Kimber-Sonoshee Racing League

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Kimber-Sonoshee Racing League
KimberSonosheeIcon.png
"Stellar Slingshot" Logo
Interstellar Racing League
CEO: Bruni Avenir Takahashi
Operation
Region(s) of operation: Multi-system
Based in: Luna (Earth), Callisto (Jupiter), Dione (Saturn)
Colour(s):             
Historical information
Founded: 2800 (1205 years from present)
Founded by: Kimber Future Technologies, Sonoshee Media Group
[Source]

The Kimber-Sonoshee Racing League (KSRL) is a premier near-light stellar racing league and industry leader in starship motorsports. It is owned by the Évolués Avenir Group, the fourth largest company in governed space.

History[edit | edit source]

Text logo, based off the design of the logo of Kimber Future Technologies

Soon after the invention and spread of the Kimber Drive in 2796, Kimber Ltd. approached officials of the Sonoshee Media Group, a media conglomerate deeply entrenched in the VASIMR racing leagues held all over the Solar system. Kimber sought a platform to promote their drive to investors but also needed skilled test pilots to further develop them. Controlled testing proved insufficient, as AIs would not violate the engines safety limiters and Kimber's own pilots proved incapable of handling the drives' output. Thus, the company proposed a deal to Sonoshee: the exclusive rights to a new near-FTL racing league in exchange for the contract to skilled pilots and the opportunity to showcase the drive to potential customers and investors.

Eager to tap into this completely new market, Sonoshee agreed. Finding test pilots proved to be the opposite of a problem, as most candidates drawn from their VASIMR leagues were more than eager to pilot one of the new Kimber drives. Within less than a year, Sonoshee had put together a course and a team of pilots. While technically impressive however, the first "Kimber" league proved a commercial failure. The wider audience proved disinterested in a race that was considered “uneventful” compared to traditional sub-light races.

Kimber however was able to garner a large amount of investors, though with the original agreement seeing Sonoshee sole receiver of commercial revenue, the difference in perceived success proved straining for the corporate alliance. Long negotiations in 2800 eventually lead to the founding of "Kimber Sonoshee Ltd.", a shared child company solely overseeing the league, with its profits equally split between the parents.

Under the new label, the Kimber Sonoshee Racing League was refocused, and promoted its pilots as the bed of humanity's future colonization of the galaxy. Extensive marketing stylized its pilots as the heroes of this new age and their ever longer flights were presented as a fight "man against space" rather than "man against man". Still far from the popularity and prestige of sub-light racing, the League instead found a niche audience amongst the scientifically interested. Of course, its main purpose remained to draw in investors and further hone the Kimber drivesˋ performance.

During the next decades, the Kimber-Sonoshee Group's work massively advanced the Kimber Drives, their pilots continuously pushing the limits of the drives until they reached their peak with 99% Light Speed in 2856. By then, Kimber had cemented its position as the top dog in interstellar astronautics, a position it would continue to hold for a further 50 years. During these years, the league grew, though not as much as its owners would have hoped.

However, the records achieved by its pilots would garner those an incredible amount of adoration from the common masses and their commercial success through brand affiliation, sponsorship and advertisement deals in the new field of interstellar colonisation rivaled, and even outshined in some cases, the success of their VASIMR league counterparts.

By the early 31st millennium however, Kimber had significantly lost on its leading position, their legendary drives by now reverse-engineered by their competitors. In order to reduce expenses, they withdrew their involvement with the Sonoshee group, but allowed them to use their brand in exchange for monetary compensation. The name Kimber still carried a distinct amount of prestige after all. Ironically, Sonoshee opened the league to everyone including Kimber's rivals, transforming it from a testing ground into a platform for companies to showcase their newest drives and ships.

The roles of the pilots remained largely the same, and few cared whether they flew for science or commerce, the lure of operating the peak of ship technology overcoming possible moral quarrels, if these existed in the first place.

In 3716 the Sonoshee Media Group and Kimber-Sonoshee Racing League was fully bought out by the rising Évolués Avenir Group, seeing a much-needed surge in capital that saw the KSRL eventually return as the Solar System's premier racing league. In the acquisition, Sonoshee Media was rebranded as Uniqu Inc. after its successful social media platform of the same name.

Structure[edit | edit source]

In its current form, the Kimber-Sonoshee Racing League is consists of roughly a hundred different racing stalls, most of them directly sponsored and outfitted by renowned wharfs or astronautic companies. While other near-FTL leagues exist, the KSRL remains the most prestigious one, a fact which its owners exploit through ludicrous entry fees and widespread broadcasting.

A stall can field any number of pilots and ships, though only one is allowed to enter each individual race. Prizes vary from race to race, though they typically involve huge monetary payments with the occasional bonus offered by an outside company.

Racing Standards[edit | edit source]

The early races were little more than speed contests, geared to drive the engines to their limits. Members of the respective branches, engineers from Kimber and media experts from Sonoshee frequently clashed, with the former seeing no use in spectacle and the latter trying to turn the races into an event marketable to the masses. Eventually, a middle ground was found and instead of the races themselves, their pilots were built up and presented as pioneers of science and heroes of the stellar frontier.

In its current iteration, pilots receive only minimal AI assistance during the actual race, mainly managing the drives' countless subsystems. Navigation and steering is entirely left up to the pilots themselves, who are extensively trained, often from a young age on, to hone their reflexes to the maximum. Outfitted with a neural integration module, they are put into tanks of travel gel during the flight.

As the difference in factual speed between ships is marginal, the SR League is much more a test of route planning, navigation and the ability to precise slingshot one's ships than it is a question of pure speed.

Routes[edit | edit source]

  • Kimber-Sonoshee Jovian Slingshot: A VASIMR challenge to slingshot around all 92 of Jupiter's moons from the innermost to the outermost in the quickest time.
  • Kimber-Sonoshee Saturnian Ring Circuit: A high paced VASIMR circuit around the Huygens Gap between the A and B rings of Saturn, within the Cassini Division. Pilots are pitted directly against one and other and must be careful not to stray from the Huygens Gap lest they be shredded by the debris of the rings.
  • Kimber-Sonoshee Solar Cup: The premier VASIMR racing event staged from Mercury to Neptune remains the most watched televised event throughout the Solar System, with champions immortalised to the masses. Hosted annually, it attracts the greatest number of domestic competitors.
  • Kimber-Sonoshee Centauri Circuit: The first extra-solar race of humanity, it takes the pilots 8 years to complete the course. First completed in 2825 by Livius Schwartz, some consider it the initiator of the following colonisation of Proxima Centauri b in 2863.
  • Kimber-Sonoshee Sirius Circuit: With a travel time of 17 years, the Sirius Circuit is the current era Marathon of interstellar travel. It is not uncommon for pilots and their ships to go missing, with only a few of those ever retrieved.