Tachibana Aerospace Industries

Tachibana Aerospace Industries is a large corporation based out of Osaka, Japan that came into prominence during the mid 2050s, and has remained a major player in the manufacturing & materials research industries ever since. Tachibana Industries has cooperated with the United Nations for much of its existence, and continues to do so to this day. Tachibana maintains mining facilities in the asteroid belts of the Sol system, Venus and Mercury, alongside various industrial complexes on Earth.

Early Years
Tachibana took its roots in a small, short-lived materials research firm under the name of JMRL, founded by Nakada Tachibana in his younger years towards the beginning of 2001. It focused around the development of materials to meet demand in the military and airline industries, primarily for stronger yet lighter materials. In September, 2002, JMRL became involved in research on a metallic structure known as a composite metal foam, the discovery of which gave JMRL a brief period of fame - although the early concept failed to gain much traction, primarily due to the expensive production process.

Nakada Tachibana tasked his employees with finding a way to lower the production costs of the material, and to make it more viable for usage in both the airline and military industries. This would lead to a series of innovations throughout the next few years, with the organisation managing to secure funding from several other firms & governments for this process. The company soon touched on aerospace research - primarily in fuel and propulsion solutions - which became a major player in JMRL's rise to popularity from 2006 and onwards.

Rebranding & Age of Information
JMRL had begun to gain minor traction by then, and, as such, Nakada Tachibana opted to rebrand the organisation under Tachibana Aerospace Industries in 2007, primarily due to their progress in the production of aerospace technologies. Soon, Tachibana would drop out of military research altogether, focusing on the aviation industry to uphold the new company philosophy that had been introduced alongside the name. The next decade was spent furthering aviation & materials science, with metal foams becoming more and more commonplace in the commercial aviation industry due to Tachbiana's joint research with other organisations on the subject. Tachibana also helped to pioneer various advanced turbofan systems for usage in jet aircraft, which would also gain traction and be used on variants of various aircraft, such as the A320 and Boeing 737-600.

By 2042, Tachibana was well-known in eastern Asia, and was beginning to become known outside of the continent as well, with branches being established in Australia and the United States over the course of the next few years, in hopes of spreading the company's influence. This proved successful, with other products now becoming available to the transport industry in the US and Australia - which then later spread into Europe, and western Asia. However, Tachibana was still relatively unknown - its products had been taking the world by storm, yet few knew the name, and so various advertising campaigns were launched in the western world from 2044 to 2049. The Great Gulf War, however, proved catastrophic for Tachibana, annihilating its sales - and, as such, further research was put into other forms of propulsion, namely electric methods. This also drew Tachibana into the power development industry - becoming a direct rival of AXIOM, who was also trying to achieve the same thing.

Rise to Prominence
The next few years saw a race between the two companies, with Tachibana pushing into making existing fission systems more efficient, alongside chemical batteries - such as the Lithium-Tungsten design - but was soon beaten by AXIOM, which managed to take the world by storm with its fusion reactors, in turn preventing Tachibana from seizing as much of the energy market as they had once hoped to have done. However, Tachibana still found use for its newly developed technologies in the 2050s, with the colonisation of Mars in 2052 - the leadup of which had involved Tachibana, amongst other companies, developing new propulsion & rocket technologies. Tachibana's new and efficient ion thruster designs became extremely successful, being used in the second and third stages of the colonisation vessel. This, in turn, is what brought Tachibana to global prominence - with the next few years showing a boom in sales of various technologies, and the innovation department expanding rapidly. Branch offices were established in France, Austria, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Russia, and Canada over the course of the next 7 years, with new advertisement campaigns and further developments in material & propulsion research raking in millions more. It was a few days after the establishment of these new offices that Nakada Tachibana, the company's founder, passed away due to old age - leading to the young Takaki Tachibana, his son, taking over the corporation.

Soon, aluminium composite metal foam, a now-aged concept, had finally become cheap enough to mass produce with Tachibana's newest methods, designed in the years prior, resulting in Tachibana setting up its own factories to produce the material en masse. The newly available material would be used for newer commercial aircraft designs, with the patenting of its production method pulling in many more millions for Tachibana - which then opened its own branch factories, starting off by manufacturing its own products for later sale, and soon progressing into automated manufacturing for other corporations. However, this was not enough, as Tachibana fell behind AXIOM, which paved its way to becoming a megacorporation - while Tachibana progressed slowly, albeit surely. Despite this, Tachibana managed to move into the spacecraft industry even further, developing upon its previous ion thruster design. The organization then used the profit from this endeavour to establish mining posts around sections of the asteroid belt, followed by platforms over Venus, and even geothermal & industrial complexes on Mercury's surface.

Minerals were soon being ferried in from Tachibana's mining facilities all across the Sol system, being sold on Mars and Earth for amazing profits - and also used to manufacture many of Tachibana's products. With Martian Dynamics' rise, Tachibana began a cooperation initiative with the to-be megacorporation, who would help with staffing their automated factories with various robotic units for a cheap cost - also lowering labour costs as, soon, the factories entirely phased out humans, who were now only in administrative and maintenance-based positions within the manufacturing department.

Recent Years
Towads the 2070s and 2080s, Tachibana slowly progressed back into the arms development & manufacturing industries, with work being done to produce the B-series weapons - starting off with the B1, followed by the B2 PASR in 2094, the B3 PDER in 2099, and B4 PER in 2101. Three decades of research were also put into the K-series armours, starting off as commercial exoskeletons, and progressing into military exosuits with the K5, and later stealth suits with the K7 ERSP - which was completed in 2097. As of 2111, Tachibana has been cooperating with the UNSDC in all sectors, providing security, engineering and scientific staff to assist them with research - primarily in xenobiology, but also minorly in the materials development sector.

Materials
Tachibana's research over the decades has led to many products being produced, with some of these being new materials, patented by Tachibana for sale to consumers & other corporations alike. These included new, denser forms of Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene & Dyneema, as well as various forms of composite metal foams - although the most commonly produced version was aluminium metal foam, which would also be used in the K-series armours as a strong yet lightweight material.

Propulsion Systems
Alongside the materials research, Tachibana has pumped out some propulsion systems as well, such as the 'Arigato' line of turbofan engines, 'Chiheizen' ion/xenon thruster system - originally used on the Mars colonisation spacecraft, and later versions on various commercial shuttlecraft - and 'Inparusu' ion thruster system, which would come to be used on various UNSDC vessels - including drones, rated spacecraft, and larger shuttlecraft. It remains the most common spacecraft thruster system to this day, for vessels of all shapes and sizes.

Energy Systems
Amongst Tachibana's research was various new forms of energy production/storage, such as developments to Fission reactors, newer fusion reactor designs (although not quite as effective as those produced by AXIOM), compact fusion cores - which allowed for up to 54 years of massive amounts of power - and the Lithium-Tungsten power cells, which became a widespread consumer power product, used as batteries in items ranging from radios, to toys, to suits of armour.

Weapons
Over the course of the later end of the 21st century, Tachibana made a return to the military industry, leading to a series of new designs being produced - including the B-series weapons, with the B1 rifle system, B2 Plasma-Assisted Service Rifle platform, B3 Plasma Directed Energy Rifle, and B4 Pulsed Energy Rifle - all of which are modular and easily modifiable weapon systems suited for a variety of tasks.

Armours
Alongside Tachibana's arms development projects in the later decades of the 21st century, the organization also produced the K-series armours - originally starting off as the K1, which was a versatile yet bulky industrial exoskeleton system, moving into the K2 - a miniaturised version of the previous one - followed by the K3, which integrated a protective body suit, and then the K4, which added CBRN compatability and further miniaturisation of the exoskeleton. The K5 was the first one to be directed towards military usage, with various tweaks to the exoskeleton making it more effective for field usage, as well as ballistic protection capabilities. The K6 further enhanced this by adding more modular armour plating that could be fitted with it, with the K7 entirely disregarding the exoskeleton and instead introducing an advanced stealth suite to the armour system. The K7.5 made attempts to integrate an exoskeleton to it, with the K8 design making improvements to the cloaking device to function more effectively, and also integrating a further developed version of the K6's exoskeleton to create a highly adaptable suit - although it has not become available for consumer purchase as of yet.

Product Permissions
All armour and weapon products require direct permission from either myself (Eike_Griebel) or the CEO (Calverdy) to be used, in which case you will be assigned a role in our discord to signify your permission to use said armour/weapon system/platform. Please keep in mind there are some documents for these products in this wiki, such as the one for the K7/K6 armours, as well as the B4, B3 and B2 weapons.

All explanations on how weapons function have their roots in real life science, though they may not be 100% accurate. Thank you for your consideration.