History of the Belief In A Lower Power

Belief In A Lower Power is a very old spacecraft with an intriguing history, having been passed down through many owners and species.

It began its life under development by the United Earth Space Program in the year 2450, it was a state-of-the-art ship at the time, employing the first warp drive on a functional crewed spacecraft. It was given the name Hermes, and had the sister ships Aphrodite, Ares, and Zeus. Each starship was identical except for mission plan and their compliment of scientific instruments. Hermes would make flybys of as many planetary systems as it could, collecting data to pave the way for further expeditions. Aphrodite and Ares had similar missions, that of making detailed studies of solid planets. However, Aphrodite's mission was one of mapping and cartography from orbit, and robotic exploration. As such, Aphrodite's probes were sent to particularly dangerous locations. Ares, meanwhile, was a crewed exploration ship that would send robotic and manned landers to various planets, collect samples, and return them to Earth. Finally, Zeus would explore gas giants and their moons, both with robotic lander probes and from orbit.

Each ship was intended to stay in service for 70 years during which time they would return to Earth three times for refits, repairs, and crew changes. However, no ship lasted the whole 70 year mission. Zeus was destroyed during year 50 after a miscalculated trajectory caused it to fall into a gas giant. Ares suffered heavy damage from a flyby of a ring system around a Superearth during year 30, and the Aphrodite had to rescue her crew. During Aphrodite's second third of its mission, it had been damaged so much that it was cheaper to build a new ship than repair the burnt out, bodged together systems.

Hermes made the true, unrecorded first contact during year 66 with the Langrelians as they were under attack by a rogue Traddin starship. Mistaking Hermes for another Traddin starship, the Langrelians fired a missile at it, damaging the crew module and killing the crew. The Langrelians later recovered the Hermes from orbit and attempted to repair its systems. It was at this point that its biggest rebuild occurred, and the ship was given the name "Zykof," the name of a great explorer in Langrel history.

The Langrelians were at that time an incredibly low-tech society, space travel afforded by their small planet and surprisingly advanced metallurgy. Most of the electrical systems were torn out and replaced with low-voltage and mechanical counterparts, powered by a steam boiler that would stay with the ship for the rest of its life. The only system they didn't tear out was the mostly undamaged high-energy fusion reactor used for the warp drive. The crew module was replaced with a lower-tech replacement that nevertheless largely kept the same deck plan, albeit modified for the snake-like langrelian body. The Langrelians used the ship to set up a colony on their nearest star system, ferrying back supplies, materials, people, and messages. But the Langrelians didn't know how to fix the ship as some critical, irreplaceable components began to wear down, such as the warp drive and the fusion reactor. These components were disassembled and an attempt was made to reverse-engineer them, but the ship was far too complicated.

The ship was abandoned for 30 years in orbit around the Langrel sun until a terrestrial salvage company found the hulk and sold it to a Traddin bidder. The ship was used as a cargo ship to ferry ice and ore between the Traddel system asteroid belt. It passed through several different owners through the years and was at one point a dirt-cheap interplanetary passenger ship. Any record of it having been owned by Langrelians was forgotten, as the ship gained a new electrical system, a proper computer, and biped-compatible chairs.

During its time in the Traddel system it had the name "Jorlo's Speech," "Hammelsbak," and "Belief In A Higher Power"

At some point, a salvage company recovered the Ares, which was then sold to a Traddel company that owned the Belief. It didn't take long for the Traddel company to learn that Ares was not only an ancient human ship, but that it was also the same class of ship as the Belief In a Higher Power. The engineer for the company did some digging, and uncovered much of the ship's history through Langrel and Human archives--this was by now after the UPPPM was founded and a common interplanetary information network was set up. He then realized that warp drive components of the Ares and warp drive components of the Belief were compatible. After the ship was repaired using those components and made warp-worthy, it was sold to a human owner who learned of the ship's history and renamed it "Belief In a Lower Power. He made extensive modifications to the warp ring so that it would function as a superluminal drive using the Stocker metric.

After two hundred years, Belief In A Lower Power finally returned to Earth, where it was rented to a museum for three years and then sold to a group of enterprising ladies and gentlemen for the purposes of exploring space. The many-year-old Traddel computers were ridiculously out of date, but at least could have a human operating system replacement. It is the single oldest spacecraft known to be in active service.