[Snail]

The might have had some influence on the future birth of the NTF, though. The GTVA was only 9-10 years old when the NTF rebellion started (if I remember well), meaning that it was quite possible to be the result of grudge towards the powers that pretended to take the place of the legitimate GTA authorities.

We know there are many ideals behind the creation of the NTF, but I wouldn't scrap those connected to politics.

Exactly. In fact, the GTVA was made the supreme power in 2358, only 9 years before the NTF rebellion (however, it had existed before that date as a trade framework with less power). I suspect the political turmoil in Polaris, Sirius and Regulus during Reconstruction caused the people in those systems to get pretty angered at the GTVA government and encouraged them to join Bosch's rebellion.

[Mobius]

Very good point. I agree....

[htnk]

Just a heads up though, the regional blocs were only semi-autonomous. They weren't like the NTF.

I only found canon information that Luyten Alliance was independent until eventually rejoining GTVA under BETAC. There was nothing about the level of independency.

[Mobius]

Well, after the collapse of the Sol jump node no one legitimately had the powers to replace the government of Sol. Under a military point of view, a temporary Terran Command had been established in Delta Serpentis. Something similar surely happened to politics and politicians, hence the creation of the independent factions.

[Snail]

From the Reconstruction entry of intel:

...the Galactic Terran Alliance disintegrated into semi-autonomous regional blocs...

Though it's so vague you can do anything with it.

[Mobius]

IMO, they probably were semi-autonomous because none of them could virtually survive without the others. It's quite possible, IMO, that during the Reconstruction period the classic "I give you food, you give me weapons" helped a lot. Our info on canon planets are poor, so we don't know what kind of resources each system could rely on.

For example, the normal Prometheus became nearly impossible to produce after the collapse of the Sol jump node, so the GTVA came out with the Prometheus R. This means that, eventually, GTA systems other than Sol did not have a considerable number of exploitable gas giants.

[General Battuta]

That doesn't make much sense...if I were trying to elucidate the loss of the Prometheus S, I think I'd want to come up with a more elaborate infrastructure. Something about the loss of a critical bit of know-how or technology. The loss of gas giants just doesn't make any sense, because gas giants are everywhere.

[Snail]

This means that, eventually, GTA systems other than Sol did not have a considerable number of exploitable gas giants.

No gas giants with argon you mean.

[Mobius]

Oh right - I forgot that argon is needed to use the Prometheus.

Yet still, we have to assume that the gas giants outside Sol were different from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune... or things wouldn't make sense...

[MarkN]

Oh right - I forgot that argon is needed to use the Prometheus.

Yet still, we have to assume that the gas giants outside Sol were different from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune... or things wouldn't make sense...

The gas giants in the solar system have much lower argon contents that the earths atmosphere. there is no mention in the tech database that it is the gas giants that Argon was extracted from, so it is likely that the Earths atmosphere was still the main source of Argon for the GTA (we produce 700,000 tons a year of the stuff at the moment, although of course, most of that is returned to the atmosphere when it is lost).

Thinking about it, considering our current reliance on Argon, (the electronics industry to start with, plus some of the light alloy industry, as Titanium 'burns' in Nitrogen), the GTVA must have had to rethink many technologies with a loss of Argon. One possibility is that the Prometheus is one of the few technologies where the Argon cannot be directly replaced with Neon, which is easily extracted from cold gas giants (equivalent to Uranus and Neptune). Of course, the lack of Argon, suggests that there is a lack of planets in the GTVA with an earth-like atmosphere (the gravity and temperature which produce an oxygen-righ atmosphere also lead to an Argon-rich atmosphere), and this is a major limit to the possible population of the GTVA.

[Snail]

Perhaps they use terraforming technology.