8.0 Overview

The painful memory of the Romulan War had thankfully diminished by the opening of this quarter century, and the UFP entered into an era of quiet growth and prosperity. Though there were the seemingly inevitable planet conflicts, plagues and space catastrophes, the welcome placidity of this period has begun what has become known as the Golden Age of Space. For almost a century now, there has been a steady progression of peaceful exploration of space and steady expansion of the frontiers of knowledge.

There is perhaps no better indication of this period's tranquility than the veritable explosion in space ridership, the number of people who enjoyed interstellar travel. Space tourism blossomed into a major interstellar industry, with luxurious new generations of starcruisers to pamper the traveler. Exploiting the natural wonders of the cosmos, sightseeing tours were organized to such marvels as the Jewel Stars of Corona Major. These are Cepheid Variables, stars which change brightness, whose unpredictable, flashing bursts of color have dazzled countless legions of amazed tourists.

Moreover, whole planets adapted themselves to the tourist trade, like the nightclub world of Argelius II, or the famed vacation paradise that is Beta Colony II. No longer the exclusive domain of intrepid explorers and avaricious traders, space opened its treasures to people from every walk of life. Including students. The educational possibilities of space were developed more and more. For instance, collegiate excursions were made to planets in early stages of development so that the paleozoology students could witness firsthand, an actual dinosaur age. The uses of space seem endless.

The variety of new worlds discovered also appears limitless. During this period, the first highly intelligent flying creatures were found on Alpha Virginis. On this geologically unstable planet, the most advanced lifeform evolved in the most stable medium, the air, and the Canaris of Alpha Virginis possessed a well-developed ethical and cultural civilization.

As often seems the case, there was a theoretical breakthrough in this era that only decades later produced what is now known as the transporter. For many years, a heated debate had raged between biologists and physicists over whether forms of life could be broken down into constituent parts and reassembled without destroying the fragile spark of life in the process. Previous experiments had always supported the naysaying biologists. But the increasing sophistication of matter/antimatter reactions, new generations of computer intelligence and the successful application of transtator physics, developed by the brilliant twenty-second century physicist Abramson, finally achieved in a controlled laboratory situation, what had been thought impossible: life could, in fact, be transported. It could be energized into personal energy engrams, beamed to another location, and faithfully reassembled into a living entity. However, these first successes dealt only with single-cell protozoa. It would be another forty years before the process was perfected enough to permit the safe transporting of a human being.

Other advances were made in the field of galactic astronomy. Black holes were studied for their insights into multiple continuums—other complete universes coexisting with our own in a different space/time matrix. The antimatter universe is just such a continuum, whose occasional presence in our own has been harnessed for warp drive. In fact, large antimatter lodes have been found in certain sectors of space, for reasons still unclear, which are now the sites for the major antimatter refineries.

Another galactic mystery concerned the string of novas that plagued a particular space sector one solar year. A special task force was assigned to discover the source of these novas, and the answer they found was linked to a completely new field of science called galactic tectonics, or the study of the patterns of galactic evolution. The novas traced a galactic fault line along the whole of the Omega finger of the Milky Way's Orion arm. While there isn't yet any technological solution to this hazard, at least other star systems along the fault have been alerted to the danger, so that they can monitor their troubled stars closely. They were found to be the result of a galactic fault, a line of instability caused by unbalanced stresses from the rotating galaxy.

Unfortunately, not all astronomical research can be done within the safe confines of a research station. The research ship USS Kepler was sent to observe closehand, the collapse of a Giant Type I star into a Black Hole, a body with so great a density that its gravitational forces don't permit any radiation to escape, including light or radio waves. The star literally disappears. This collapse was to have been the first within the reach of Federation spaceflight, and the Kepler was there. Tragically, however, the Kepler's computers had miscalculated the mass of the star. Instead of collapsing steadily into a black hole, the not-quite massive enough star went supernova, the cataclysmic explosion of dying stars. The Kepler and all crew were instantaneously incinerated. There should be no illusions: space is still a very dangerous place.

One of the innovations that has made space a little safer was the medical tricorder invented during this era. This piece of equipment allows all vital lifesigns to be measured by a portable, handheld device which can output instant diagnoses. Also employing transtator circuitry, tricorders are now standard equipment on all starships.

Galactic health has the highest priority within the UFP, and in fact, it is one of the only possibly permissible exceptions to the Prime Directive, the overriding prohibition against interference into a planet's internal affairs. Few others are tolerated, and it was in this era that the first starship captain was convicted of violating the Prime Directive. Though his “crime” was certainly understandable—he intercepted a wave of nuclear missiles that was about to start a world war on Vega Proxima that would have killed millions—it was nevertheless a reprehensible intrusion into a planet's history, with incalculable effects on that world's future. The Star Fleet Special Court Martial had no alternative; the captain was relieved of his command, his rank and commission.

Despite this black mark and the interplanetary war near the Romulan Neutral Zone that had Star Fleet Command on edge for a while, this era was uncommonly peaceful. Breakthroughs in science, advances in technology, and the increase in galactic travel all added up to a period of placid growth, a period that extended through the next quarter-century, and has largely delineated our present stable, technologically advanced society.