User:Murgh/Structural Reform Act

Overview

The "Structural Reform Act"' was ratified by GalCop High Command exactly one standard cycle after the Great Standardization. If fundamentally altered the construction paradigms of all space-bound structures from the moment of its implementation.

Its announcement was unveiled with carefully calculated timing. As the outrage of the galactic populace over the Standardization began to gather momentum, this second controversy was designed to divert attention from the first, while providing massive financial incentives for planetary economies and giants of industry to fall in line. Conceived entirely by the GalCop Central Mainframe (D.E.E.M.), the reforms were justified by vast projected gains in profits and logistical efficiency, but the consequences for the aesthetics of space travel cannot be overstated.

The incentives

Volumetric Efficiency Standards

The Structural Reform Act did not frame the change as an intervention in industrial design but as an "Economic Liberation". It introduced the Volumetric Efficiency Standard (VES), based on the "Kepler Conjecture", which promised significant profit to those who complied, with commensurate rewards for early adopters.

The industries connected to construction, transportation and logistics in space were presented with a new reality:

• The Argument: A curved hull filled with square cargo crates creates "Dead Volume", a certified average mathematical waste of 26% of the internal capacity of a ship or station. GalCop assessed that that this inefficiency would no longer be sustainable.
• The Promise: By altering all structural design principles to Planar Hulls, flat-sided space craft constructed of "elementary polyhedra" matching the cargo grid, all logistics industry would reclaim its 26% "lost revenue".
• The Boom: To the industrial giants, this was not tyranny but an invitation to a gold rush. Planetary economies that retooled their shipyards to produce "low-poly" plating stood to make profits in the trillions. The leadership of every major space construction conglomerate lobbied aggressively for the Act.

The ultimatum

The Act delivered a brutal ultimatum to the existing fleet: "Modify to Compliance or Decommission". Private ship owners across GalCop-controlled space were given a brief 5-cycle "grace period" to bring their vessels into geometric compliance.

An unprecedented transitional period followed, termed by the mechanics of the time as "The Great Shave". Innumerable space craft, from grandiose luxury liners to humble traders, queued at drydocks for the mandatory restructuring. Their undulating curves were torched off and replaced with crude, angular slab-plating.

• Obsolescence: Hulls determined to be beyond regulation alteration were declared "Geometrically Obsolete".

• The Cost: Owners who refused or could not afford the "faceting" were denied docking permits, taxed into oblivion, and eventually scrapped for their metal.

The Reptilian Registry

To signal this shift, the Act stipulated that the new fleet, whether reclaimed and enhanced or newly constructed, must bear the nomenclature of lawfully compliant space craft, demonstrated by adopting the "Reptilian Naming Scheme".

The symbolism was crude but effective: a reptile is an organism whose exterior is composed of scales (flat plates). A snake a flexible tube made of rigid polygons. Consequently, the GalCop Craft Registration Deptartment would only accept name applications that could justify thematic relevance in order to be certified "space legal".

Case study: The Starboat

The transition is best illustrated by the efforts of Marine Trench Co. for whom the continued operation of their submarine-to-space craft, the Fulmar, was critical. Originally a streamlined vessel with compound curves for aquatic hydrodynamics, the Fulmar was flagged as non-compliant.

A desperate solution was found by "facetting" the hull using only 10 massive lightweight alloy plates, resulting in a form bearing only a vague resemblance to its former fluid shape. To pass the registry, the bird name was abandoned for a new anguilliform name, the "Moray". The GalCop Bureau of Clarification would later emphasize that the acceptance of this name application illustrated the "munificence" of the arbitration panel.

Galactic Market Network

Before the Reform, trade between systems was erratic in comparison to what it soon became. When DEEM introduced the Galactic Market Network (GMN), a dimension of security and predictability was added to space trade that had not existed before. With the "Trade Route incentive", a system that presented a VES-compliant orbital trade station, initially the efficiency-optimized Coriolis station, but eventually also the Dodo and Ico stations, would be granted GMN connectivity and see its economy soon flourish.

The Incentive proved hyper-lucrative to those that charged forth within GalCop's regulations. As GalCop franchisees, local system governments that completed the construction of a regulation station were presented with low cost access to a GalCop Viper fleet, and would represent GalCop operations in return for complete intake of commodity market tariffs and orbital trading post profits.