January 1st, 1963. Progress continues. We have established a second colony, this one on Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter's moons. All four of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter are semi-habitable and have the potential to be eventually terraformed up to class-0, although only Ganymede has mineral deposits worth exploiting. The environment is far harsher than Mars, though... each colonist requires three times as much life-support Infrastructure here on Ganymede as they would on Mars, and a greater percentage of each million colonists must work in life-support, leaving a smaller fraction to work in factories or mines. The Wheeler Corporation civilian company has been supplying so much Infrastructure to Mars lately that it is simpler and cheaper for the new Ganymede colony to buy its Infrastructure on Mars, rather than having it shipped out from Earth.
Our first three Jump Point Defense Fortresses will be ready in a few more months, with three more being delivered every seven months thereafter. That averages about one new defense installation every seventy days, or more than five per year. Meanwhile, work is pressing ahead on Missile armament, and on Power and Propulsion research; while our military shipyards continue to expand towards the tonnage required for laying down major warships.
Our industrial conversion efforts are also making good progress. More than half of our 1940's-technology Conventional Industry have now been converted to space-age equivalents... most importantly, we now have 1600 TN Construction Factories, which has raised our output from the original (1948) total of around 6,000 production, up to today's total of over 25,000 production. This huge increase in our industrial strength allows us, for example, to build a new research lab or naval shipyard in only one month instead of four. Whenever other concerns allow, we have been churning out new research labs and adding and expanding new shipyards, to support our intended Battle Fleet expansion. We now have 33 research labs (a 50% increase) with more building, and from our original total of a single 1,000 ton Naval yard with one slipway, we have expanded to a total of 9 yards and 23 slipways, ranging in size up to 12,000 tons (Naval) and 102,000 tons (Commercial).
