An overview of the times prepared by Level 2
students, Luna Middle School, based on records
and commentaries in the official archives of
The Interstellar Mining and Teleport System.
(Reference: Index, Capsule V67 The Interstellar
Historian, Third Millennium, Interstellar Era.)
In the centuries that followed humankind's giant
leap to Luna, scientists, engineers and scholars in
almost all of Planet Earth's disciplines probed ever
deeper into space. Explorers studied and charted the
surfaces, depths and atmospheres of each of the
Solar System's bodies, and scrutinized the dynamics
and constituents of space matter out to the Kuiper
Belt and Oort Cloud. They ventured into the void
beyond Pluto's aphelion for hundreds of millions
of kilometers -- although not yet the stars.
The first landing on Luna in Year 1969 of the then
Common Era was judged to be among humankind's
grandest achievements. At the Luna landing's
Tercentenary a universal calendar was ordained to
commemorate the Event as New Year's Day, Year 0,
formally beginning humankind's Interplanetary Era.
By then, populated Moon and Mars bases were well
established. Construction cadres had ventured
into and beyond the Asteroids. Their experiences,
surface and strata tests and studies influenced
the selection of sites for mining operations and
strategic outposts along the space frontiers.
Advance construction battalions built basic habitat
and, having attained 'shirt sleeve' environments,
conceptualized, planned, gathered local materials,
and designed and built infrastructure and
industries that, in time, blossomed into enormous
encapsulated cities, social orders, cultural
adjustments and civilizations.
Explorers became teachers and mentors. Initially
in Earth orbit, later in lunar space and on Luna
itself, they guided settlers in developing new
lifestyles and colonizing skills, and showed them
how to wrest and refine usable elements and
minerals from nearby sources. They devised and
tested methodologies to convert crude space
matter into forms with which to create and
integrate structures, and manufacture and operate
machines and networks that would sustain surface
and contiguous space and inter-satellite and
interplanetary navigation and logistics systems.
The emigrants procreated and populated their
cities in the void. Their disparate ancestries blended
through a natural vitality that accelerated human
evolution so as to survive in a radically new
environment. In so doing, they turned away from
traditional conventions still deeply ingrained in
their common species. Adjusting over time to the
novel experience of space, they conceived new ways
or adapted their ancient qualities and prospered
in wholly enclosed artificial worlds. Organ
modifications, genetic engineering and cloning
gave impetus to human transformation.
Instinctively, humankind-in-space prepared for an
eventual voyage to the stars.
At the close of the first interplanetary millennium
that shaped and launched The Great Migration to
Space the original emigrants' progeny had become
an indigenous population. Five centuries into the
Interplanetary Era's second millennium the Solar
System included more than five hundred populated
colonies and outposts, and twice that number
of robot stations for interplanetary and
inter-satellite navigation, communication relay,
and space rescue. Populated by humans and their
robots, colonies extended from the voids above
Mercury and Venus through the Asteroids, the
satellites of the gas planets, to Planet Pluto.
As colonies multiplied and spread across the
vast interplanetary realm the solar community
became impatient with time consumed in normal
point-to-point space communications and transport.
The excessive transmission and portage time was
especially irritating in communications, shipment
of priority cargo, and human travel across
distances from bodies orbiting along on opposite
sides of the Sun. Hyperspace technology solved
the problem.
"Spunnels" in the public's jargon, came into being,
the term compressed from the phrase "hyperspace
tunnels," a universal phenomenon once suspected
and eventually confirmed. In the centuries preceding
The Great Migration the phenomenon had been
generally referred to as a wormhole, an archaic and
irrelevant expression, even in those ancient times.
Spunnel networks reduced transmission time between
the most widely separated points in the system from
hours to real-time. Successful in communications,
scientists and engineers concentrated on the
technological leap from spunnel communications
to spunnel teleportation, a capability urgently and
clearly essential to move humans, machines, and
raw materials across interplanetary distances.
The flood of emigrants to space colonies and
outposts exceeded tens of thousands each
year over several centuries, leaving behind a
still over-crowded Earth that had long since
cried 'enough'. Among the migrants were artisans
and technicians, minimally to highly-skilled
administrators, sociologists, teachers, scientists
and engineers and, scattered among them,
contemporary philosophers who preached the
metaphysical. Together, they represented all
of Earth's peoples and a cross-section of their
cultures.
Technology, however, imposed constraints. The
insatiable appetite for metals, minerals, rare
earths and other nonrenewable substances increased
inexorably. They remained the foundation for the
Solar System's industries, driven by the constant
clamor of indulgent lifestyles. Fully aware that
vital minerals and other substances were beyond
replenishment from within the Solar System, the
solar community nevertheless squandered its
rapidly diminishing resources.
In time, reserves of nonrenewable resources
dropped from residue to gleanings. Recycling, salvage,
ever-deeper mine shafts and tunnels, repeated
sweeps of the Earth's sea beds and planetary
and satellites' crusts, trenches, beds and craters
offered insufficient returns. Scouring the Asteroid
Belt, sifting the Kuiper-Oort regions, and intense
competitions for substitutes provided inadequate
and merely temporary relief. The solar community's
population, on Earth and in space, had exploded to
more than fourteen billion people. The search for
substances to support humankind's needs ranged
throughout; there were no more sources, nor were
there sanctuaries.
Certainly, there would not be enough for voyages
to the stars.
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At long last, humankind confronted its reality. Net
yields from nonrenewable reserves, residues and
substitutes had dwindled until exhaustion was
certain and a timeline predictable. The choice
among grim options could no longer be postponed.
In the end, there were two:
-- Remain in place, ration, recycle and
redistribute minerals, metals, ores and other
usable substances and substitutes with Draconian
discipline, and take the consequences, or
-- Chance the most awesome venture in humankind's
long history: reach out to a distant star and tear
from it the raw matter that would preserve and
perpetuate the grandeur of the human experience.
The second option would be the ultimate gamble:
winning would bring the cornucopia sought
throughout the ages. Failure, even at an early
stage, would dissipate what little reserves
remained. Vitality drained, humankind would slip
back into the pits and the mud from which it had
so laboriously climbed.
The decision was to reach for the stars.
##