Pieter ter Houck

b. 2232 CE d. 2396 CE; Pieter ter Houck, Chief Executive Officer, ExMShell (2277 - 2350 CE), Chairman, Charter Convention Executive Board (2281 - 2320 CE). The Charter was signed in a political environment that was fraught with discord among the states of the United Nations and a weak Executive Branch headed by President Jimmy Wagoner. Colonial expansion was in its infancy with major settlements on the Moon, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Claims had been staked on many of the Earth-crossing asteroids and the largest of the trans-Martian asteroids, and the UN courts were clogged with cases of claim jumping, murder and assorted other felonies.

Delegates from the southern states – lead by India and Australia – were pressing the administration for the declaration of martial law in all colonies. Observers from the Moon and Mars colonies were powerless to enter into the argument because the colonies had no representation to the General Assembly. Delegates were being lobbied heavily by the multi-national corporations with colonial interests.

ter Houck was frustrated by General Assembly impasse and the incompetence of the UN bureaucrats in Amundsen-Scott, and vowed to put an end to the impasse. ExMShell had invested heavily in the exploitation of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere for Helium-3, the isotope of helium needed for fast fusion. He enlisted the commitments of the CEOs of the other fifty largest multi-national corporations with similar colonial interests to boycott the United Nations. This group became the Committee of Fifty-one and, ultimately, the Executive Board of the Charter Convention.