions
  • each mission included recording the fine-structure constant (the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles) of the extra-Kuiper heliosphere of Sol, to compare to later more-distant missions, as an aspect of early research into subspace physics.

Salient Facts (Timo)

Part 1:

• first manned attempts to leave the system in the late '30s, led by USA
• France, Texas, China & India were intentionally left out, vocal critics of the program
• TAU = Thousand Astronomical Units, an "unrealistic intended range"
• Kuiper belt: 30 - 50 AUs
• Oort cloud: 2,000 - 100,000 AUs

Part 2:

• ion engines built by AmJet (American Jet?)
• ship's modules (and equipment) were built on-planet around the world with partner nations
• component sabotage by Texas & Greenpeace submarines; theft of EM shield generators by Russia
• assembled in orbit
• relatively large, fusion-powered booster to achieve

Salient Facts (SFC)

• Fusion power is now available
• Additional plasma contractor units are installed to create a slow neutral plasma “bath” around the craft https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=what+is+a+plasma+contactor+unit

Salient Facts (MA)

• "equipped with a block D gas-core fission reaction propulsion system"
  
• "equipped with hibernation systems"
• "extrasolar survey mission objectives included the survey of deep extra solar environment to distance of 100 AU, interaction of the solar magnetic field at heliopause, long-duration crew habitation..."
• "NASA lost contact with the Charybdis following the apparent failure of the ship's telemetry system on February 7, 2038. The official NASA report read: "Vehicle systems at telemetry cutoff indicated thrust abnormality. Vehicle attained 12× solar escape velocity 2.56 hours earlier than planned. Assumed vehicle was lost with consumables run out, 20% possibility of crew survival with hibernation systems at low usage mode. Follow up mission Jacob resulted in negative track.""

Daedalus variant

• Cryosleep "ring" different shading, boxes arranged/depicted differently.
• no grey sphere between radiators; instead extend (white) transit tunnel aft of it in its place.
• Radiator panels without gold lines (possibly different panel style) and shorter, no longer than the high-point of the mid-brace (or maybe 3/4th of Trigwell).
• do away with the forward two rings of yellow batteries and color them differently (where the yellow represents a rubber coating)