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Mission Control
 | | Reputation: 45 | | Group: | Command | | Posts: | 226 |
| Post #1: 15th Mar 2015 10:57 PM | |
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Extracting: Memoirs_JL_x8292_2234-11-25_1845
Supposedly the Dalia is a fully stocked and equipped mining vessel. I have my doubts.
I've been in the mining trade for 30 or so years and it's an industry which changes at ludicrous speed. As such, it's difficult to pre-suppose the technical specs of a new craft. Maybe I'm just too old for the newer, shinier toys they're using out there nowadays. Still, a few fundamentals have to be present. The state of the Dalia and it's initial build lead me to doubt that it's fit for purpose, at least a purpose that would appease mining regulations on Earth.
For starters, the craft just isn't very sturdy. There's a lot of debris floating around in the kuiper belt. It's an active mine-space. Not really a problem if you're commissioning an asteroid which has no previous work done, which supposedly fits Dalia's remit. But you still need a solid hull and interior to withstand the occasional bumps the ship will take during a mining run. I honestly feel like the ship isn't built to last. The walls are paper thin alloy.
I was sat down in the loading bay earlier when shop was closed because it's peaceful, and nobody goes by that way. It's not off-limits and it's a good way to catch your thoughts. Wasn't to be because the noise carries like nobodies business. I could hear every footstep from the level above me, echoing down. Really killed the moment to be sure. Honestly most craft I've been on for a mining run has insulated interior alloys. This thing is a joke.
I think it's a trojan horse. Kayla's SETI division went under five years back and since then all of the craft has been de-commissioned. There's more and more of a push to get mine vessels to do a preliminary scout, but it's by the books and nothing ever comes up. If there was life out here, we'd have found it already. It's just not fit for purpose out in the cold depths of space. Life isn't meant to thrive out here. It's supposed to pass through on the way to getting things done.
Maybe there's life in another solar system, but there's no way to get a signal that far. They really should wrap up with these exercises altogether. It's costly and it cuts down on valuable mining time. I feel like some folks down at Kayla SETI don't much like the notion and have snuck in some craft as supposed "mining" vessels which are really designed to be scout ships. Dalia fits the ticket like a hand to a glove. It's not just the sturdiness, it's the lack of quarters for a full mining staff. This ship simply can't maintain a full mining detail for the duration it needs. 200 people could feasibly last a month outside of stasis, before supplies ran down. I've never been on a mining detail that lasted less than three.
It's passed every safety check supposedly. The safety commission are a bunch of clowns though. They wouldn't know a broken heat valve from a broken toilet. I'm honestly getting tired of this game now. I've got land out in the sea of tranquility. Should be able to rest up there and live out my days in peace. The industry just isn't what it was. | | |
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Mission Control
| | Reputation: 45 | | Group: | Command | | Posts: | 226 |
| Post #2: 27th Mar 2015 5:01 PM | |
Extracting: Memoirs_JL_x8292_2234-12-03_1301
I've been in the mining business as long as I can remember. You know what's harder than successfully piloting to, docking on and mining through an asteroid? Mining for any sort of data on Kayla Interplanetary. The level of red tape you have to go through just to find the slightest amount of information is frankly ridiculous.
I don't get it, I really don't. For a corporation so adept on exploration and freedom, they certainly don't share much. Almost every aspect of the company is surrounded by a fifty ft. wall of secrecy. I was searching the archive bank on Ganymede earlier and most historic records of the company have gone missing under "mysterious circumstances". How do a couple hundred years of corporate history vanish into the aether?
From what I can gather, the company was originally created as Kayla Ltd. but quickly became a corporation thanks to a generous amount of funding. The original founder was a man named McCoy, who had a significant amount of money behind him. This all kicked off after the Inferno crisis, because the corporation was started in the vaults beneath Earth. All of the infomercials put forth by the corporation suggest that it was actually them who were behind the Lunar colonisation project that allowed that broken shell of a planet to be left behind, but there's nothing historical to support it.
Stranger still, there's precious little information on McCoy himself. The corporation exchanged ownership back in 2050, but there's no suggestion that McCoy retired. I can't even find any record of his death, reported to have been some 15 years on from this. If the archives were on Earth, I don't doubt that they could've been lost. The planet was in a turbulent state following Inferno and the nuclear strikes.
It might be worth locating the archives on the planet itself, but I'm not in any particular rush. It's a grim and desolate place, full of whackjobs and outlaws. I'll try some of the other archives and see if I can dig up anything else.
Incidentally, Kayla recently announced their new air filtration collars. I personally wouldn't rely on one of those things. Initial reports confirm that they have a really, really limited battery life. You basically have to stockpile fusion cells and pop them in all the time to keep breathing. What if you want to sleep? There's no alarm, just some stupid light system that might not always be visible in certain atmospheric conditions. I'll chance it with a filtration pack.
New tech isn't always good tech. I like to leave my safety in the hands of those with a decent track record. Do Kayla have a decent track record? Who the hell knows. Their records are so fragmented it's impossible to tell.
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Mission Control
| | Reputation: 45 | | Group: | Command | | Posts: | 226 |
| Post #3: 3rd Apr 2015 6:25 PM | |
Extracting: Memoirs_JL_x8292_2235-01-06_1748
Nothing like hitting brick walls over and over again to pique your curiosity. When I first started researching the history of Kayla Interplanetary and the construction of the Dalia, it was more just an exercise in trying to find statistical evidence for the unsuitability of modern day mining vessels. Problem is, the more I get involved in this research, the darker the road seems to go. That's both in terms of how little I can see ahead, and now downright...disturbing...the path seems to go.
There's something sinister about such a large enterprise funding the majority of all space exploration to date being shrouded in so much enigma like Kayla is. I'm beginning to sound like one of those conspiracy loons but they really aren't helping their case with so many redacted entries and destroyed logs.
I did find a little more information on McCoy and the start of Kayla, though again it was vague. For one thing, it looks like McCoy was involved with the renegades who escaped the caverns and rode out into post-apocalyptica during the Inferno war. I can't exactly place what his involvement was, but I found evidence that he arranged a meet in the ruins of Knossos Palace sometime before they set out.
There's a lot of vagueness surrounding that chapter of history, but it looks like McCoy didn't actually go above ground himself. The renegades notably disappeared without a trace, presumably because the Labyrinth exploded in a flash of purple electricity according to hearsay. I personally find it a bit hard to stomach that explanation. In the view of most accepted historians, there was another nuclear strike that wiped out Willis and his base and the renegades probably never made it out of the wastelands.
Around this time, Kayla was set up. McCoy was a businessman, not a scientist, so he hired a scientist to assist with his first research project to bio-engineer plant-life in the caverns. That was a successful operation flag-shipped by a Dr. Burke, which led to the techniques used on planetary and satellite terraformation. The project was code-named Genesis. This is where records begin to get sketchy.
I need to dig up more information on Genesis and this project. Records indicate that the Genesis project was abandoned, although the bio-engineering continued under the name Greenhouse. This was widely considered a more suitable title, because the plants they were engineering weren't being synthetically created. It's just that there was a stockpile of plant DNA and frozen cells from the surface which were genetically modified to grow under different conditions.
In some respects Greenhouse was partially a failure too. The plants were meant to grow on the surface of Earth to help sustain the flailing atmospheric conditions, but all samples put onto the surface died with in a number of weeks. Earth was just a dead husk at this point, and so Kayla turned their attentions to space flight with a view to eventual Lunar colonisation. This was of course highly successful.
What baffles me is that there's no further mention of Genesis, and that McCoy kind of fades into the records. After the success of Greenhouse, there's also little information surrounding Burke. He wasn't involved in any other keynote projects. I can't help but shake the suspicion that something is off here. Research projects are dropped without any further mention all the time, but the money that was poured into Genesis seems excessive. None of the collected research from the project has been published. All records are lost or redacted.
Generally this only happens if the research is incomplete, implying that maybe the project didn't end there. I'd be curious to know what happened to it. Maybe I'll have to visit the archives on Earth, but I'm still not sure that I'm as curious as that. You'd need a damn good reason to go traipsing around that cold dead world. | | |
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Mission Control
| | Reputation: 45 | | Group: | Command | | Posts: | 226 |
| Post #4: 7th Apr 2015 1:19 AM | |
Extracting: Memoirs_JL_x8292_2235-02-12_1422
I'm booked onto a shuttle leaving for Earth at the end of the month. I can't say I'm looking forward to the trip. The planet has fallen into such disarray, and I'm nothing short of a crotchety old man these days. It really isn't the ideal environment. Most shuttles don't fly out there which is why I need to wait so long. When I finally do touch down, I need to get onto a return flight too. They don't leave all that often any more. I Might have to hold up for a week or so.
It'll give me long enough at the various archive sites. Transport on Earth isn't too taxing if you know where to ask. Once I have the data I need to complete my investigation I'll leave again. I'm not there for the tourism after all. Incidentally a third party has contacted me about my visit to Earth and is interested in collaborating notes with me on arrival.
Apparently he's a representative of a group who protect the victims of cultists. This gave me pause for thought too. Earth has quite a number of active nutjob cults operating, and they've been going since the Inferno war. One such cult simply calling themselves the Cult of the True Light have apparently destroyed the lives of many inhabitants on the planet.
I really don't see what any of this has to do with my notes, but apparently there's a link. I'm struggling to see it myself, but it'll be nice to have the company down there. I've already scoured his records and he's clean, so there's no risk of him turning rogue on me because he doesn't like what I've been writing. I'm getting a little paranoid now, but I think it pays to be careful. The deeper into this Kayla mess I get, the more disturbed I become.
Genesis has me intrigued the most. I can't shake it. I suspect the project was never abandoned, which means it's continuing even to this day. I can only presume it started off as a means to create synthetic life, something which has never been done successfully to this day. What it's become after all these years, who can even imagine? Maybe the habitation deck on Dalia wasn't intended for life they found, but life they were developing.
Have you ever seen the commercial for those creepy RAMSES droids? They're part biological, but mostly machine. Still, Kayla thought it vital to give them the function to breathe. This is becoming commonplace on androids these days because it doubles them up as canaries for bad atmosphere. Still, RAMSES are meant to be utility droids. I don't get why they make the things breathe at all? There's more efficient ways to test an atmosphere than that.
Maybe they're testing suitability for Genesis? I suppose synthetic life need not breathe oxygen, so seeing how different atmospheres play on the RAMSES synthetic lungs could be telling for the project. Either way I don't much care for them or the fact they're being shoved aboard so many flights. Oh and those ethics committees that declared them suitable? Two have been disbanded under investigation of fraud. Go figure.
Kayla really don't work with the most squeaky clean people. | | |
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Mission Control
| | Reputation: 45 | | Group: | Command | | Posts: | 226 |
| Post #5: 8th Apr 2015 8:30 PM | |
Extracting: Memoirs_JL_x8292_2235-02-26_0142
I don't have a lot of time. My flight is leaving soon, but I wanted to document this. I received a strange transmission about 30 minutes ago. The sender was scrambled so I have no idea who sent it.
In discussion with my contact meeting me on Earth, he seems to think based on the image accompanying the transmission, that it came from the Cult of the True Light. I'm a little worried at this point, but I've come too far to look back now.
If something should happen to me, please ensure that my journals are compiled. I'll place the last of them on an encrypted network so that there's no danger of the entries becoming redacted. I feel like any moment now, these words won't transmit.
Also to my son Matthieu, please know that I'm sorry we haven't spoken in the past two years. Right now I'm very contemplative, and I'm feeling sorrowful. I wanted to call but I was unable to get through. There's a solar peak at the moment so I think it's knocking comms down. Know that I always did and always will love you.
Irregardless I have to press on. The transmission only strengthened my resolve. Something dark is behind all of this, and it needs to be unveiled. Every step I take sends chills down my spine. I fear that there are forces out there we are unable to comprehend.
One more point I recently discovered; Kayla means Key. Is there something they've unlocked...or something they're trying to? I have a long flight to a desolate world to muse on this some more, but comms will be scarce. I'll upload the transmission before departing.
Thank you for reading my rambling words. I hope they meant something, and I hope that for all our sakes I'm just a crazy old man. | | |
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Mission Control
| | Reputation: 45 | | Group: | Command | | Posts: | 226 |
| Post #6: 9th Apr 2015 5:47 PM | |
Extracting: Memoirs_JL_x8292_2235-03-28_1523
We regret to announce that the author of these memoirs, Mr. Raymond Soderbergh has passed away. He is succeeded by one son, Mr. Matthieu Soderbergh and two grandchildren, Elizabeth and Jacob Soderbergh.
These journals are set to automatically publish on death of the author, and as a result will be uploaded to the Europa archives as per request.
We are humbly sorry for all friends and relatives of the deceased. | | |
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