VP (Ops) Torus is to undertake a tour of major New Sparta bases from Proxima Centauri to Saeou over the next 4 weeks. This is said to be a "morale boosting and fact finding" tour but in reality is seen as the first step in Torus' election campaign to replace her adopted father Windscorpion as NS President at the end of the year.
Torus has called on all NS personnel to be "honest" with how NS is run and to present suggestions for improvements.
The Dinos are going to send a ship to investigate space beyond the DTA near Apassara after the reported attack of a Repican merchant ship by the Terrasaurs. Although the attack took place some lightyears away from Apassara a Terrasaur ship was detected here last month.
The Dinos are also preparing to send a detachment of ships and troops to Voth to reinforce the DTA forces in the area.
While many warships are now equipped with worm drive and the much greater speeds facilitated, civilian ships such as spaceliners and transports are still stuck with traditional hyperspace drive and most in the 400-500c speed band. New Sparta has started to explore producing a civil version of the Pentekonter Protector platform with Consolidated Spacecraft. These could be fitted with worm drive.
NS are looking at three possible versions, a 50 berth spaceliner, a luxury VIP craft and a 120 seat short range liner (though with worm drive such a type could make very popular journeys such as Proxima Centauri to Solaris in less than a day).
The ships could be built at a new jig owned by Consolidated Spacecraft and bring in a lot of valuable income to NS. It is said that several large spacelines have already shown an interest.
The new NS Head of Communications Hibiscus has given the New Year message to New Sparta.
"Fellow New Spartans, we now enter the new year of 2121. We will continue to enhance our defensive capabilities in the face of emerging and developing threats. Threats which come from a variety of sources and a variety of forms, in the last year especially the threats have been biological. NS' DNA Scanning Agency was one of our biggest achievements in 2120 and we will continue to facilitate a full spectrum grid of response vectors.
"I can exclusively announce that NS will add a fifth exercise to it's schedule this year. This will replace the floating exercises. This new exercise will concentrate on bio-warfare, terrorism and asymmetric threats. More details will be released later on. This will be just part of NS' continuing development and holistic self-actualisation.
"The new year will also end with a new president. As we know President Windscorpion will not stand again, the election for his replacement will take place in November. So there is much to look forward to this year. Happy new year."
