Mirfak
24-12-2004, 15:55
Mirfakan governing council leader Petrovich Kolani launched an aggressive campaign in his nation to research and build new technology, especially for starships, in a landmark effort to catch up to other nations. In its 200-year period of civil war, Mirfak fell far behind its contemporaries in terms of overall technological competence and advancement. To correct this, Kolani founded today the Advanced Technology Development Administration; a government agency tasked with delivering a competitive starship fleet within the next fifty years. Their timetable is aggressive, calling for a mix of new technology and customized bits and pieces from other nations, and to meet it they have been granted a full 5% of the government's budget and, perhaps more valuable, expenses allowances for garnering foreign technology to research and reverse-engineer. "There will be limited progress at first," Kolani said in his announcement, "due to the limited power of our current economy, but we have survived two centuries of warfare. Mirfak is strong, and we will prevail in this endeavour just as we have in the past." When questioned later, Kolani expressed doubt that Mirfak will actually have a fleet in fifty years that can stand up to the top nations in the technology race today. "The key," he said, "is that we will have competitive ships, and we will be in the race instead of simply milling about at the starting line. For me to know when I retire that my nation is on the path to success will be enough. Just because it will not be easy does not mean it is not worth doing."