Anyone know the name of the Terran starship that jumped to Barnards Star in 2096?

[Michael Taylor]

As the subject implies: Anyone know the name of the Terran starship that jumped to Barnards Star in 2096?

The Solomani alien module does not specify anything other than the fact it was the Americans who went there. Any references in Canon to the size/type of ship and name of the ship?

 

[Malenfant]

The name of the ship, according to Rim of Fire (sidebar, page 41) was StarLeaper One. There's no more info about the ship that I can find though...

It does mention that the STL European Union ships that went to found the Prometheus colony at Alpha Centauri were hollowed out planetoid hulls though.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Wasn't there a scenario (in Challenge?) that involved finding one of the crew in cold sleep somewhere?

 

[Flynn]

Yep, that's it. See CT Alien Module 6: Solomani for details.

-Flynn

 

[shield]

The scenario in Challenge was finding one of the crew of the Jefferson, a solomani firgate dispatched with a peace envoy to Bernard that was destroyed by the vilani and hence started the 1st Interstellar war.

Cheers
Richard

 

[mike wightman]

More info may be forthcoming when GT Interstellar Wars is released.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"The scenario in Challenge was finding one of the crew of the Jefferson, a solomani firgate dispatched with a peace envoy to Bernard that was destroyed by the vilani and hence started the 1st Interstellar war."

The peace envoy being, I think, the captain of the SL1.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
"The scenario in Challenge was finding one of the crew of the Jefferson, a solomani firgate dispatched with a peace envoy to Bernard that was destroyed by the vilani and hence started the 1st Interstellar war."

The peace envoy being, I think, the captain of the SL1.

That's quite a revision of history then if your memory is accurate

According to the text of AM6 " ...a minor incident by a Vilani merchant caravan (it ignored traffic control signals from the Terran base on Barnard) sparked the First Interstellar War. The Vilani scarcely knew a war was going on... "

So, the Vilani were in no way inciting or considering war. The Solomani were, far from sending peace envoys, engaged in aggressively asserting a foothold on Barnard and Alpha Centuri, and later the Vilani settled worlds of Nusku and Gashidda*

The Solomani were spoiling for a fight. For the Challenge article to later change that 180 degrees and say they were trying to make diplomatic peace makes no sense at all. The only Vilani presence at Barnard at the time was a small prospecting base.

Sounds to me like somebody wanted to retroactively make the Solomani the good guys

* according to the text, I have a correction noted in the margin that it should be Agidda but I'm not sure where I got the info or if I reasoned it myself.

 

[Malenfant]

Yah. The Solomani - specifically the Americans - were the ones intruding on Barnard. The Americans started the war by shooting down a Vilani trader that got too close to "their" territory.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

From my copy of the GT:Rim of Fire playtest files (the book is elsewhere, so I can't tell if it changed):

"Lorette Kathryn Strider...was selected to command the international crew of StarLeaper One, the first true Terran starship. Her mission to Barnard's Star led to first contact with the Vilani. Following the Vilani contact, Strider accepted a position with the United Nations as one of the first envoys to the Imperium.
...
Strider...was a leading advocate for peace even as the threat of war loomed. In -2408 Strider left
for the Barnard system aboard the American frigate Jefferson, with a last-ditch proposal to avoid conflict. She was too late. The Jefferson was attacked by a Vilani warship and destroyed -- the first major Terran casualty of the First Interstellar War."

 

[far-trader]

Well, not having the book for the larger context there seems to me two possibles at least.

One, this is just another example of a different rules version taking a slightly different approach.

Two, each is true for it's time and source. History is written by the victor, and subject to revision, so the true story could be close to either or both, or different altogether.

Picking apart the quoted bit, and again granted it's out of full context so I may be way off on what the authors intended, I can maybe rationalize both a bit...

"Lorette Kathryn Strider...was selected to command the international crew of StarLeaper One, the first true Terran starship."

OK, two things, in CT the first ship to Barnard was a US Space Force ship only, not international, and it was not a true starship. From this we might infer that StarLeaper One was the first true starship, probably J2* (hence Star rather than Space) to be able to reach Barnard in one jump.

* yes, that's a few years ahead of the "official" time frame but this could be the prototype

"Her mission to Barnard's Star led to first contact with the Vilani. Following the Vilani contact, Strider accepted a position with the United Nations as one of the first envoys to the Imperium."

This further reinforces the idea that her mission to Barnard's Star and first contact was before the StarLeaper One mission. It was after the first US Space Force mission returned that the UN was informed of first contact.

"Strider...was a leading advocate for peace even as the threat of war loomed. In -2408 Strider left
for the Barnard system aboard the American frigate Jefferson, with a last-ditch proposal to avoid conflict. She was too late. The Jefferson was attacked by a Vilani warship and destroyed -- the first major Terran casualty of the First Interstellar War."

This also fits fine with the CT version. The base on Barnard fired on the Vilani merchants. Strider and the Jefferson were sent to avert all out war. They were too late, the Vilani had already sent a warship in response to the incident and it presumed the Jefferson was hostile. So the Jefferson was not the first casualty of the 1st IW, but it was the first Terran casualty, and the first combatant casualty.

Which still begs the question what was the name of the first quasi-J1 ship to reach Barnard under US Space Force command? If it wasn't in fact StarLeaper One and I don't think it was, based mostly on a vague memory of seeing the name somewhere a long time ago. Sounds like an "Ask Avery" question if that section is still active.

Of course the sense I'm getting is still one of "Gredo shot first"

 

[shield]

I think the history is not correct. USA sent ship to barnard and eventually establish a base. They fire on a vilani convoy. The vilani send a warship, which blows up the jefferson with a peace envoy onboard - got the feeling that the govt back home was not too happy about the barnard base trading shots with the locals.

The american ship Starleaper 1 was J1. CT6 and the MT solomani + aslan mentions they spend several years making the journey including establishing deep space fuel caches.

Cheers
Richard

 

[shield]

I think the history is not correct. USA sent ship to barnard and eventually establish a base. They fire on a vilani convoy. The vilani send a warship, which blows up the jefferson with a peace envoy onboard - got the feeling that the govt back home was not too happy about the barnard base trading shots with the locals.

The american ship Starleaper 1 was J1. CT6 and the MT solomani + aslan mentions they spend several years making the journey including establishing deep space fuel caches.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Andrew Boulton]

The bit I quoted was from a sidebar; the main text states that the first mission was American* and the Yanks fired first**.


*Both versions could be true: there may have been a "token foreigner" (probably British, Canadian, or Oz/NZ) aboard.

**The more things change...

 

[kafka47]

Agreed, it was StarLeaper One that was the first ship. It used deep space fueling stations, as remember Jump Drive was never really tested outside of the Solar System. Somehow, I speculate the Terrans once they saw Vilani technology began the process of Reverse-Engineering straight away to achieve J2 in record time or at least, a functioning J1 drive which led to real reason for war.

But, the first Interstellar War did not begin with the discovery of the Vilani but later.

The dominant theory is that the Vilani fired a warning shot at a convoy and this shot was used as a pretense for war.

 

[Malenfant]

The dominant theory is that the Vilani fired a warning shot at a convoy and this shot was used as a pretense for war.

The Americans fired the warning shot at a Vilani convoy that strayed too close to their base on Barnard. It ignored them, and they responded by opening fire on it and destroying it. That was what actually started the war (at least according to RoF).

 

[shield]

Finally got my copy of CT 6 out.

Colonel strider did command the first starship Starleaper One. It was J1 as they established a deep space fuel cache. the ship was a join NASA/USAF / UN space administration ship with an international crew. Strider was assigned as a peace envoy on the Jefferson and despatched to barnard as tensions were rising only to get caught in the combat (probably from the terran base firing on that merchant convoy.

Question. If the starleaper one could carry 2 x J1 fuel + some fuel for the cache, why did they not just jump straight to barnard.

Answers:

A) they wanted to have sufficient fuel onboard to jump from the cache to barnard and then back to the cache without relying on in-system fuel sources (it was an unexplored system).

B) The ship was modular and only had space for J1 fuel tankage. It carried fuel modules to establish the cache and get back. Once the cache was full, they swapped the additional fuel tanks for accommodation / labs / landers / supplies in various modules.

How does that sound?

Cheers
Richard

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by RichardP:
Question. If the starleaper one could carry 2 x J1 fuel + some fuel for the cache, why did they not just jump straight to barnard.

Because they only had a J1 drive, and Barnard is 2 pc away?

 

[kafka47]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />

The Americans fired the warning shot at a Vilani convoy that strayed too close to their base on Barnard. It ignored them, and they responded by opening fire on it and destroying it. That was what actually started the war (at least according to RoF). </font>[/QUOTE]Apologies Malenfant and others. My mistake. I was relying upon my faulty memory of AM6. But there must be something more to it. Why would a Vilani convoy (which naturally would want to avoid war) destroy an American base? I could see this as an after response to some other incident...maybe, the cargo was carrying something precious...

I wish that I had enough money to join the playtest of Traveller: Interstellar Wars, as this prehistory of the Imperial Campaign interests me. Especially, leading up to First Contact and also given that the Vilani were thin on the ground in the Rim...how far up the Main was the Reserve Fleet of the Vilani...as this would certainly explain the early Terran victories...plus, I would want to see the Vilani protrayed as something really alien before their helmets came off and then the reaction between Terran and Vilani...all these dynamics interest me. Plus, what are were the events leading up to the launch of the StarLeaper? Were there other attempts and did we ever recieve any signals from the First Imperium and this has been a Conspiracy...too many questions...and such a long wait for the answers...so hopefully those on the playtest will ask them for me.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by kafka47:
But there must be something more to it. Why would a Vilani convoy (which naturally would want to avoid war) destroy an American base? I could see this as an after response to some other incident...maybe, the cargo was carrying something precious...

Way I see it, the Americans tried to muscle in on Barnard, the Vilani thought "haha, little barbarian upstarts" and ignored them as long as they didn't do anything stupid. Then a Vilani convoy strayed too close to the US base, continued on its path since the Vilani didn't recognise the legality of US territory and ignored their threats, and then got shot down as a result. This got the Vilani's attention, and so they decided to teach the barbarians a lesson, and thus the first war began.

I would imagine that the other nations on Earth weren't particularly grateful to the Americans for starting a war with a huge interstellar empire. Personally, I think the US would have taken a major fall in space after that as a result, simply because the rest of the planet didn't want them to screw things up even more.

I wish that I had enough money to join the playtest of Traveller: Interstellar Wars, as this prehistory of the Imperial Campaign interests me.

It's only $20...? If you're that interested, surely you can rustle up the money? Could you just not drink (insert favourite beverage here) for a week or something?