2.0 The Star Age (2001–2100): Overview

With the dawn of a new millennia in Terran reckoning mankind found himself no longer limited to a single world. He had both the desire and the technology to break the bonds of his homeworld and venture forth into the void. That he did, establishing his first permanent off-world colonies in the Sol System. The first beachheads had already been established on Luna and Mars only a few years before. Within the quarter-century both of these had grown into full-fledged, self-sufficient colonies. New footholds would be established in the inner asteroid belt as well as the Jovian and Saturnian moons. The giant L-4 and L-5 space cities were built in orbit around Terra, with additional ones planned for Mars and other colonized worlds. Mankind even dared to plan for exploration beyond the bounds of his own solar system. This period is known in Terran history as the Planet Age: the period of time in which mankind was no longer limited to just one world for his habitations. It was but the beginning.

Along with this drive into space came a wave of industrialization and technology to support it. Major spaceyards were built both in Terra and at Mars for the building of a new generation of Terran spacecraft. These would finally allow humanity to break the bonds of his star Sol and venture into the great Sea of Stars. In the meantime, though, there was plenty enough exploration and colonization within the Sol System to go around.

With any wave of colonization comes the commoner in time, seeking new fortunes or simply to start anew. The First Great Space Rush began in 2014 with the passage of the Space Homestead Act and would continue for some three decades thereafter. Its generous settlement policies opened the door for the average human to take his or her family, pull up stakes, and resettle off world. In this he was only following the examples of his ancestors: the great Oklahoma Land Rush, the California and Alaskan Gold Rushes, the settlement of the Australian Outback, the German colonization of South Africa, and so on. There are countless parallels in human history. It is one of the idiosyncrasies of humanity: to venture forth against all reason and judgment into an untamed wilderness in order to better one’s self and family. So it was then and so it was now. A veritable wave of humans sallied forth into the asteroid belt seeing quick riches through raw mineral mining. Along the way, they ensured that humanity would no longer be a Terra-centric species. Mankind was in space to stay.

Even with all of the incredible advances that had put mankind into space in so short a time a common consensus was lacking. The Eugenics Wars reminded everyone on Terra what a few well-armed madmen could do to the planet. If humanity was to survive it needed to get its act together and head for the stars before it destroyed itself in another war. The dawn of a new millennium saw Terra’s first one-world government in the form of the New United Nations. One of the first acts it passed was the United Space Initiative, confirming to all that man’s ultimate destiny was in the stars. UESPA was reorganized and, as part of this, the United Earth Solar Fleet (UESF) was born. This organization was independent of any Terran nation, using its growing off-world resources to further space exploration efforts. In time it would also take over police and military duties for Terra’s off-world colonies. It was the forerunner of Star Fleet.

Around the same time that the UESF was founded UESPA found it needed a better means of coordinating the science and survey missions of Terra’s various spacefaring nations. UESPA itself had become too bureaucratic by this point to continue in this task. Instead it created the International Space Agency (ISA) to act as both liaison and coordinator among the various national space agencies. Unlike the UESF, the missions of the ISA were always of purely scientific nature, even though the UESF was sometimes involved in support. The ISA can rightly be said to be the Terran forerunner of the organization we know today as the Federation Bureau of Sciences.

Perhaps the most portentous discovery in this period of Terran history was the confirmation of non-Terran intelligent life in the universe. Firm evidence had already been discovered at the end of the 20th century, when the astronauts of Apollo 18 stumbled across a Slaver stasis box on the moon. The million-year-old flying belt found inside, still fully functional, gave Terra advanced anti-gravity technology long before it would have developed it on its own. There were also the striking images of the face on Mars first photographed on the Sidonia plain by the Viking space probe. Further follow-up missions, including a secret side excursion by the Mars Probe One mission, confirmed that the remains of a once-vibrant alien civilization that predated humanity by thousands of years existed on Mars. What the John Carter astronauts found in the Sidonia ruins would be kept a carefully guarded secret for generations. What could not be hid by the New United Nations were subsequent discoveries of fossilized alien life on Mars, as well as evidence of strip mining on the Jovian and Saturnian moons stumbled across by the Saturn-Titan Probe. The cat was now out of the bag, to borrow a Terran euphemism. After the initial predicted culture shock wore off, though, mankind’s natural curiosity took over. Humanity might no longer be unique in the universe; however, it was no longer alone, either. A growing desire began to fill the hearts of man to seek out this new life, these new civilizations … to boldly go where no man had gone before. That desire would eventually take man to the stars and beyond.

As humanity prepared itself to take its first faltering steps beyond the Sol System it knew that its current spacecraft propulsion systems were woefully inadequate to the task. First-generation rockets, powered either by messy chemicals or radioactive fission, were soon replaced by a range of clean and efficient fusion power engines. The technology was perfected and further refined by the end of the decade, resulting in the ion impulse drive. This we know today as the impulse engine. Its basic theory and design has remained unchanged ever since this era in Terran spaceflight development. Simply put, it was the most efficient and reliable form of sub-light propulsion ever developed on Terra (or any other Federation world, for that matter). Ion impulse engines would drive two more generations of Terran spacecraft to the stars until the introduction of warp drive in the 2060s.

At the same time that work on the ion impulse engine was proceeding, a spacecraft power plant of a completely different sort was being developed in secret. The details surrounding this remain murky, as most of it was lost during World War III. What is known is that a top secret development program was initiated by UESPA in co-ordination with NASA (the best of the various national space agencies) and Dyson-Yoyodyne (the pioneers of Terran interplanetary spacecraft). The goal of this program was to develop a next-generation engine for Terra’s first interstellar spacecraft, or “starship” for short. What was so unusual about this drive system, if the surviving reports are true, is that it marks the first effort in history of known current galactic humanoid cultures to tap the unlimited power of a controlled singularity. This ambitious project was known as the spinner drive and was first tested in small-scale form on a converted DY-200 series spacecraft in 2018. This test just happened to coincide with the tragic loss of the UES Cyclops, mankind’s first purpose-built starship, which exploded near Mars on its maiden voyage. The cause was never determined; however, many believed it to be due to catastrophic failure of its experimental advanced power plant (the details of which are still unknown). Spinner drive immediately suggested itself as a workable alternative, and efforts commenced on producing a version suitable for driving a starship to Alpha Centauri and back. Those efforts would not see results for another decade.

The loss of the Cyclops did not mean that mankind’s efforts to break the bonds of Sol were at an end. Far from it. As the old Terran adage goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” A series of privately funded “space arks” had already started leaving the Sol System in 2010, making do with proven Bussard ramjet technology to launch multi-generational colonization efforts at nearby systems. Dyson-Yoyodyne’s DY-500 series of spacecraft entered service in 2019, a year after the Cyclops disaster, and became the Terran stellar workhorse of a generation. Its extended range would acclimate crews to being in space for two or three years at a time – excellent training for interstellar missions to come. Also, like its ancestor, the DY-100 class, a member of the DY-500 class would leave the Sol System under tragic circumstances. The loss of the UES Courageous would raise the safety bar on all subsequent Terran spacecraft designs, and also lead in due time to humanity’s first true successful starship.

One would think that with all of his bounty, the technological rewards reaped from his rapidly expanding space program, and the abundant resources from cheap solar power and asteroid mining, that Terrans would finally shed their clamorous past and unite as one under their new government. Sadly, however, it was not meant to be. A rift began to develop between humanity in space and humanity on Terra. The former were the forward-thinkers, looking ever outward; while the latter were still trapped by the religious and petty bickering of Terra’s past. Slowly, inexorably, Terra’s space colonies began to distance themselves from the political affairs of their homeworld as Terra began to stumble once again towards the brink of doom. The greed, prejudice, and strident nationalism that should have ended with the Planet Age only seemed to become worse. The age would end with riots around the globe as the socially dispossessed fought for their place in Terra’s new society. Events such as the Bell Riots in the United States, the Neo-Trotsky Movement in Russia, a resurgent eugenics movement in Southeast Asia, and the Avignon Riots in France were all signs of a planet falling fast into chaos. Like its two predecessors before, the New United Nations proved ineffective in stopping these conflicts. The final straw proved to be the British invasion of the newly reunified Ireland in 2025, done under the pretext of reclaiming its former possession of Northern Ireland. The Planet Age, which had seemed to promise so much for Terra when it began a mere twenty-five years before, ended with the outbreak of World War III.