Post by Baron on Feb 5, 2008 11:46:50 GMT -5
This is a little ways past near-future in time. People have made extraordinary advances in robotics, cybernetics, and space travel, and have colonized many of the rocks in our solar system. Colonies have settled on Mars, Mercury, and several moons and large asteroids in the solar system. We have even made settlements as far as Pluto, though these are primarily research stations.
With this expansion in land came political upheavals on the Earth. Nations rushed out to claim every pocket of land they could. To do this, they hired corporate contractors to do the heavy lifting and maintenance of these newfound colonies. Over time, these corporations began to have a larger and larger say in the government, making key changes in regulations and intellectual property laws. Now, these collection of monoliths are the driving force behind the laws on Earth and the moon. Off-world, each company has developed its own firm grip on the mining posts, research stations, and colonies in the solar system. They make their own laws in these regions, unbeholden to the collective law on Earth. Each company specializes in many things now, needing to diversify themselves to keep up with their competitor company-states.
This does not mean that these companies control everything, however. Several areas of space have been deemed either unprofitable or too risky to keep. This neutral space now holds many colonies, stations, and bases, all with their own owners, businesses, and economies. Entrepreneurship is even stronger here than on Earth. The stations themselves may be considered outdated by the company-maintained sites, but they function from day to day just fine and are home to many.
A lively black market trade also exists. It actively smuggles goods and information between Earth and the different outer colonies, pirates hapless travelers on the trading routes, and can be seen in some form or another on almost every major station, colony, or planet. The Megacorps sometimes pay these groups to spy on their rivals, steal tech, and sabotage key research, but the market has no loyalties on these matters.
Technology on each of the colonies and planets are fairly uniform within the company-controlled areas, as the Megacorps roll out new improvements to bases, cities, and stations in a timely and uniform manner. Fusion has been developed and powers most of the larger stations, especially those that cannot benefit from solar power. It also powers large star ships, and even a few prototype models of the smaller freighters. There are even rumors of energy weapons, black stations that can move themselves gravitically, and even "folds" in certain parts of reality deep in the Oort cloud. None of this has been given on a press release, however, and the Megacorps control of these outer regions of space is tight and paranoid.
While energy weapons may or may not exist in some labs of the Megacorps, energy weapons are less efficient than bullets at this time, and security guards for the Megacorps are often armed with a variety of close-range, mid-range, and area-attack weapons. The guards for more high-security areas, be they human or cyborg, are often cloned, given proprietary gene therapy and implants, and raised to guard important assets to the company. Complemented with the creation of true AI, these and robotic guards are all a part of the Megacorps' paramilitary forces. Towards the outer rim of space and towards the main headquarters of each company, these defenses become progressively tighter. No one aside from the corporations really know what goes on at the rim, and most people are fine keeping it that way. Knowing a bit more than you should and having a big mouth tend to get you vanished about that topic.
Even if someone did wish to visit these far research bases, it would take some time to do. Space travel has made progress since the early days, but it still takes days or weeks to get between the various colonies scattered across moons, asteroids, and built in the middle of space. Relativity kind of sucks at times, and there have been no breakthroughs announced that allow someone to break this law. Quantum tunneling, on the other hand, has led to several breakthroughs in instantaneous communications systems, so news reports, comm chatter, and everything else can all be done instantaneously. This can be somewhat disconcerting to someone going .9c, as time tends to bend around them and the messages they send and receive need to be processed in a more intensive fashion. A ship with a true AI tends to manage this with only a small delay, but this kind of tech is usually reserved for the larger ships. Smaller ships, like small business freighters and transport ships, often access communications in a non-live format when in relativistic speeds.
Most people in the system are pure human. However, the natural conditions on some of the planets and colonies have led these natives to adopt experimental gene therapy, creating a few different subspecies of human. Some are able to withstand high gravities, different atmospheres, and even be able to function in space for a time without a space suit. While rare, these people have spread to many areas of the solar system, so it is not too uncommon to see one or two even in a station far from their natural climes.
Many people have also adopted cybernetic or genetic implants. It is not uncommon for the average trader to have a robotic eye or a neural interface to their computer for making appraisals and finances easier. Gene implants are more uncommon, and exist mostly in the upper-middle class or in important Megacorp assets. Nanotech, while demonstrated to exist, is strictly proprietary used for managing Megacorp interests only. The only public displays of this tech are when a Megacorp rolls out a new layout for a base or expands a colony, where they release several billion preprogrammed nanites to integrate into the existing carbon nanotube infrastructure of the buildings and perform the changes over a period of a few hours, becoming a part of the structure itself at the end of the task.
--Editted for grammar. I shouldn't post things when I'm tired.--
With this expansion in land came political upheavals on the Earth. Nations rushed out to claim every pocket of land they could. To do this, they hired corporate contractors to do the heavy lifting and maintenance of these newfound colonies. Over time, these corporations began to have a larger and larger say in the government, making key changes in regulations and intellectual property laws. Now, these collection of monoliths are the driving force behind the laws on Earth and the moon. Off-world, each company has developed its own firm grip on the mining posts, research stations, and colonies in the solar system. They make their own laws in these regions, unbeholden to the collective law on Earth. Each company specializes in many things now, needing to diversify themselves to keep up with their competitor company-states.
This does not mean that these companies control everything, however. Several areas of space have been deemed either unprofitable or too risky to keep. This neutral space now holds many colonies, stations, and bases, all with their own owners, businesses, and economies. Entrepreneurship is even stronger here than on Earth. The stations themselves may be considered outdated by the company-maintained sites, but they function from day to day just fine and are home to many.
A lively black market trade also exists. It actively smuggles goods and information between Earth and the different outer colonies, pirates hapless travelers on the trading routes, and can be seen in some form or another on almost every major station, colony, or planet. The Megacorps sometimes pay these groups to spy on their rivals, steal tech, and sabotage key research, but the market has no loyalties on these matters.
Technology on each of the colonies and planets are fairly uniform within the company-controlled areas, as the Megacorps roll out new improvements to bases, cities, and stations in a timely and uniform manner. Fusion has been developed and powers most of the larger stations, especially those that cannot benefit from solar power. It also powers large star ships, and even a few prototype models of the smaller freighters. There are even rumors of energy weapons, black stations that can move themselves gravitically, and even "folds" in certain parts of reality deep in the Oort cloud. None of this has been given on a press release, however, and the Megacorps control of these outer regions of space is tight and paranoid.
While energy weapons may or may not exist in some labs of the Megacorps, energy weapons are less efficient than bullets at this time, and security guards for the Megacorps are often armed with a variety of close-range, mid-range, and area-attack weapons. The guards for more high-security areas, be they human or cyborg, are often cloned, given proprietary gene therapy and implants, and raised to guard important assets to the company. Complemented with the creation of true AI, these and robotic guards are all a part of the Megacorps' paramilitary forces. Towards the outer rim of space and towards the main headquarters of each company, these defenses become progressively tighter. No one aside from the corporations really know what goes on at the rim, and most people are fine keeping it that way. Knowing a bit more than you should and having a big mouth tend to get you vanished about that topic.
Even if someone did wish to visit these far research bases, it would take some time to do. Space travel has made progress since the early days, but it still takes days or weeks to get between the various colonies scattered across moons, asteroids, and built in the middle of space. Relativity kind of sucks at times, and there have been no breakthroughs announced that allow someone to break this law. Quantum tunneling, on the other hand, has led to several breakthroughs in instantaneous communications systems, so news reports, comm chatter, and everything else can all be done instantaneously. This can be somewhat disconcerting to someone going .9c, as time tends to bend around them and the messages they send and receive need to be processed in a more intensive fashion. A ship with a true AI tends to manage this with only a small delay, but this kind of tech is usually reserved for the larger ships. Smaller ships, like small business freighters and transport ships, often access communications in a non-live format when in relativistic speeds.
Most people in the system are pure human. However, the natural conditions on some of the planets and colonies have led these natives to adopt experimental gene therapy, creating a few different subspecies of human. Some are able to withstand high gravities, different atmospheres, and even be able to function in space for a time without a space suit. While rare, these people have spread to many areas of the solar system, so it is not too uncommon to see one or two even in a station far from their natural climes.
Many people have also adopted cybernetic or genetic implants. It is not uncommon for the average trader to have a robotic eye or a neural interface to their computer for making appraisals and finances easier. Gene implants are more uncommon, and exist mostly in the upper-middle class or in important Megacorp assets. Nanotech, while demonstrated to exist, is strictly proprietary used for managing Megacorp interests only. The only public displays of this tech are when a Megacorp rolls out a new layout for a base or expands a colony, where they release several billion preprogrammed nanites to integrate into the existing carbon nanotube infrastructure of the buildings and perform the changes over a period of a few hours, becoming a part of the structure itself at the end of the task.
--Editted for grammar. I shouldn't post things when I'm tired.--