ISEO Discussion Thread (OOC) (TWI only)

[Reynaerdia]

International Space Exploration Organisation

Discussion Thread

Cosmic greetings to all! This thread is meant for discussion and world building around the International Space Exploration Organisation (ISEO for short).
ISEO is meant to be an organisation where smaller economies band together to fund a world class space program. Here we can discuss memberships, funding, procurement and most importantly our missions.
All ideas are welcome!

We can also share factbooks, dispatches and other information here.

Current Priorities

• Defining the tiers of membership
• Defining how we will handle funding
• Setting the requirements in contribution in order to be a member
• Setting our priorities in the types of missions we want to have
• Aligning on a timeline, (when was ISEO founded, do we have any missions in progress etc...)

[Reynaerdia]

So for the funding I’d suggest we do it in a similar way to ESA, they have a policy of "georeturn", where funds that ESA member states provide to the ESA are returned in the form of contracts to companies in those countries.
Outside a minimum membership fee (to keep the organisation afloat) the programs and missions that are funded should stay optional to be chosen by the member.

For membership I suggest that we have 2 tiers: Full member states and associate states.
Full members would have to participate in funding a number of missions and programs while associates have less commitments but don’t enjoy the georeturn policy.

[Balervia]

Balervia would like to be a full member

[Xokalderix]

Xokalderix would like to become a member

[Rhostohn]

Excited this is happening! Just a thought on timelines: If we're following real-world examples then the USA and the Soviets started their space programs in the 1950s, and JAXA is among the newer programs, founded in 2003 (though this was through a merger). If the ISEO is all smaller economies, then maybe we want to found toward the middle/latter end of this range?

[Reynaerdia]

Balveria, Xokalderix, Welcome! Your memberships have been noted.

For our timeline I agree with Rhostohn. We are all smaller economies and I do not think we could realistically start a space program in the 50's.
Reynaerdia would be dealing with the Gael economic crash in the 70's - 80's. So early 90's would be the time where it could start investing in R&D and other science programs.
I would suggest 1994 as the founding date. This also gives us a nice time frame to write about past mission.

For the writing of the dispatches about missions and discoveries, I would write a central dispatch about ISEO itself and then link everything to that one. I'll try to get some work done on it over the weekend. So every member can then freely set up their own missions (after we all agree on the time frame and funding of course) and write about the things that interest them the most.

For our new members, we are still looking for a nation to host the launch site. Ideally close to the equator and an area that is sparsely populated. From looking at the world map the southern tip of Balveria seems like a good spot.

[Rhostohn]

Not opposed to 1994, I think that gives us a good timeframe to establish solid rocket designs and at least get us into satellite and probe territory, if not manned missions. And thank you for taking on that drafting work, Reynaerdia!

Agreed that Balervia is our best candidate for a launch site at this time. Balervia, what's your geography like along your southern tip?

Also, how do we feel about the the discussion about the layout of the solar system last week? It didn't seem to me like the RMB was leaning in any particular direction.

[Reynaerdia]

Hi everyone,

I've made a very rough outline for the main dispatch, feel free to give suggestions on what to add, or if there are things you want to add about your nation specifically.
I'll start with my own suggestion, I'd like to host the HQ of the organisation. I think it would be fitting since I'm a neutral nation so well suited to host international organisations.

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=2821659

What the solar system discussion is concerned I think it would be best to wait it out a bit. Seems like there is no consensus yet. I personally like the idea keeping it closer to our IRL solar system but leaving some room for imagination on existing bodies and also leaving room for some undiscovered objects (like asteroids, comets or outer system dwarf planets).
We can start with fleshing out missions to things that wont cause lore issues later on, like our first satellites in Terrine's orbit, moon orbiters and landers and maybe a comet interception. Then once we are more established in the space lore of Terrine we can push the issue to get the solar system sorted.

Rhostohn, Xokalderix, Balervia
For now I'd mostly like to know when each nation joined if they weren't a founder nation, what facilities they provide or host (production centres, launch pads, communications, observatories,... ) and how much you are willing to spend on ISEO so I can get a rough number of our annual budget.

[Rhostohn]

This is an excellent start Reynaerdia, the write up you've done so far seems realistic. I noticed that "IDEO" is listed twice in the third paragraph; is that a typo or something separate from the ISEO? I'm in favor of you hosting the headquarters as well, seems only fair since you got the ball rolling on this whole thing.

What do we want to do for official languages? Open to all members? A select group like the UN? A common language for operations like air traffic controllers?

Agreed that we can wait a while on the solar system. There's plenty of other writing to do, and we'll have more momentum if we pick up some new members before bringing it up again.

I would like to bring Rhostohn in as a founder. We can provide excellent glassware (lenses and mirrors for telescopes, lasers, etc.), precision machinery (especially for rocket motors), and our mountain ranges will have plenty of dark sky sites for terrestrial observatories. Budgeting outside of the aforementioned components is going to be more difficult for us because of the way our government works, I think around 15% of the operations and admin costs is something we can manage.

Last thing, I'm not sure tagging a nation here sends a ping to their notifications. I'll send out telegrams so Balervia and Xokalderix have the link handy, and we may want to do that for new members going forward.

[Reynaerdia]

Ideo was indeed a most embarrassing typo. No idea how I missed that. I've corrected it.
Good idea to send out a telegrams, kinda annoying you don't get notified when you're mentioned in a forum post. I hope we hear something from the others soon.

For languages I think we could select a few global languages, this would mostly be for official documentation and publishing of research and communication between control centers and astronauts. ESA for example has English, German and French as the official languages.
On the other hand since we're a small group at the moment we could instead take all local languages for documentation and use the TWI equivalent of English (Alteran, I think) as the lingua franca for astronaut communications.

Rhostohn, the facilities you suggested sound great. I can already imagine an observatory sitting above one of your pine forrests. If you have an idea of specific locations or some info about them you can let me know, I'll add it to the overview or link the dispatches. No rush of course.

[Balervia]

Languages.

I think since that around half of the members are Gaeltic we should have Andarian as one of our languages and also Alteran as one of our languages