I've been following the UN thread & was suprised to find a couple of ideas
forming in my head.
For revenue generation, couldn't one of their roles be the equivalent of
the InterStellar Post Ofice? If you had a hull with - say - 4 seperate
FTL drives & a couple of thousand gigabytes of memory on board it could jump
between systems 4 times as fast as normal ships & then zap the electronic
messages at the UN base station's comms satellite for distribution. Opinions?
I liked the idea of the UN being responsible for Starship safety. Doesn't it
mean that all UN ships have to donate 1% of mass to a giant blue flashing
light ("excuse me sir, could you just pull over to the nearest orbit & then
breathe into this bag for me, please?"). Seriously
though, it would give them a hold over the major powers - imagine it;
the slavering IF tell the UN to take a long (naked) walk through a short
airlock & suddenly all the IF merchant ships in human space are having
"routine safety inspections" on every single planet they stop at... Might even
make the IF think twice. On second thoughts, maybe not...
As for population, wouldn't the first settlements in our solar system
almost certainly be multi-national & be turned over to the UN at some
point in the GX history - just a thought.
> I liked the idea of the UN being responsible for Starship safety.
Doesn't
> it mean that all UN ships have to donate 1% of mass to a giant blue
I agree, they'd have a hard time getting a warship to heave to. You'd do it to
merchant vessels, which would be the mainstay of interstellar trade (put the
armlock on their $$$, not headbut with their navies...). You wouldn't see a UN
vessel chasing down a merchant to heave to for inspections unless there was a
trade embargo or you suspected them of "deficiencies" or something. Rather,
there would be a series of treaties kind of like the present day international
maritime law, that would provide for standards for starship safety, etc. Each
operator of a starport would have the authority to impound a ship for
violations of the "space laws" such as improper licences or safety violations.
The authority would be
part of the treaties - but would be limited by a requirement that the
impounding authority be able to prove the violation. Maybe there's a UN
inspector at each starport who is there to provide oversight authority if a
violation is found (but who wouldn't actually inspect each and every ship). To
get a licence, you'd have to have your ship inspected by UN authorized
inspectors and pay a UN fee. Present day ships can be impounded by another
country if they are violating international safety standards, etc. - so
this idea is really just an extension of the ideas in existing international
law. Each country today has the responsibility of enforcing
international maritime law in its territorial waters - and there are UN
bodies for dispute resolution as needed.
I figure either warships would be exempt from having to get UN permits, or
they would have a different category. They'd still have to follow some kind of
basic rules, or a starport could refuse to let them dock, refuel them, etc.