Tarsus

Tarsus (Tarsus Electronics) is a human spacecraft component manufacturer that produces jump modules, quantum drives, and scanners. Founded by a pair of mechanics who built an affordable module to convert a quantum drive into a jump drive, Tarsus grew into one of the principal producers of dependable jump drives in the United Empire of Earth (UEE) and later expanded into quantum drives and scanners.

History

Tara Dilione and Alfonsus Carbrino met while working as mechanics at a refueling station near the Croshaw-Sol jump point, where they discovered a shared interest in space exploration. While inspecting a malfunctioning RSI jump drive, they realized that the drive was technologically identical to the quantum drives already fitted to ordinary ships, and that it should therefore be possible to convert a standard quantum drive into a jump-capable one. After 27 months of work, they designed a separate module that performed the conversion, and they named the device the "Tarsus" after a combination of their first names. They tested it successfully on November 7th, 2292.

Word of the module spread quickly through the community of amateur explorers who called themselves Jumpers, and the pair put their own exploration plans on hold to build modules for fellow Jumpers. Selma Tontil, a Jumper and a lawyer by trade, advised them to patent the design, and with her help the Tarsus corporation was established. Because the module let ship owners upgrade their existing quantum drives at a fraction of the cost of an RSI jump drive, demand surged once word spread beyond the Jumper community. RSI attempted to sue the new company, but Tontil successfully defended its right to modify the drives, and RSI began offering its own jump module roughly six months later.

Tara and Alfon eventually left to explore the stars, but the company continued under CEO Tontil, who bought out the pair's controlling shares. Under her leadership, Tarsus moved from producing only jump modules to also producing a popular line of quantum drives. Over the centuries Tarsus has continued to develop and grow, and although its products are widely used, the Jumper mentality remains close to its core. When the company's testing division grew frustrated with off-the-shelf scanning devices and nav computers, it developed its own to better measure how its jump drives performed. The in-house versions became popular with the staff who installed them on their personal ships, and then with fellow exploring enthusiasts. Before long, Tarsus became as well known for its equipment for finding jump points as for its equipment for navigating through them.

As much as Nick Croshaw is credited with expanding Humanity's reach, that expansion would not have been as rapid or as vast without Tara Dilione, Alfonsus Carbrino, and their homegrown Tarsus module. As Alfon put it, "The pieces had all been right there thanks to the hard work of so many others. Tara and I just happened to be the lucky ones who put it all together."

Trivia

• Tarsus is named after the Tarsus light freighter from Privateer, one of Chris Roberts' games.

Source: StarCitizen.tools. Source content is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.