[big]Mainstay: Ringlab Beta[/big]
The construction of Ringlab Beta was the first serious full-scale attempt by colonists at understanding the ways of the alien planet, and assimilating their terraforming efforts to them. It was the vision of an idealistic few who believed that the enigma of weather systems and their seemingly unpredictable behavior could be solved once and for all.
The Kapstan-Oliver-Grofman collective presented an impressive piece of research concluding that instructed data selection, a surprisingly simple set of mathematics, and a lab full of modified quantum computers would do the trick. If you count long enough you will eventually have counted the universe. And if you only have to count a single planet, you don’t have to count nearly as long.
Soon almost everybody shared in the vision of the three weathermen, and for a while a sort of collective euphoria gripped the colonists. Today the project would probably have been written off as plain madness, but back then people still believed that the genius of simplicity could save the day. Or, at least, that was what they wanted to believe.
Construction began around L940, and lasted almost five years. The first attempt was a rushed performance suspended high above the Canyon floor, and accessible from the interim gangway connecting the radlocks to LabSpace and the later Hatchery. However, it had to be abandoned when it was discovered that frequent earth tremors and sudden changes in temperature had a negative influence on hardware performance.
Efforts were then moved back to LabSpace where it was decided to model the weather station on the existing Ringlab Alpha. Then followed the big argument about the Loading Bay lift (see The Shaft), and when finally it was settled, it turned out that existing quantum computers could not be linked in the way proposed by the Kapstan-Oliver-Grofman thesis. New research had to be made, and new blueprints had to be thought out.
The only reasonable explanation that the project was not given up midway is that too many resources and too much faith had already gone into it. Defeat was no longer an option, and even though the original roadmap had long since been scrapped work continued unabated. The vision would carry them through.
Ringlab Beta was the single most resource expensive and time-consuming construction project ever undertaken at the time. And in the end, it turned out to be nothing but a somewhat inferior copy of Ringlab Alpha. Hardpoint performance has never reached the level of its predecessor, and the place is still subject to frequent and unexplainable flaws.
The quantum computational dream was never properly realized. The calculation network could only be extended over a small corner of the lab, and soon other pieces of hardware started moving in.
Still, it was a triumphant moment when project lead Grofman flipped the switch, and set the new Ringlab a-humming and a-buzzing. In the first couple of months everybody faithfully waited for the scientific revelation to come. And when the first successful weather simulations were produced people spoke of a breakthrough even though the simulations could easily have been done with existing equipment from five years before.
In time it became clear that nothing worthwhile would come of the Kapstan-Oliver-Grofman setup. However, a few enthusiasts kept the dream alive, even after the originators had abandoned it. Today they stand accused of having contributed to the worsening of the overall climate on Da Vinci.
Faulty decisions based on faulty computations led to questionable terraforming efforts the full effect of which the colony may not have experienced yet. Some even link the project to the allegedly intentional introduction of black algae which resulted in the Dambuster Event in L960, and the seasonal flash floods continuing to this day.
In a sense, the laborious and costly construction of Ringlab Beta was the first major let-down after the first hundred were released into the tower. The idealism and self-confidence of the colonists were shaken, and it became obvious that neither man nor machine were free of fault. Never again would the visions of a few lead so many so blindly.
