Do you think Mr House knew about the Vault social experiments?

[The Dutch Ghost]

This really just randomly popped in my mind while I was playing FNV and was wandering around in the Vault on the Strip.

House was pretty high up in the government contractor circles as Robco manufactured various technologies for the government/armed forces, so he was probably in on various top secret government projects and designs.
Could he at some point have learned about what the true purposes of the Vaults were, collecting information about various human condition scenarios and difficulties people could experience and how they would deal with them for the Enclave's space program.

Or perhaps even involved with the last, to build interplanetary or even interstellar capable spaceships to colonize other worlds.

I doubt he would have much objections against these plans, perhaps even thinking the Vaults were not going to save anything from the present/old America as he had his own plan to preserve a little bit that personally mattered to him.

Had the Enclave survived I wonder how they would have reacted if they had found out that House did so as well and in some ways had technologically surpassed them such as his hibernation technology, remote control of robots, and his missile defense systems that in general were quite effective. (imagine if the pre war government had contracted House to build a nation wide missile defense grid. The US would probably still got hit by a few missiles and bombers but not as much as it did in reality)

 

[Hardboiled Android]

The fact that the use of RobCo products specifically designed for VaultTec (most notably the Pip-Boy) would indicate yes, he had to know about it. His dreams for space travel probably come from the same ultimate seed as those of the Enclave.

 

[Atomic Postman]

If he knew, which he probably did, he likely didn't care at all and likely viewed it as loony trash. House is a very single-minded man, he knew he wanted to make his Vegas from the moment he knew the world was going to end. He never had intentions of saving the future of mankind. New Vegas was always the plan.

All the space stuff was nonsense, from both him and Enclave in equal measure.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

All the space stuff was nonsense, from both him and Enclave in equal measure.

What do you mean by nonsense? That it was just propaganda?

 

[Black Angel]

House is a very single-minded man, he knew he wanted to make his Vegas from the moment he knew the world was going to end. He never had intentions of saving the future of mankind. New Vegas was always the plan.

All the space stuff was nonsense, from both him and Enclave in equal measure.

Once again, a very ignorant way to perceive Mr. House. He's a business man, first and foremost. We talked about this before, if he actually had a good chance to prevent the Great War altogether, he would've done it. More people alive means more money flow.

Vegas isn't the end for him, it's his means.

 

[Atomic Postman]

What do you mean by nonsense? That it was just propaganda?

For one I don't think it was anything for the Enclave but madness. The US government was not in control by the time of the Great War and things did not go to plan. The Vaults being massive failures is testament to that. The Enclave were never going to space, and it was never in the sightlines.

For House, I don't think he gives a single fuck about anything but making Vegas the utopian ghost of rat-pack Vegas, or whatever nostalgic image of Vegas he reveres. His spiel to the Courier about a space-program is a pie-in-the-sky sales pitch meant to convince you of his business plan and the benefits of his employment. House would like to convince you that he is a futurist, but literally everything else about him and New Vegas says otherwise, I actually think Cass's ending sums him up the best.

"We were going full speed ahead... but facing backwards the whole time."

Once again, a very ignorant way to perceive Mr. House. He's a business man, first and foremost. We talked about this before, if he actually had a good chance to prevent the Great War altogether, he would've done it. More people alive means more money flow.

Vegas isn't the end for him, it's his means.

Mr. House was an international businessman who owned of the most powerful and technologically advanced companies of the pre-war world, and yet he chose fucking Las Vegas of all the places to make his enclave for the end of the world. Las Vegas. By his own words he'd known for 15 years that the world was going to end. If space-travel and futurism to help mankind "escape" (Not that a space-program in the world of Fallout would actually help anything at all) and build a genuinely better society was actually his goal, his plan would not have been to make Vegas into a money-making fortress and his strange obsession with the city as a "neon paradise" would not have been his guiding objectives.

Thematically, nothing about his endings look to the future either. The language used is deliberately meant to paint a picture of the future of the Mojave as a fortified status-quo established by House's Vegas.

 

[Black Angel]

Mr. House was an international businessman who owned of the most powerful and technologically advanced companies of the pre-war world, and yet he chose fucking Las Vegas of all the places to make his enclave for the end of the world. Las Vegas.

The Fort where he hid his Securitron vault is right next to Hoover Dam, literally in the same neighborhood as Las Vegas.

And if you're wondering why would he even place it there, mind you that even the highly classified West Tek Research Center was a literal bullseye hit with a warhead, turning it into a hole on earth. Nowhere is safe, you could say he's lucky and you're correct, literally, because Lucky 38 prevented most of the warhead from even touching the Mojave landscape.

By his own words he'd known for 15 years that the world was going to end. If space-travel and futurism to help mankind "escape" (Not that a space-program in the world of Fallout would actually help anything at all) and build a genuinely better society was actually his goal, his plan would not have been to make Vegas into a money-making fortress and his strange obsession with the city as a "neon paradise" would not have been his guiding objectives.

Read this

Summer: Adding further insult to the Sino-American relations, the first crude fusion cell is unveiled, one of the results of the power armor project. Devices designed for the fusion cell begin to be manufactured. Incorporating fusion power into the general U.S. infrastructure begins, but the process is too slow to supply power to the regions that need it. Nearly eleven years later, few sections of the United States were supplied with fusion power

This is why he just gave up 'saving the world' and focused on what he can instead. Barely more than a decade wasn't enough to solve the energy crisis, which is the one true source of the conflict at the time, so doing anything else would've been fool's errand.

Also, restarting high-tech sector, putting people in orbit, and even sending people to other planets would definitely need money. The workers need to be paid, and then there's the scientists and the engineers. There's also the cost needed to educate and train new members of the society. Oh, also, don't forget to feed them. Which means, the farmers also need to be paid. Not to mention the overall costs, from services, raw material, maintenance, and even in case of anything breaking and the likes.

This is why the argument that Mr. House didn't care or even outright having anything to do with the Great War is absurd. Money needs to flow, if he actually had a good chance to save the world, he would do so because it means the money flow would keep going and he would be a LOT closer to his goals.

Thematically, nothing about his endings look to the future either. The language used is deliberately meant to paint a picture of the future of the Mojave as a fortified status-quo established by House's Vegas.

This is literally true to all of the other major factions.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

I think it sort of depends on what you mean by bullshit exactly. I think it's obvious that Mr. House could have picked far better locations if he was singularly driven by space travel/futurism. Las Vegas is not really strategically valuable, the onl thing that makes it valuable is that Hoover Dam is somewhat nearby - but then, why not just set up shop in the dam itself and build a settlement around that (like the one planned for Van Buren)?

I guess you can look at it as him being a liar, or you can look at it as him still being a human being with an attachment to a particular aesthetic, time and place. I think he still fully intends o do futurism, but he's "held back" by his humanity.

 

[Sublime]

This really just randomly popped in my mind while I was playing FNV and was wandering around in the Vault on the Strip.

House was pretty high up in the government contractor circles as Robco manufactured various technologies for the government/armed forces, so he was probably in on various top secret government projects and designs.
Could he at some point have learned about what the true purposes of the Vaults were, collecting information about various human condition scenarios and difficulties people could experience and how they would deal with them for the Enclave's space program.

Or perhaps even involved with the last, to build interplanetary or even interstellar capable spaceships to colonize other worlds.

I doubt he would have much objections against these plans, perhaps even thinking the Vaults were not going to save anything from the present/old America as he had his own plan to preserve a little bit that personally mattered to him.

Had the Enclave survived I wonder how they would have reacted if they had found out that House did so as well and in some ways had technologically surpassed them such as his hibernation technology, remote control of robots, and his missile defense systems that in general were quite effective. (imagine if the pre war government had contracted House to build a nation wide missile defense grid. The US would probably still got hit by a few missiles and bombers but not as much as it did in reality)

I really wonder if he was ever asked to join the Enclave. For such a meaningful character of the Fallout Universe we have very little dialogue.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I really wonder if he was ever asked to join the Enclave. For such a meaningful character of the Fallout Universe we have very little dialogue.

Well the perspective of the series it is of course because Mr House was made up long after Fallout 2.
Ingame related, well the Enclave outside the Remnants does not really play any role. There is no mentioning of them in Big MT either despite that you would think that company would also be handling Enclave contracts.

But a few lines would have been nice, somewhere in Mr House's database.
Perhaps in his records a note in which he discovered how the Enclave's oil rig was wiped out and praising himself for having the foresight of not accepting the Enclave's offer to join them.
He would probably mock the Enclave, showing how once again the private sector succeeded where the government failed.

 

[Atomic Postman]

Considering the Enclave were a marriage of Poseidon Energy and the pre-war US cabinet, I wouldn't say it would be that much of a private sector vs public sector victory.

I'd say with regards to the Enclave invitation, we get no indication that House was a meddler in pre-war politics, though he could have been. I imagine the Enclave was a "need to know" type thing where all the lobbyists and politicians patting eachothers backs in specific iron triangles of DC were the ones involved. Invitations weren't extended, it was more that certain "Boys Clubs" in US Congress were now preparing post-nuclear strategem. Something that functioned without specific label or operations, because the members were all mutually and concurrently in cahoots.

 

[Risewild]

If he knew, which he probably did, he likely didn't care at all and likely viewed it as loony trash. House is a very single-minded man, he knew he wanted to make his Vegas from the moment he knew the world was going to end. He never had intentions of saving the future of mankind. New Vegas was always the plan.

All the space stuff was nonsense, from both him and Enclave in equal measure.

For House, I don't think he gives a single fuck about anything but making Vegas the utopian ghost of rat-pack Vegas, or whatever nostalgic image of Vegas he reveres. His spiel to the Courier about a space-program is a pie-in-the-sky sales pitch meant to convince you of his business plan and the benefits of his employment. House would like to convince you that he is a futurist, but literally everything else about him and New Vegas says otherwise, I actually think Cass's ending sums him up the best.

"We were going full speed ahead... but facing backwards the whole time."

House wanting to progress humanity into the future is obvious. He gets really pissed off if you destroy his securitron army and says this:

Singlehandedly, you've brought mankind's best hopes of forward progress crashing down. No punishment would be too severe.

I don't think that in a moment of anger he would still be trying to convince you that he is futuristic.
Also, House was dead set on having space exploration and resource gathering, that's why he bought REPCONN in the first place (and it had to be an hostile takeover). He was boosting REPCONN tech and costs to make reliable "hybrid" engines for space crafts. This is information available on the game:

Just like the rocket you see here, we're aimed at the sky, but we've got a ceiling in the way! See, Rocketeers, while REPCONN is (was) focused on non-radioactive* propulsion engines, we still need to sneak back and use some of our older "proven" techniques with nuclear-driven engines to make space travel a reality. Partnered with our new buddy RobCo, we've dug up older, cheaper technology for upcoming orbital projects. No worries, even if you can't always see what we're up to up there - we can see you!


* Any implication of radioactive material as negative is unintentional and in no way reflects RobCo or its subsidiary REPCONN.

This sleek and purple R77-293A "Needlenose" is what happens when you mix fossil and plasma in a rocket and shake it up! The fossil fuels punch this sharp-nosed terror through the sky, and the plasma is used to shoot it through space to planets where REPCONN can mine more fossil fuels,* continuing the whole cycle again!


* Interplanetary mining and resource rights still in negotiation.

A model of our solar system (not actual size). Beautiful, isn't it? RobCo, with its subsidiary REPCONN, has often gazed into the night sky, seeing the rich pageant of stars and planets above us. Our goal? To send unmanned rockets to these other systems, seeing their beauty firsthand while mining ever deeper into each planet's surface for precious resources needed here at home. This is our promise to mankind, extending our reach into a future where the number of RobCo and REPCONN rockets match the stars in the sky.


This Exhibit Brought To You By Your Friends at RobCo

All of this supports what House says about wanting to explore and collect resources from outside Earth. Notice how it even mention that he was already negotiating interplanetary mining and resource rights. Why would he be going to so much effort and spend so much money if he had no interest in actually develop interplanetary space travel and mine new resources? It's supporting everything he says to the Courier.

I think it sort of depends on what you mean by bullshit exactly. I think it's obvious that Mr. House could have picked far better locations if he was singularly driven by space travel/futurism. Las Vegas is not really strategically valuable

It had the headquarters of his space program, a launch pad for space rockets and it was also it's space program R&D facility... It's the obvious place for him to settle because of his interest in developing interplanetary space travel... He settles there so he can make and deploy his defense grid that would protect his army of robots, the source of his income, and the source of his space plans.
REPCONN was already there and he took it "by force" while using a lot of money to do it, so it's not like he had better places to settle down. Basically, it's why it makes perfect sense for him to be there.

The game puts effort into supporting what Mr House says, I don't think the Devs ever intended for players to think Mr House is a liar that doesn't really want to have his own space program and make it work. It shows the connections to steps that House took to make it a reality. If House was lying all he did to acquire REPCONN, what is said in the tour messages over at the REPCONN HQ and what he says to the courier wouldn't match so well.