The Mo`ikeha Challenge In the public eye the Murray cup has always be at the forefront of sport racing with all the glitz, glamor and corporate sponsorship. To the average layman on the street you can mention the Murray Cup and they may start listing out their favorite teams and pilots; or at the very least acknowledge their familiarity for the sport. Less famous is the Mo`ikeha Challenge, a long distance endurance race starting from Terra and making a round trip through some of the more difficult to navigate systems in the UEE. The history of the race started off simply enough: Long haul transports carrying perishable consumer goods from Terra to outer colony worlds would attempt to shorten the travel time to their destination in order to collect early delivery bonuses. As these routes became more heavily traveled the ship captains would start making friendly wagers with one another on who can make the runs in the least amount of time. Sometimes the captains would plot newer and safer routes through uncontrolled space, though more often many would end up getting lost in unfamiliar sectors and have to backtrack. Normally this would have stayed within the shipping circles, until one of these captains end up unintentionally plotting a new jump point from Terra to Goss. This new jump point ended up shortening the normally indirect route between the two systems so it was now just a straight jump. The captain credited his luck on finding the point to an ancient Earth legend of a Tahitian navigator who sailed from Tahiti to Hawaiian in a canoe and from that the Mo'ikeha Challenge was born. Shortly after, hundreds of amateur and professional explorers started plotting out from Terra looking to find new jump points to other systems in order to claim the fame, notoriety and prize money. This came to a head when a ship flown by an inexperienced pilot ended up crashing into a heavy fuel transport at Terra's main jump point. After the UEE investigation it was concluded that because the pilot was too focused on plotting an untested course into his navigational system he did not see the transport in his path. The explosion resulted in the death of thousands and caused massive public out cry about the unregulated nature of the contest. The Mo'ikeha Challenge commission was formed after the tragedy to create a series of rules and regulations in order to prevent another such disaster. The Commission set the specific ship types that could be used, the required level of piloting experience, and turned the challenge from blind exploration to an organized race with set checkpoints and way-stations for ship refueling and emergency rescue. At first racing teams were hesitant to participate in the challenge, fearing that it would turn into another Murray Cup only with transports. It didn't gain the attention of the racing world until famed Murray Cup racer Claude Mutambo took 6th place in the race and was then quoted by several media sources as saying, "I went into this thinking that it was going to be easy, but once you go through the fatigue, navigational challenges, and the distance it makes the Murray Cup look like amateur hour." Interest started to pick up over the next several years, and on many core worlds vid stations would broadcast highlights from the race in the normal sports news. Eventually teams from the Banu and even a few Xi'an started participating with the humans for both the fame of winning the race, but also for the lucrative exploration contracts from race sponsors. At the 20th official running of the race the total number of participating teams was roughly 150, compared to the scant 10 teams during the first 3 years. Eventually the race was broken down into weight classes based on hull mass, reactor output and main thruster output after a 7 year winning streak of a Banu team using a single seat ship that was commonly described as 'a flying fuel tank with an anti-matter reactor, and a pair of class 6 engines'. While still not as popular as the Murray Cup, the Mo`ikeha Challenge has worked its way into the hearts of racing fans and adventure seekers alike, proving that while speed will always draw the big crowds the thrill of adventure will still have a place in the racing world.