NationStates Jolt Archive

Dateline: Nairobi, Kenya, Roycelandian East Africa

The Roycelandian Space Agency is proud to announce the imminent launch of the satellite ROYCESTAR IX from the Colonial Space Centre, located near Thompson's Falls in the province of Kenya, in Roycelandian East Africa.

ROYCESTAR IX replaces ROYCESTAR VIII, which suffered a "minor technical difficulty" on Launch and almost crashed into the Lusakan City of Mbeya, before it was intercepted by Lusakan AA defences. Imperial Defence Bureau officials expressed surprise that the Lusakan AA defences worked at all, whilst the Roycelandian Space Agency has promised that ROYCESTAR IX won't be a repeat of ROYCESTAR VIII.

Rachael Lane, of the Roycelandian Space Agency addressed a Press Conference in Nairobi this morning, explaining the uniqueness of the latest satellite launch:

"This one will work properly, we promise. In fact, all the ROYCESTAR satellites worked perfectly, except for ROYCESTAR III, which failed to enter geosynchronous orbit and was last seen hurtling towards Mars. ROYCESTAR V's disappearance remains a complete mystery, of course, and ROYCESTAR VIII doesn't count since it didn't get out of Earth's atmosphere. The important thing is that we've learnt from our mistakes... well, most of them anyway. Even in a worst case scenario, the explosion should be pretty spectacular... Oh crap, did I say that out loud? Can you edit that out?"

Make sure we edit that last part out before issuing this press release!- Ed.

The ROYCESTAR series of Satellites handle most of Roycelandia's international Telecommunications and TV channels, as well as most of the other technological wizardry that you'd expect expensive modern satellites to do.

The Imperial Communications Ministry have authorised the sale of Comms Channels and Frequencies on ROYCESTAR IX, and interested parties should contact the Imperial Communications Ministry for futher information.

Bookmakers William Hill are offering odds of 3 to 2 that the Satellite will launch and deploy without any problems, 2 to 1 that it will explode spectacularly on the launch pad or in orbit, and 5 to 3 that the Roycelandian Space Agency will accidentally launch the wrong Satellite.

The Launch is scheduled to take place next Monday at approximately 2:05PM.

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Needless to say, there is much activity afoot around what Lusakan SA-20 regiments of the several dozen provided many years ago by the Republic's then-allies remain operational. New Lusaka City has not been terribly shy about expressing the fact that the Tendyala government is not the forgiving one of Igomo, and that the Republic is not distracted by foreign invasion as she was last time a Roycelandian missile, "went astray".

The Imperial Roycelandian Government insists that the ROYCESTAR VIII incident was an "Accident", and the strong resemblence between the satellite's wreckage and that of a Nemesis missile is "a coincidence so improbale it should be in Beleive It Or Don't!", according to the Roycelandian Space Agency.

Should we be donning hard helmets also? I mean, we're in the Pacific and all, but you never know what might happen.

- Foreign minister Schützer, between cat-insulting sessions

Air Force Space Division HQ, Eboneeza AFB, Western Desert, United Elias

Director Bergstein sat behind his desk, piled high with unread research documents. The white peeling walls seemed to close in on him each day. He fanned himself with a briefing memo, the air-conditioing having broken down weeks ago and not yet repaired. On the wall a massive colour photograph of the Elias space shuttle Unity, a former Soviet Buran class orbiter. It had flown twice, over a year ago, seemingly just to put an Elias citizen in space and The President's much publicised ambitions to send men to Mars, develop space stations etc had grinded to a halt. The shuttle now sat in a hangar covered in plastic sheeting.

Bergstein had to fight tooth and nail for very penny of funding for research, currently the only areas that seemed to be doing well was satellites, military satellites. From the Seaborne launch rig off the coast of Brunei they had launchings about once a month, and had so far put the 'Hound Dog' constellation of photo recon birds into orbit, a constellation of 'Wizard' comms sats and now the space based synthetic aperture radar. Due to the nature of the product, i.e classified no one knew of the failures or even the succeses.
With the MoD's thirst to put shiny electronic things in orbits to help blow things up more or less satisfied, their budget for next year was not looking hopeful, and if anything the expertise of his staff and more importantly him would probably be tasked with designing new ballistic missiles.

He picked up the phone, "Hamid, get me The Roycelandian Space Agency." He was going to find out if they were recruiting...

Enquries to the Roycelandian Space Agency confirm that they're always on the lookout for suitably qualified people to help with their space programme.

In the mid-60s, Roycelandia managed to launch a manned capsule, do a couple of orbits round the planet, then get the astronaut back to earth in one piece. It was a major source of National Pride at the time, but then the difficulties in Lusaka started, and then the Hippies started protesting the Roycelandian Presence in Africa anyway, and the whole space programme was mothballed.

Fast forward 40 years, and with the Lusakan economy in ruins and Roycelandia having enough money to swim in lying around, His Majesty decreed that the Space Programme should be re-started to impress the hell out of Roycelandia's neighbours.

As it stands, once the ROYCESTAR IX Satellite is sucessfully launched, construction will begin on the Space Shuttle Starlight. In fact, the unofficial word is that there might be room on the shuttle for one or two Allied "Technical Observers", if the right people are interested...