Running the largest shipping and logistics network in the world OMTC prides itself on being able to get anything anywhere on time. They’ve become practiced in designing and building everything from cargo ships to hard hats, wherever the existing solutions don’t provide the exacting efficiencies and features they demand. Many of these ventures go on to become successful products in their own right, and none more so than their Supply Chain Management software which has become the default worldwide. Ever since 1858 when they bought the largest ship in the world, the company has been enamoured with the efficiencies of scale; giving very little time to any venture or innovation that doesn’t have the potential to grow into something deserving of the company name.
Seeing the success of Beacon I, OMTC was convinced that the Foundation Society had picked the wrong direction to effectively expand into space. Alongside Condor they presented a plan to accelerate capabilities in space, a key component of which was the adoption of ‘Cargo Accommodation Standard Space Shipping Containers’ (CASSSCs). Made from lunar steel or aluminum and removing the need for individualised cargo fixturing systems, CASSSCs delivered 90% of the structural components for Beacon II. Having proved the design, CASSSCs were adopted by other companies, marking the transition point between small scale and large scale operations in space.
To avoid the menagerie of modules that constituted Beacon I, OMTC designed the structure of Beacon II differently. By taking the method they’d first used to emergency build the Forest class of destroyers during WW2, they refashioned the structure to use a mix of large pre-fabricated components and supplied finishing kits once workers could be on-board. This meant that a large number of parts could be fabricated simultaneously, better saturating the limited space-based facilities and labour to deliver the project on time: the cost of this was that design flexibility was lost across all components, as incremental adjustments would be impossible. For the construction of Beacon II OMTC lobbied for the development of resource extraction capabilities on the moon to make the project viable. When concerns were raised about the quality and types of alloys that could be made in these early facilities, OMTC pointed to the cost of launching anything better from Earth for what they considered to be marginal gains in performance. Some would go on to call Beacon II ‘The Flying Brick’ in mockery of its bulky structure, but OMTC took it as a point of pride that anything they made could be compared to something so impactful.
This webpage refers to a fictional company which is part of the UK Space Design Competition. No information presented here or implied herefrom should be regarded as factual. Any similarities with real events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.