Though I’d tried, it wasn’t easy to get information on my new employer. ICORS – Institute for Coordinated Research in Space – was set up to exploit the propulsion breakthrough and accelerate progress. Rather than a half-dozen agencies hatching broadly similar plans, a single, unified programme could streamline resources and bypass the usual governmental checks and restraints, and in theory get missions off the ground much quicker. There were three main bases – California, Beijing, Moscow – and though it sounded unlikely, press releases insisted they were in step with one another, working to
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