Why did Mesa ever develop Congo

So we've all had fun beating a dead horse with trying to get to Darius via Torch, but I was wondering why the MA allowed Mesan companies to exploit Congo/Torch in the first place.

Per Textev, they found the chain from the far end (Felix), and then explored out and found Torch. So if they wanted to keep things on the DL, why did they start farming Congo for drugs?

The pharmaceuticals they were getting couldn't have been worth that much.

I would imagine a way to establish 'ownership' of the system to prevent anyone else from settling in and performing their own surveys.

Mesa wouldn't want to make things too obvious by putting in a huge amount of infrastructure, but creating a slave based drug factory would at least allow the overhead cost of being able to watch the wormhole terminus to break even.

Borealis wrote:I would imagine a way to establish 'ownership' of the system to prevent anyone else from settling in and performing their own surveys.

Mesa wouldn't want to make things too obvious by putting in a huge amount of infrastructure, but creating a slave based drug factory would at least allow the overhead cost of being able to watch the wormhole terminus to break even.

In retrospect they'd have almost certainly been better off leaving the system vacant and trusting that nobody stumbled across it in the next hundred years or so.

Remember, at the point they founded Verdent Vista they weren't expecting the military tech advances that came out of the Manticore Haven wars, and therefore were on a much more leisurely schedule for reaching their endgame. I'm sure that timeline played into their decision to grab it officially rather than trusting to obscurity.

Actually, I'm trying to remember. Do we know how long ago the planet was settled?

But if they'd known they might need their secret backdoor into the Haven Quadrant as soon as the 1920's PD they might have been more willing to trust to obscurity.

Jonathan_S wrote:But if they'd known they might need their secret backdoor into the Haven Quadrant as soon as the 1920's PD they might have been more willing to trust to obscurity.

Or arranged for a less notorious operation to hold it.

Jonathan_S wrote:In retrospect they'd have almost certainly been better off leaving the system vacant and trusting that nobody stumbled across it in the next hundred years or so.

I must respectfully disagree, friend Jonathan. We know Torch is relatively close to Erewhon and the Maya Sector, and you would think that ships from one of those areas, if for no other reason than it was a star that was in the 'normal' range for possible life-supporting planets, might have checked it out sooner or later. Maybe they would have detected the wormhole and maybe not--but I don't think the MAlign would take the chance--they tend to leave nothing to chance if they can help it...

So Manty advances (and MAlign re-scheduling) notwithstanding, I couldn't see the Alignment taking any risks with possibility of wormhole detection (at least until they got folks to guard the open ends for them).

Just my opinion, you may be right.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Borealis wrote:I would imagine a way to establish 'ownership' of the system to prevent anyone else from settling in and performing their own surveys.

Mesa wouldn't want to make things too obvious by putting in a huge amount of infrastructure, but creating a slave based drug factory would at least allow the overhead cost of being able to watch the wormhole terminus to break even.

In retrospect they'd have almost certainly been better off leaving the system vacant and trusting that nobody stumbled across it in the next hundred years or so.

Remember, at the point they founded Verdent Vista they weren't expecting the military tech advances that came out of the Manticore Haven wars, and therefore were on a much more leisurely schedule for reaching their endgame. I'm sure that timeline played into their decision to grab it officially rather than trusting to obscurity.

Actually, I'm trying to remember. Do we know how long ago the planet was settled?

But if they'd known they might need their secret backdoor into the Haven Quadrant as soon as the 1920's PD they might have been more willing to trust to obscurity.

There were three primary reasons for the decision to colonize Congo:

(1) The security of the wormhole had to be safeguarded at any cost, and that meant keeping anyone else from discovering and exploring it. Given the fact that it was in such close proximity to Erewhon, that it was a star system which was likely to have a life-bearing planet, that exploration would undoubtedly get around to checking that out as soon as Erewhon had the opportunity, and that it is now to check stars' gravitic profiles for possible wormholes, the only way to prevent someone else from exploring the wormhole was to secure ownership of the star system for themselves.

(2) Once they surveyed the system themselves, they recognized the pharmaceutical cornucopia that Congo/Verdant Vista represented. They also realized that anyone else who surveyed the system was likely to recognize the same thing, which meant that anyone else who surveyed the system (and somehow missed spotting the wormhole) was extremely likely to colonize/claim the planet because of its inherent value. By establishing their own claim to it ASAP, they preempted that outcome.

(3) By securing control of the system, they also secured the right to police and control all traffic into and out of the system. That put them in the strongest position to ensure (A) that no one had the opportunity to discover anything about wormholes that they weren't supposed to discover and (B) to manage the system's traffic control in a way which would preclude someone from "stumbling across" a Mesan Alignment ship transiting the wormhole.

They could have used a different front organization to seize control of the star system. They chose not to because every additional layer they worked through offered an additional opportunity for something to slip through the cracks and (more importantly) because Mesa was so repugnant to most of the galaxy and such a pariah that legitimate shipping was extremely unlikely to come anywhere near a Mesa-claimed star system. That was another major factor in controlling access to the wormhole junction and the possibility of a genuinely neutral observer seeing something he shouldn't see.

Now, it can certainly be argued that the decision worked out . . . poorly, but to be fair that was because of circumstances beyond the Alignment's control, including a rogue Havenite intelligence officer and a Manticoran aristocrat willing to kick over the traces and pursue a policy he could be pretty sure wasn't going to make his own government happy. And, of course, the turn the war took with the introduction of the MDM and (especially) Apollo hadn't happened yet when they made their decision about how to proceed in Verdant Vista's case.

runsforcelery wrote:There were three primary reasons for the decision to colonize Congo:

(1) The security of the wormhole had to be safeguarded at any cost, and that meant keeping anyone else from discovering and exploring it. Given the fact that it was in such close proximity to Erewhon, that it was a star system which was likely to have a life-bearing planet, that exploration would undoubtedly get around to checking that out as soon as Erewhon had the opportunity, and that it is now to check stars' gravitic profiles for possible wormholes, the only way to prevent someone else from exploring the wormhole was to secure ownership of the star system for themselves.

(2) Once they surveyed the system themselves, they recognized the pharmaceutical cornucopia that Congo/Verdant Vista represented. They also realized that anyone else who surveyed the system was likely to recognize the same thing, which meant that anyone else who surveyed the system (and somehow missed spotting the wormhole) was extremely likely to colonize/claim the planet because of its inherent value. By establishing their own claim to it ASAP, they preempted that outcome.

(3) By securing control of the system, they also secured the right to police and control all traffic into and out of the system. That put them in the strongest position to ensure (A) that no one had the opportunity to discover anything about wormholes that they weren't supposed to discover and (B) to manage the system's traffic control in a way which would preclude someone from "stumbling across" a Mesan Alignment ship transiting the wormhole.

They could have used a different front organization to seize control of the star system. They chose not to because every additional layer they worked through offered an additional opportunity for something to slip through the cracks and (more importantly) because Mesa was so repugnant to most of the galaxy and such a pariah that legitimate shipping was extremely unlikely to come anywhere near a Mesa-claimed star system. That was another major factor in controlling access to the wormhole junction and the possibility of a genuinely neutral observer seeing something he shouldn't see.

Now, it can certainly be argued that the decision worked out . . . poorly, but to be fair that was because of circumstances beyond the Alignment's control, including a rogue Havenite intelligence officer and a Manticoran aristocrat willing to kick over the traces and pursue a policy he could be pretty sure wasn't going to make his own government happy. And, of course, the turn the war took with the introduction of the MDM and (especially) Apollo hadn't happened yet when they made their decision about how to proceed in Verdant Vista's case.

Wasn't Manticore's assistance in vacating Mesa from Verdant Vista one of the points Erewhon insisted on when they joined the Manty Alliance before the 1st war? And Manticore's lack of fulfilling that promise just another reason Erewhon left that allaince between the wars?

I think that the Mesan alignment has demonstrated a profound appreciation for the strategic military value of wormholes. Given their anticipation of military operations, they would feel compelled to secure any wormhole that they were not confident would remain undiscovered. Something like the Linx terminus could be ignored, but Congo was simply to valuable.

Keep in mind that with Honorverse technology, they probably do not need to send a ship to every star system to discover habitable planets. We are detecting planets now using current technology. Given very long baseline interferometers in space with very large aperture (kilometers) telescopes perhaps using gravity technology lensing, (KZT and SMR no doubt understand the potential), they can image continents on planets not just the planets and collect enough IR spectrum data to KNOW what the climate is and spectroscopic data to know atmospheric composition and thus detect a viable biosphere.

If Mesa wants to secure a strategic wormhole terminus that is near habitable and valuable planet, they need to grab it ASAP.

namelessfly wrote:I think that the Mesan alignment has demonstrated a profound appreciation for the strategic military value of wormholes. Given their anticipation of military operations, they would feel compelled to secure any wormhole that they were not confident would remain undiscovered. Something like the Linx terminus could be ignored, but Congo was simply to valuable.

Keep in mind that with Honorverse technology, they probably do not need to send a ship to every star system to discover habitable planets. We are detecting planets now using current technology. Given very long baseline interferometers in space with very large aperture (kilometers) telescopes perhaps using gravity technology lensing, (KZT and SMR no doubt understand the potential), they can image continents on planets not just the planets and collect enough IR spectrum data to KNOW what the climate is and spectroscopic data to know atmospheric composition and thus detect a viable biosphere.

If Mesa wants to secure a strategic wormhole terminus that is near habitable and valuable planet, they need to grab it ASAP.

As far as we can tell, the Alliance is not trying to grab every wormhole it can. The Congo wormhole was special. They weren't nosing around the Erewhon neighborhood, sniffing out potential wormholes or habitable planets to claim. They discovered Congo by transiting through the wormhole they had secretly discovered. They grabbed Congo because the wormhole junction it was a part of was connected to the secret planet they were using to build a navy with new technology they didn't want anyone to know about. They could not afford for anyone to poke around that particular wormhole, and it was in an area that Erewhon was already interested in exploiting.

SWM wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I think that the Mesan alignment has demonstrated a profound appreciation for the strategic military value of wormholes. Given their anticipation of military operations, they would feel compelled to secure any wormhole that they were not confident would remain undiscovered. Something like the Linx terminus could be ignored, but Congo was simply to valuable.

Keep in mind that with Honorverse technology, they probably do not need to send a ship to every star system to discover habitable planets. We are detecting planets now using current technology. Given very long baseline interferometers in space with very large aperture (kilometers) telescopes perhaps using gravity technology lensing, (KZT and SMR no doubt understand the potential), they can image continents on planets not just the planets and collect enough IR spectrum data to KNOW what the climate is and spectroscopic data to know atmospheric composition and thus detect a viable biosphere.

If Mesa wants to secure a strategic wormhole terminus that is near habitable and valuable planet, they need to grab it ASAP.

As far as we can tell, the Alliance is not trying to grab every wormhole it can. The Congo wormhole was special. They weren't nosing around the Erewhon neighborhood, sniffing out potential wormholes or habitable planets to claim. They discovered Congo by transiting through the wormhole they had secretly discovered. They grabbed Congo because the wormhole junction it was a part of was connected to the secret planet they were using to build a navy with new technology they didn't want anyone to know about. They could not afford for anyone to poke around that particular wormhole, and it was in an area that Erewhon was already interested in exploiting.

I think you meant the MAlign, not the Alliance.

Otherwise, exactly.

The other issue is that The Twins are an anomaly, and, according to the conversation between the McBryde brothers in ToF, they'd "fully mined the military implications forty years ago." Which implies that there are things to learn from a close study that have military value other than its strategic back door to the Haven sector.