Houdini:Shedding the Onion

Anyone want to speculate on how long Manpower can last in light of recent events on Mesa and that they no longer appear to have support from the MAlignment?

Phalanx wrote:Anyone want to speculate on how long Manpower can last in light of recent events on Mesa and that they no longer appear to have support from the MAlignment?

About as long as it's going to take for Mike Henke to seize the orbitals at Mesa?

That will kill the head sure and certain, the rest of the body will follow as fast as Torch/BSC/Audubon Ballroom can manage it.

Phalanx wrote:Anyone want to speculate on how long Manpower can last in light of recent events on Mesa and that they no longer appear to have support from the MAlignment?

There are basically two questions here, neither of which seems to have anything to do with the title of the thread. I kind of agree with Hutch that Manpower, off of Mesa, will last about as long as it takes for the Ballroom to clean it out. I don't see either Torch or Manticore having a whole lot to do with it except in their areas of operation, however. Getting rid of Manpower is a high priority on Torch, but Torch has a few frigates, plus some heavier ships that they can't support yet. It's a very low priority for Manticore and Haven, which means it'll be pursued as long as there are targets of opportunity. Operations like Honor pulled off in Let's Dance will be officially blessed, but I don't see it going much beyond that.

On Mesa is a different question. IIRC, 50 or 60% of the population is genetic slaves, and the overwhelming majority would have no idea what to do once they were liberated. I'm looking forward to how RFC has Mike handle that mess. As far as I'm concerned, simply waving the magic wand and saying "you're free now, go do what you want," and ignoring the resulting stew is going to have about as much chance of working as the same policy did in the aftermath of the American Civil War, on top of which is that a lot of them are rather specialized genetic lines that weren't designed with the idea of making any kind of reasonable decisions in civic situations.

One interesting issue here, that applies to the seccies as well, is that Mesa's planetary income is going to nosedive because of income from the Transstellars being cut off, while about 70% of the population is going to be expecting a bigger slice of the pie.

JohnRoth wrote:One interesting issue here, that applies to the seccies as well, is that Mesa's planetary income is going to nosedive because of income from the Transstellars being cut off, while about 70% of the population is going to be expecting a bigger slice of the pie.

If only Torch had had more time to get its potentially lucrative pharmaceutical industry up to speed. We could have had the irony of Torch providing financial aid to Mesa! Just the offer of aid would probably cause apoplectic coronaries in Manpower's management.