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Selene Luxury Shuttle Scuds Smoothly

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Not all of TME Industries' output was for military equipment. In the first years of returning to interstellar commerce, their products were solely civilian in nature, usually in the range of extremely durable mass-produced consumer goods. An Industralist appliance was hardly the sleekest affair, but the unintentional edge given by being manufactured by late Age of War Terran Hegemonic technology meant that, near the end of the Third Succession War, they were quite likely to survive three more such conflicts. The Industrialists evolved into weapon manufacturers mostly because of the "cool factor" associated with military hardware (and only partially because a perpetual state of conflict made such quite profitable), but once they had, they reinvested their earnings and what they'd learned from materiel manufacturing back into the consumer side of the business.

Even if they were somewhat insulated from the demands of surviving in the interstellar capitalist market, the Industrialist Board of Directors weren't unsavvy. For as long as industrial manufacturers had existed, they had existed in the sine-wave cycle of war and peace. Guns sold in times of conflict, and they didn't sell in times of peace. Butter sold in times of peace, but wasn't what customers wanted or needed in times of war. The most successful manufacturers were those that made both guns and butter, with each half of their enterprise supporting the other half during their respective fallow periods. When peace broke out in April 3067, the Board of Directors recognized that after the (soon to be disbanded) Federated Commonwealth rebuilt its forces, there were no new large-scale conflicts on the horizon to justify full-scale war materiel production. They therefore pushed down through the company a request for proposals on a new product that could use soon-to-be-excess manufacturing capability for a profitable civilian project.

The relative lack of secrecy surrounding "Project Postwar" came as a culture shock to the institutionally paranoid Industrialists. With a low DisClass and no secret reporting name--in the proposal phase, it didn't even have a Project designation--more than a few design teams figured that this was some sort of Compliance Department trick to see who'd bite. As a result, more unconventional design teams such as TEAM MELTA avoided it entirely. Proposals therefore came in from demographics skewed towards the young and the externally recruited, rather than natives of Tinker's World born and raised in TME Industries' culture of professional secrecy and compartmentalization. With relatively little oversight by or feedback from Management, the proposers, ranging from engineers and manufacturers to marketers, debated publicly as to what Project Postwar should look like. Several sets of core ideas developed; factions developed around those; design teams formed from those factions; actual conceptual proposals grew from those teams. By July 3067 enough proposals emerged--toasters, cars, DropShips, IndustrialMechs, saunas, personal submarines--that the Board of Directors had their pick of the litter. The winner of their fiat was The Outsiders' Selene-class personnel shuttle.

The Selene, as proposed, was a hundred-fifty ton shuttle built for medium-range insystem flights. Ten tons of fuel gave it five days of transit-drive endurance, giving it an interplanetary range suitable for most inhabited systems in the Inner Sphere. Beyond that, however, The Outsiders' proposal included intentional marketing phases that would result in externally identical but internally variable products. The first phase was that of a high-performance luxury shuttle whose cruising acceleration of three gravities would make it as maneuverable in an atmosphere as some medium fighters. Provisions for three crew and three passengers in first-class accommodations including a salon with sky windows sold the Selene-0 as either a luxury pleasurecraft or a business shuttle. Five tons of cargo would easily carry most people's luxuries and fifteen tons of armor would suitably protect the clearly important people inside. As a civilian craft, the Selene-00 would be unarmed, simplifying its certification, licensing, and regulation in postwar markets.

What made the Selene win the unstated competition that was the Project Postwar public discussion phase was the proposal's inclusion of a long-term business plan. The Selene-00--sold as only the Selene at the time--would initially be marketed towards a luxury and prestige market with an artificially high sticker price and options for decadently upper-crust fixtures. Part of this marketing would also include heavy investment in celebrity news and documentaries in order to establish a form of product placement for the next phases. The Selene-01 would then aim slightly down-market, putting the price point closer to the market estimate of around seven million C-Bills but otherwise retaining the Selene-00's internals: the differences would mostly be limited to less opulent interior options. Once that market filled out, future Selene models would start downgrading the overpowered engine and structure (and thus reducing the cost) to expand the market base while capitalizing on the conspicuous consumption cachet associated in the first phase. The endgame for the Selene series would be a Selene-A shuttle no faster than a Union-class hauling three second-class and ten steerage passengers under a thinly armored skin, suitable for charter flights or business shuttles for third-tier corporations.

To maintain the Selene's upmarket reputation, however, at some point between the luxury craft and the people mover versions they would be sold under different marques, and all variants would have distinct differences in their outer loft definitions and trim so that the Selene-00 remained the boat for the obnoxiously wealthy and the Selene-A, while not dumpy, would clearly be more plebian. The Selene-00 would be a sleek, cleanly flowing delta wing with a wasp-waisted fuselage; the Selene-A, while nowhere near as drab as an ST-46, would still be a blockier, chunkier delta wing clearly intended for something approximating mass production. Part of the marketing plan included the different marques actually being front companies that would get into a manufactured court battle over infringement. The 'heads' of the companies would be characters in a highly "meta" soap opera played out to keep them, and the Selene, in the news and associated with powerful, dramatic people and to take advantage of the human tendency to associate more firmly with something because it is against something else.

The Outsiders wisely kept everything past the base shuttle definition's under wraps, so it came as some surprise when the Board of Directors Selene declared to be the first part of Project Postwar going forward, with a development start date in October 3067. Needless to say, the Inner Sphere found itself in the middle of another war--and this time a total one--on 5 December 3067. The Board immediately moved most of Project Postwar's staff back onto military development and production, but left the core of The Outsiders to work on the Selene with a target delivery date of "one year after the end of the current hostilities."

The "current hostilities" ended on 2 April 3081.

Over the intervening decade and a half The Outsiders developed the Selene-00, then the Selene-01, and on through the Selene-A. They drew up the plans, manufactured prototypes, tested the prototypes, then cleared their datapads and drew up new plans that fixed what they missed in the old plans. They carefully developed the lofts and aesthetics for each of their planned models, drew up plots for their planned hijacking of reality to market their shuttle, carefully created the characters that they would end up playing as part and parcel of moving more hulls. By the time the Selene-00 was officially ready for production in 2 April 3082 (with an anniversary selected to take advantage of the onset of relative peace) The Outsiders had created an entire mythos to play out. The best actors of the group, groomed over the decade to take on the roles of high-powered aerospace executives, took their places in a drama that would continue beyond the end of the century.

The Selene, as intended, never reached a mass market and because of that, going strictly by the numbers, was not the most profitable aspect of Project Postwar. However, the marketing reach of its conspiracy and media manipulation made it the cornerstone of other TME consumer products cautiously inserted into the narrative, which then continued to succeed (or occasionally fail) on their own rights.
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Comments4
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Colourbrand's avatar
Nice design, love the variants - from cheap and ugly to sleek and expensive.

"Butter and Guns" - what an amazing definition about business - excellent!