by the late 2200's the climate crunch has left earth visibly the worst for wear and homo sapiens considerably sobered.
By
- in response to growing shortages conglomerates of corporations finance the first scientific explorations of solSpace specifically designed to discover 'exploitable' resources. particularly hydrocarbons. as climatic chaos increases corporations, in attempt to safeguard vital installations, begin to evolve the technology to build and support fifty person workforce habitats and low earth orbit factories.
- scarcity of hydrocarbons collapses the globalised world order. advanced oil based agricultures and militaries collapse, populations forcibly relocated from cities to the agricultural sector. Additionally, the effects of climate change are clear for all to see. Corporations relocate vital workforces and assets to the relative safety of low earth orbit.
- Global economic and climactic chaos forces the adoption of an authoritarian secular confucian world state. 'earthGov'. Using totalitarian force earthGov attempts to combat climate change and resources scarcities by capitalising and subsidising the orbital corporations to develop the technologies to relocate what industry is left to space. this includes an intensive exploration effort of saturnSpace and "the belt" for hydrocarbons and resources. the corporations survive with earth as the marketplace. earthGov also applies a vicious and racially based global one child policy. population 4.15 billion peasants, cadre and coporates and still falling.
- godel's bootstrap. the discovery by imperial scavengers at phobos of an ancient wrecked human ship isotopically dated to be from about 2700 (a.d.). Within five years this yielded the fusion power plant. That, however, only worked in orbit and free space where gravitational densities were low. It became very efficient to transfer industry, materials production, a workforce and its logistical supplies of biological necessities to platforms scattered across sol system. the corpratz were real happy to get all of sol system to play in.
an earthGov research team finally teases the secret of the wrecks ftl drive from clues in the fusion plant.
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the ftl effect is by no means an ideal technology. it can only be turned on. while in ftl 'space' ship systems are effectively non functional and crew forced to drug themselves insensate for entropically measured weeks. A ship only exits the effect when it moves through/encounters a sufficiently powerful gravitic field.
the lower the local gravitic density the less power required. using fusion energy sources the most efficient economic solutions exist at radii typically two to three times larger than the orbit of the stellar systems outer planet.
where there is a more intense gravitic environment, such as insystem, only massive military vessels can afford the power. even these, though they attain massive inertialess delta v's, can only can only partially shift and only for brief periods of time.
navigation is precise enough that a ship can pick it's exit as any point at any sublight velocity on the surface of a volume that is defined by the target systems gravitational field. FTL 'velocity' is approximately ten entropic realtime subjective days per light year. Sublight transits, turnaround times measured in multiple weeks and months. Practical ranges are limited by imperfect interstellar scanning/observational techniques and the physiological consequences of the FTL effect.
...
due to technical and political considerations ftl technology is supressed until earthGov funds the mapping of feasible transits using fast sublight mapping drones.
- players begin with sub light fusion powered transits.
- earthGov begins licensing ftl rights and routes to the corpratz. all systems within twenty light year radius. of the systems surveyed no biologically active stellar systems found. all systems contain enough resources to sustain any degree of material exploitation for thousands of earth years.
earthGov completes sixty four massive military vessels and forcibly capitalises the voluntary deportation of sixty percent of the remaining corpratz barbarians to interstellar exile.
- in the end, earthGov discovered and suppressed many amazing technologies in it's successful mission to restore and maintain the earth's biosphere and indeed homo sapiens. It did not however invent time travel.
Through some theretofore unpredicted glitch the fusion plant of a lowest class ftl capable naked 'spine' somewhere in earth orbit sundered space time. The spine went back .. way back ... way way back to mars orbit in the aforementioned 4900 b.c.
this event, like a futuristic neutron bomb, totally wiped out all evolved life in the unsuspecting biosphere below leaving nought but the undamaged archives and artefacts.
Now all the suppressed tech is out and free for the taking, if you can decrypt and research fast enough, in the desperate race to survive in the big lonely without.
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