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Thanks to the current state of the planet, new space technology has been coming in leaps and bounds, expanding mankind’s foothold into the ‘next frontier’. Defeated by the enormity of cleaning up the existing environment, governments around the world have been committing vast amounts of resources into creating a new environment. With the completion of the Triangle Moonbase, construction has increased in space, with less distance to transport raw materials, now mined directly from the moon’s surface. Production has increased again, as the orbital station GENAROS-01 was completed, making a waypoint between Earth and the Moon.
Boomers play a major part in space, having originally been designed for manual labor, governments quickly
found it was cheaper, easier and safer to put robots into orbit than astronauts. Construction into Extraterrestrial
Environments forges on, under the auspices of the USSD, SDPC, and Genom Space.
The UNITED NATIONS STRATEGIC SPACE DEFENSE FORCE is an international militia operated by the United Nations. It has worldwide authority to shoot down any weapons launched at and from any nation, and its devastating orbit-to-surface weapons are also used to enforce peace. Its unique resources can be called upon by any nation for ‘special intervention’, as long as the UN council approves the action first.
The USSD was formed in 2005 as a small subdivision of the UN, and currently it has risen to become the division with the largest share in the UN budget. The USSD is not mainly concerned with the exploration and colonization of space, just the exploitation of space to make things on earth a little easier,.
The USSD created and maintains the Space Net, (originally sixteen, now twenty four) orbiting space
platforms, the Ra-Atum Orbiting Energy Facility, the orbiting USSD headquarters, and part of the Triangle Moonbase.
The SPACE DEVELOPMENT PUBLIC CORPORATION is a corporate group exclusively contracted by the UN to develop the orbital territories (like a privatized Parks Service). They are an image-conscious company, charged with the development of and exploitation of extra-terrestrial resources. It maintains five space stations, including the GENAROS-01 Orbital Transfer Platform, part of the Triangle Moonbase, ongoing construction of the ‘Lazy Eight" colonization project, and the ‘Boomer Generation Station’.
It bills itself as the herald of the 22nd century, pushing the dream of a better tomorrow and encouraging
hard work and optimism. However, behind this face lies the dark, gritty truth of the SDPC’s policies: Since most
of its holdings are outside any and all national borders, SDPC considers itself outside the law. As a result, it
blatantly lies to the public about the goings-on in orbit. Worst of all, while SDPC ostensibly answers to the
government, it is actually controlled by Genom.
Genom is also a powerful force in space, partly because of its hidden scores of orbital weapons, disguised
as various regular and inane satellites, and more importantly, because it owns the world’s four largest aerospace
industries-and consequently it owns the SDPC as well.
Despite the hardships and costs, space really is set to be the next frontier. The test Nanotech factories
on the back side of the Moon have been operational for 8 years now, and have been producing self-replicating
assemblers and large lattice domes for inhabitation for 2 years. This test proves that functional facilities
for a colony can be produced simply with machines, using only acquired materials from the planet’s surface. All
that need be added is colonists, and air scrubbers. This was the basis for the idea behind the Nanotech mission
to Mars, except the test is for terrforming, not just building structures.
The Ra-Atum Orbiting Energy Facility was placed into operation in 2011, providing clean, efficient microwave energy beamed to the ground, several receptacles in each of the countries in the UN. Several more stations came online in the next six years, one for each continent, and the energy was produced at little cost, and provided free to the major power concerns in each. From there, the power is distributed to the outlying areas.
In 2026, a collision with Ra-Atum-03 resulted in a huge explosion, and the bulk of the station landed on the
west coast of Australia, obliterating several small villages inland. Since then, the Ra-Atum orbits have been
increased, and no other satellites have been allowed near the space.
Satellites and space junk litter the low orbits around Earth, as well as the higher orbits, to a lesser extent. Orbital shuttles transfer goods between stations, repair crews travel between the stations and the plants, citizens travel to the pleasure space resort ‘The Tower of Babel’, and in the midst of all this traffic, the satellites continue their endless journey around the globe.
Collisions between satellites do seem to be far and few in between, thanks in part to the USSD space net.
On average, the Space Net vaporizes 3 satellites a month, when they don’t end up disintegrating from the air friction
themselves.
Other pieces of space architecture include the orbital factories, using the absence of gravity to their advantage, creating superstructural compounds, microscopic lattices of substances only achieved in space. These products are then either used in space construction, or shipped to the surface for use there. As well, pharma- ceuticals and chemicals are mass produced in orbit, and shipped to the ground, and to the stations. Illicit drugs are also produced, some up to ten times more potent from an orbital compound than in a gravitational environment.
Shuttles are produced fully functional in space now, sometimes never seeing the surface. Landing shuttles are, however, all produced on the ground, to make sure the transports can support themselves on the earth.
Genom maintains several Boomer factories in orbit, producing most of the labor used in orbit, and selling at
lesser costs than on the surface, because some features aren’t needed. Consequently, many space boomers cannot
function properly on the surface, and will overheat, collapse from the gravity, or simply remain non-functional.
In 2028, construction was completed on the ‘Triangle’ moonbase, a project taken on by the three leading space authorities, the USSD, the SDPC, and Genom. The station was built for twofold reasons. One, to establish a foothold on a non-Earth celestial body, and two, to provide secure facilities to build the ‘Lazy Eight’ colonization project.
The pseudo-colony is set up for mining, energy production, and is essentially self-sufficient. There
are 2300 permanent residents, and a staff of 8000 boomers. At any given time, there can be as many as 600 temporary
residents of the station, usually casualties from orbital facilities (the moonbase hospital is extraordinary) or
researchers.
The Nanotech colony on the back side of the moon is uninhabited (except for vegetation) for the present,
although plans to move some of the Triangle’s residents there permanently is in the works. The colony is functioning
normally, and all the Nanotech machines have properly gone into stasis after reaching a certain population.
The goal of the ‘Lazy Eight’ is to build a completely self sufficient space vessel, capable of interstellar
travel with a crew in stasis, and land it on a habitable planet, and begin the colonization process.
In 2029, a large Nanotech Assembler was sent to Mars by the SDPC, in the hopes that the planet could be terraformed using Nanotechnology. Basically, the plan is as follows:
The entire project is estimated at 4-560 years before it is completed.
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