bunrab | Rodent fiction

Keek'k 8330 d'Chiqi v'Springdale had unfortunately been late to the meeting, and as a result, found himself volunteered to write the big report. His chief's instructions boiled down to, "Summarize the current projects, lay out the alternative directions for future projects and their estimated costs, and make a really good case for an interstellar trip because that's the direction I want to go in."

Keek'k didn't necessarily agree with that, but since he could make the case to himself that any of the directions were good, because they were all space exploration, he was willing to go along with the chief's slant.

One thing the chief hadn't mentioned, that Keek'k thought he'd better include, was the buy-in status of the various Families on the existing projects, and the likelihood of non-Squirrel support for each alternative, monetary and otherwise. The Chinchillas, he knew, would be all for building another large orbital station in addition to the four already in orbit; they wanted to start holding Contests in space. Their Contests drew audiences from all over the world to South Twin Continent to see the various sporting events, and over the last 50 years, they had expanded the Contests to include sports of other Families, a very successful move. The Chinchillas loved zero gravity, as long as there was plenty of room - the ones who worked on the orbital stations almost universally went through a period where they acted as if zero gravity were an intoxicating drink, and it took a couple of weeks for the newbies to settle down and get to work. (You couldn't get a Chinchilla to undertake a long trip in a small ship, but give them space to move around, and they were happy.) But Keek'k knew that even with major Chinchilla support, a recreational orbital station would not be a big enough priority with other Families to warrant serious consideration. But was there some sort of minor project that the Squirrels could allocate to the Chinchillas that would include sports, as a way to convince them to buy in to the more serious projects? Would an interstellar ship perhaps be large enough to convince the Chinchillas to participate?

Almost all of the projects were engineered by the Beavers, and Keek'k knew they would view an interstellar trip as another engineering challenge - but if they wanted to go along, that would increase costs significantly; a ship built to accomodate the larger-bodied Families, and hold supplies for them, could cost billions more. Of course, there was the offsetting savings of having members of a longer-lived Family on board - less training of new generations, for example - but would that be enough?