Operation Wagon Train:
The ultimate goal of Hyperlight Industries, and everything Captain Rich has been working towards since he successfully booted Twilight up. In brief, Operation Wagon Train/ The Yorktown Plan/ Project Yorktown are all geared towards the construction of the necessary logistical machinery needed to manufacture, move, and settle a self-sustaining population of Biologicals on an M-class planet outside of the Sol System with a minimum population of 250,000 by 2025-2030.
Originally, this was intended to be aimed at Alpha Centauri, or another close-by star due to the perception that FTL didn't exist when the plan was concieved in 2008. At the time, resupply would have been impossible due to the multi-year transit times, forcing the prospective colony to bring everything needed to set up a logistical base capable of sustaining 1st world living conditions in a single massive package.
The Yorktown Project is the primary vehicle of the plan. Originally designed as a sublight Fusion Torch ship; it was partially redesigned in 2013 to take advantage of FTL in order to free up internal space from fuel tankage, increase the available range, and to increase the pushing capacity of the craft. Due to the thrust of the ship, best described as 'one Castle Bravo per second', towing would have been out of the question, and any towed container would find itself rapidly vaporized under a relativistic iron ion stream from the fusion torch drives. Instead, the ship is designed to push a train-like container assembly ahead of it, allowing it to push enough cargo to make the plan viable.
The Yorktown Plan is both a smokescreen for the project, and also serves as the study, design, and manufacturing of all necessary infastructure modules and supplies needed for the journey and settlement. Key in the objectives of the Plan is the commonality of as many components being sent as possible, so that there are as few points of failure as possible. Additionally, a secondary aim of the planners is to recruit as broad a spectrum of settlers as possible, to include danes and fen, in order to create a snapshot of the time period that they left in their demographics.
Further objectives include analyzing the target world, and determining what staple crops will grow there, comparison of local pathogens, biosphere, and trace elements against the human race to identify possible incompatibilities, as well as targeting potential landing sites.
To that end, a six month survey by the AI-controlled Thunderhawk squadron Fuzzyhawk ventured to the Rho Canceri system. Despite the four gas giants within 1 AU of the star, tantilizing glimpses of water vapor and an oxygen atmosphere were detected by long range telescopes operating in Alpha Centauri, Delta Pavonis, and other systems. The Fuzzyhawks discovered a complex moon system around Rho Canceri IV, which included two terrestrial planets that had been captured during planetary formation in an outer orbit around the planet. One, was a mars-like world, with a thin atmosphere and an extremely low water ratio. The other was the motherlode, a planet closely resembling Earth.
The ultimate goal of Hyperlight Industries, and everything Captain Rich has been working towards since he successfully booted Twilight up. In brief, Operation Wagon Train/ The Yorktown Plan/ Project Yorktown are all geared towards the construction of the necessary logistical machinery needed to manufacture, move, and settle a self-sustaining population of Biologicals on an M-class planet outside of the Sol System with a minimum population of 250,000 by 2025-2030.
Originally, this was intended to be aimed at Alpha Centauri, or another close-by star due to the perception that FTL didn't exist when the plan was concieved in 2008. At the time, resupply would have been impossible due to the multi-year transit times, forcing the prospective colony to bring everything needed to set up a logistical base capable of sustaining 1st world living conditions in a single massive package.
The Yorktown Project is the primary vehicle of the plan. Originally designed as a sublight Fusion Torch ship; it was partially redesigned in 2013 to take advantage of FTL in order to free up internal space from fuel tankage, increase the available range, and to increase the pushing capacity of the craft. Due to the thrust of the ship, best described as 'one Castle Bravo per second', towing would have been out of the question, and any towed container would find itself rapidly vaporized under a relativistic iron ion stream from the fusion torch drives. Instead, the ship is designed to push a train-like container assembly ahead of it, allowing it to push enough cargo to make the plan viable.
The Yorktown Plan is both a smokescreen for the project, and also serves as the study, design, and manufacturing of all necessary infastructure modules and supplies needed for the journey and settlement. Key in the objectives of the Plan is the commonality of as many components being sent as possible, so that there are as few points of failure as possible. Additionally, a secondary aim of the planners is to recruit as broad a spectrum of settlers as possible, to include danes and fen, in order to create a snapshot of the time period that they left in their demographics.
Further objectives include analyzing the target world, and determining what staple crops will grow there, comparison of local pathogens, biosphere, and trace elements against the human race to identify possible incompatibilities, as well as targeting potential landing sites.
To that end, a six month survey by the AI-controlled Thunderhawk squadron Fuzzyhawk ventured to the Rho Canceri system. Despite the four gas giants within 1 AU of the star, tantilizing glimpses of water vapor and an oxygen atmosphere were detected by long range telescopes operating in Alpha Centauri, Delta Pavonis, and other systems. The Fuzzyhawks discovered a complex moon system around Rho Canceri IV, which included two terrestrial planets that had been captured during planetary formation in an outer orbit around the planet. One, was a mars-like world, with a thin atmosphere and an extremely low water ratio. The other was the motherlode, a planet closely resembling Earth.