The High Frontier: 2049

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is set in the same time period as Space 2049, but, it follows the vision set by Gerard O'Neill and his book The High Frontier.

Stanford Torus

Stanford Torus: cutaway

Von Braun Double Hulled Space Station

Island One: aka Bernal Sphere

Island One: cutaway

Island Three

Interior of Island Three: Near window area

Island Three: Another interior view

The adventure area is limited to the Solar System, there is no artificial gravity generators or FTL,
there is some Artificial Intelligence, they are pulling up even with human intelligence, but haven't
quite reached it yet. The most inhabited area of Space is the Cislunar space, that is the area
around Earth. There is also a Mars colony and some asteroid mining going on. Pretty much every
career is available, but the specifics are different. A scout typically works in the asteroid belt and
outward. The Army consists of officers and military robots, lowest rank for humans is 2nd
Lieutenant, robots do most of the grunt work and and human officers give them orders. The Navy
is highly automated as well, most of the human naval officers work from a command ship and
direct drone ships from there. The Marines operate much as the Army, but they specialize in
working from spaceships rather than based on a world's surface. There are plenty of Merchants,
their ships are highly automated as well with grunt work done by robots, human officers make
high level and business decisions as well as being part of the sales force. Belters follow the Scouts,
the scouts find asteroids with valuable minerals and the belters move in and extract the ore.
Pirates plague some area of space as well, a lot of the rogues are what you would call hackers,
they work with criminal AIs to infiltrate computer systems and concoct various schemes to get a
hold of other people's money, or run cons and frauds, also there are smugglers, people trying to
evade customs of various colonies and so forth. What do you think of the potential of adventuring
here? The encounters are with humans and AIs, either programs or AI operated robots.

I had to delay the onset of artificial intelligence according to this guy.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/01/artificial-intelligence-will-leapfrog-humans-by-2020-says-scifi-great-a-weekend-feature.html
That's 5 years from now. Well maybe if they are smarter than humans, they will help us to build these space colonies quicker, but the assumption of this setting, is that AI has proven more difficult than some optimists thought, this gives humans some role to play. Experimental and cutting edge AI's have achieved parity with humans, these are the equivalent of Hal in 2001 A Space Odyssey, usually these AIs are housed in giant mainframes. Lots of not so smart Ai robots have helped in the construction of these space colonies, the have automated space vehicles and launch systems to make them cheaper and space travel more commonplace.

 

[Hopeless]

How well does the ones shown in the Gundam series hold up when compared to these?

I think it was Gundam Seed that showed one of these right before it was destroyed...

Gundam Savior the apparently bad Gundam live action movie also had a fight inside one of those too.

Speaking of which how does the Babylon V station compare to this?

Oh Mouretsu Pirates had an episode dealing with a golden version of one of these!
Now that made me wish they'd go exploring! :shock:

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

How well does the ones shown in the Gundam series hold up when compared to these?

I think it was Gundam Seed that showed one of these right before it was destroyed...

Gundam Savior the apparently bad Gundam live action movie also had a fight inside one of those too.

Speaking of which how does the Babylon V station compare to this?

Oh Mouretsu Pirates had an episode dealing with a golden version of one of these!
Now that made me wish they'd go exploring! :shock:

Gundam is about giant robots right? I don't play too many computer games these days, so I don't know for sure, but I think Gundam is a RPG game bout people controlling giant robots, much like Battletech. In this case, I'm trying to develop a space setting that is as hard and as real as possible. No FTL, No artificial gravity generators, no planet a week, in this case I'm trying to develop a space setting that gets as close to the real possible and likely future as possible.

Some people are lazy, they imagine a future that is much like today, except for one or two things. I'm trying to develop a multidimensional future, consisting of what I think is likely by the mid 21st century while keeping it interesting as well. Basically advancing the O'Neill vision of space colonization. I don't want to go too far into the future, because the farther into the future one goes the hazier the crystal ball becomes, so we'll stick with 34 years in the future, there is a good chance I'll still be around in 34 years, so people can tell me how right or how wrong I was. 34 years in the past it was 1981, and some people were predicting that we'd have space colonies by today, well it didn't happen, so I want to go another 34 years into the future and keep my optimism, after all 34 more years is 68 years from 1981, so I think from the point of view of someone predicting this in 1981, it would be about twice as likely to happen by 2049 as it would by 2015 I'd say.

So lets say we develop all the key technologies needed to enable mass colonization of space, we get low cost transportation to orbit that is affordable to the average middle class family. Of course we'd have to project likely advances in computer technology as well, and intergrate this into the setting as well. It is the robotization that allows for the building of giant structures in space from extraterrestrial materials, as robots don't need life support, but their judgement is not quite up to par with humans, so what a lot of humans end up doing is babysitting robots to make sure they are doing their jobs properly and fixing them if they are not. As far as robots are concerned, tge tech is like Star Wars Droids, such as C3P0 and R2D2, some robots look more human than these two, but their mannerisms reveal their true nature, such as they don't blink quite right, or their facial expressions seem off a bit, or their word choices are a little awkward, in other words these AI systems have bugs in them, but for manual labor, Robots do a pretty good job, in the service area, not so much, people still want genuine human contact, and AIs are still a poor substitute for this.

By 2049, I'd say fusion reactors exist, we've been waiting for fusion for long enough, I think the next 34 years will finally bring a breakthrough in this field, that is not to say Solar Power satellites are not competitive. By 2049, Solar Panels are much more efficient at converting sunlight to electricity and they are much cheaper to manufacture as well. Lots of people have solar panels on their roofs, which are backed up with super batteries. Solar Power satellites however have 24 hour continuous access to the Sun, and the power they generate is used mostly for space based manufacturing, building spaceships and space colonies, and of course delivering rare metals and other elements such as Lithium to the Earth's surface and other places. In fact, with a large manufacturing base, its easier to deliver products to any point on Earth's surface from space than from another point on Earth's surface, as its all downhill from orbit as they say. Much of the Space Colony business is about building real estate, as they are not making any more of it on Earth. And there are environmental considerations. If a person wants to build a house, he needs to clear some forest to do it, for example, however building a house on a space colony doesn't threaten the environment on Earth, and allows much more room for population growth, and this is important as advances in medicine allow for longer lifespans, on the order of 120 years on average. A 120 year old is equivalent to an 80 year old today.

As for the Solar System, the moon is still a Harsh Mistress, a bone dry vacuum world. Mars has a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Some planetary engineering programs have started, but nothing has been accomplished yet. Mars is still the same environment as today. Venus is a hell hole, but people are starting to colonize the upper atmosphere, but more people remain in orbit around the planet, as Venus makes a great industrial park, asteroids material is hurled toward Venus from the asteroid belt and it is slowed down by grazing maneuvers through Venus' atmosphere, and the closer proximity to the Sun allows for smaller Solar collection arrays for feeding into orbital manufacturing, thus cutting down on costs. So mining is done in the belt, and manufacturing is done in orbit around Venus. Mars is a place of dreamers, there are domed cities on the surface, most have a population of around 100 to 1000, not very big by O'Neillian standards, but some people choose to live on Mars, to get away from it all, start their new societies. The New Pilgrims of the 21st century travel here to try out their new ideas and see how they work, there is a large variety of societies here, most of it small scale and close knit.

As for those fusion reactors, they have application in spacecraft engines, then thing is they require more maintenance than solar panels, they have moving parts, and the magnetic fields need to be balanced to confine the plasma and of course there are fluids which are heated and circulated through pipes which then turn turbines which generate electricity. Fusion reactors are great for spaceships and for those few communities in the outer Solar System, that is further out than the asteroid belt where Solar energy is not as available. There are also some people building starships, some have been launched by 2049, but none have reached their destinations yet. It is possible to build starships that can reach from 1% to 10% of the speed of light, with multiple stages, up to 15% of the speed of light is possible for one way flyby probes. Probably the first colony ships won't reach Alpha Centauri before 2100 AD.