In the year of 2091, Irene Mabky and Eric Hesk met for the first time. Both dreamt of seeing humanity traverse the stars with ease and exploring the cosmos. After successfully developing FTL technology and marrying by the year of 2094, they sought to finally realize this dream. At the start of the year 2100, they launched their new company that would begin designing new spacecraft fitted with their newly designed FTL technologies, making their spacecraft the only one’s capable of visiting other stars in mere months. The name of this new company would be, Hesk Industries. It would still be years before other companies and governments would catch up with them and begin producing their own FTL products.
This would become a major selling point for consumers, “If you want the best, buy Hesk.”
Irene and Eric realized that if they truly wanted the best for humanity, they shouldn’t make it too difficult for their product to make an impact on human society. In response to this, they instructed their engineers to design a “tugboat” of sorts. This spacecraft would act as the sole provider of the means to transport multiple other spacecraft with it as it traversed interstellar space. Their FTL technology bends and warps space around the spacecraft in order to move faster than light. So the spacecraft generates a large field around itself that does just that. This new “tugboat” would generate a space bending field large enough for multiple other spacecraft to fit inside along with it. This means that only one FTL capable spacecraft is necessary for a small fleet. This became a viable option for consumers since this new technology wasn’t so wide spread at the time, making it accessible for more people to use efficiently.
By the year 2106, tugboats, as they’ve been popularly known as, declined in demand as FTL technology became more common throughout the solar system. Hesk Industries had also began to shutdown their production of these spacecraft, and transitioned into mostly just selling the technology modules necessary to make your spacecraft capable of FTL travel. Hesk Industries wasn’t done yet, Erik and Irene still dreamed of sending humans to other stars, and they’ve been working on this dream since the formation of their new company.
During the year of 2110, Hesk Industries announced a partnership with the UNSA, the United Nations Space Association. This partnership would yield the first ever voyage to another star system, but of course it would include a special touch from Irene and Erik. Every spacecraft a part of this new fleet, would indeed be capable of FTL travel, but not at the required speeds to reach their destination with the desired efficiency. No, they wanted to go even faster than before while also bringing every ship up to this new speed without installing new tech. So, they brought back the tugboat concept, except on a much larger scale. Together with the help of their engineers, designed a new spectacle. They called it, the UNSA Irene. It was the largest space station ever built, fitted with the largest FTL module ever designed; capable of generating a massive warp field that hundreds of ships could fit inside, and it was the fastest man made object ever designed.
The concept behind this new space station was to have one home base for all the ships involved. A home base that could take the entire fleet with it, to wherever their destination may be. When the fleet would arrive, the Irene would remain stationary while the fleet disperses and explores the star system as they too were FTL capable, just not at the same efficiency as the Irene. Once the star system had been properly studied and explored, the fleet would return to the Irene which would bring them back to our solar system.
During the year of 2120, the UNSA launched the first ever manned mission to another star system, and Irene and Erik Hesk fulfilled their lifelong dream.
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