Stanev Center for Aerospace Research

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## Membership

### Members

Ember Storm
Emma Blake
Ellen Maccoby
Ibram Blacke
Malcolm Jimenez
Nektaria Spyros
Susan Renard

The most influential Construct in New York, the Stanev Center, often called the SCAR (and whose leadership doesn't understand why they have occasional trouble with werewolves but the other Constructs don't) is a joint Iteration X/Void Engineer project. It has a reputation for having been a big proponent of the Pogrom, but things seem to have cooled off over the years.

## History

Founded in 1917 by immigrant scientist Luka Stanev out of an old apartment building standing on the current site of the Construct, the Stanev Center for Aerospace Research was originally just an unnamed engineering studio where Stanev worked on designs for the US Air Force during the first World War. With the help of Dave Kravitz, an engineer who built prototypes Stanev designed, they bought the building in the early 1920s, expanding through it.

Stanev lead the Void Engineers at the new Construct and Kravitz lead the Iterators, and the place has always been built on the cooperation between these two Conventions. When Stanev expanded the building downward and found the Manhattan Reactor, it was Kravitz who figured out how to contain it. Whenever there were difficulties within the Union, the SCAR was brought up as a shining example of inter-Convention collaboration. Even the Syndicate could find little to object to in their large budgets, because the SCAR produced more than it consumed for the Union, thanks to their Reactor, military contracts, and the close friendship between the two leaders.

The windfall from a contract to build spy planes for the Cold War let them rebuild the place in the 1950s, expanding to almost take up a whole city block and hiring Frank Gehry to do the design. Stanev and Kravitz had both retired, and their optimism and passion for science had been replaced in the leadership with hard-nosed pragmatism that was more influecned by the military than merely working for it. The place turned from a skunkworks to a modern R&D laboratory at this time, and was chosen to be one of the Earthside bases for a flagship Horizon Construct: MECHA.

It was renamed "the Manhattan Outpost of MECHA" for all internal Union documents for the next half-century, only reasserting its own identity after the Dimensional Anomaly. This period turned out to be devastating, as neither additional prestige materialized (they were seen as subordinate to a bigger project) nor did the increase in funding remain permanent (most was absorbed my MECHA and then disappeared with it).

The Dimensional Anomaly ended up being a godsend for the SCAR as an independent Construct, and it almost immediately began to focus on aerospace research again, and has enjoyed the new era of private space flight that has begun. However, Comptroller John Robertson has been holding this movement back, wanting to re-establish MECHA, where he had been primarily assigned. He used the weapons that had been stored at the Manhattan Outpost to brutally pursue the Pogrom until he was forced by lack of resources and political will to agree to the Ceasefire. Now, he's grudgingly allowing more R&D and an increased Void Engineer presence, and buying time until he can persuade the other local Constructs that war should be back on the table.