The Conquest of Space

The availability of the first warp drives rapidly transformed the space around the Earth from a predominantly scientific and military environment into a new area of industrial development. The experimental missions of the preceding years had already demonstrated the possibility of using Voidmass to reduce drastically the travel times within the Solar System; the main problem therefore became that of building the infrastructure needed to exploit this capability economically.

2051-2055

The five Hegemonies launched space programmes of growing size, entrusting their execution to their own megacorporations. The governments financed the initial infrastructure, granted the necessary concessions and ensured the protection of the routes, while the MC supplied ships, propulsion systems, technical personnel, extractive capacity, logistics networks and, where necessary, security measures. The model rapidly became the dominant one: space remained formally subject to the jurisdiction of the Hegemonies, but a great part of the activity needed for its material occupation was in fact carried out by private operators.

The first permanent installations were concentrated in the regions already relatively accessible by means of the earlier space technology: the Moon was the first victim of this approach, rapidly filling with shipyards, fuel depots, assembly centres and industrial plants progressively transferred from the Earth’s surface. The stations in Earth orbit were enlarged and integrated into a logistics network devoted to the construction, maintenance and resupply of the new fleets.

The progressive reduction of travel times made practicable the industrial exploitation first of the asteroids near the Earth and, little by little, of the main celestial bodies of the Solar System. The first operations were aimed above all at locating deposits containing minerals from which to obtain the precursor materials, but the expansion of the extractive infrastructure made it profitable to recover common metals, rare earths and other useful materials as well.

The economic advantage was considerable: the raw materials extracted in space could be processed directly in orbit, avoiding the costs of transfer to the Earth’s surface. A growing share of the structures intended for the subsequent expansion therefore began to be built using materials that came from space and had never reached the Earth.

2056-2060

Within a few years industrial activity extended towards the outer regions of the Solar System: the great mining operators built permanent extraction platforms, automated depots and first-stage refining plants in the vicinity of the most profitable deposits. Around these installations there arose maintenance stations, shipyards, medical centres and small settlements intended for the personnel needed to keep them operational. Little by little these settlements became genuine inhabited centres, giving rise to the first permanent space communities. The rapidity of this transformation is evident if one considers that the first human being born outside the Earth had come into the world barely thirteen years earlier, in 2045: by 2058, the overall number of births registered in space had already passed a thousand.

The weak point of this model lay in the fact that almost all the new colonies depended on the MC that had built them: the company supplied housing, energy, air, water, food and spare parts, and not infrequently also controlled the only regular link with the other settlements. In space, losing one’s job could mean losing at the same time one’s home, one’s medical care and the possibility of leaving. This situation inevitably favoured numerous forms of exploitation: in many settlements the colonists were subjected to exhausting work shifts, safety conditions inferior to terrestrial standards and contractual agreements substantially devoid of guarantees. Indebtedness towards the company itself for the voyage, the equipment or essential services also made it difficult to abandon the colony or to change employer: phenomena of this kind were particularly frequent in the more isolated settlements, some of which became sadly notorious for the malpractice and abuses committed by the MC administrations.

The transfer of industrial activity into space also made it possible to move a growing share of the most dangerous phases of Voidmass production away from the Earth. New complexes were built in orbit, on the lunar surface and subsequently in the vicinity of the main mining districts. The local availability of raw materials, combined with the possibility of operating without discharging residual heat, radiation and toxic by-products onto the biosphere, helped to make these installations not only more acceptable on the political and social level, but also more efficient than the old terrestrial plants, by then burdened with ever stricter environmental and regulatory constraints.

By the end of the decade, the space economy no longer represented a sector separate from the terrestrial one: energy, components, raw materials and industrial products crossed continuously the network of stations and settlements distributed among the planets, and a growing share of the infrastructure needed for Voidmass production now depended on supplies coming from space.

2061-2065

The expansion within the Solar System did not, however, eliminate the problems of supply. The overall quantity of resources available was enormous, but only a part of the known deposits could be exploited economically with the technologies of the time: some precursor materials remained relatively rare, others were concentrated in places difficult to reach or required particularly costly refining processes. Meanwhile the growth of energy production, of the fleets and of the space infrastructure continued to increase demand. To resolve the problem, the Hegemonies therefore began to finance programmes of prospecting for precursor materials outside the Solar System.

Astronomical observations already made it possible to identify numerous potentially interesting planetary systems, and the development of a new generation of warp drives (around 2060) made it possible to verify their composition directly. The first interstellar missions, directed towards systems that lay a few light years from the Sun, proved far more costly and technically complex than foreseen: the ships were obliged to travel with instrumentation, technologies, raw materials and reserves sufficient to operate for long periods without external support.

The objectives of these preliminary missions were mainly exploratory in character: mapping of the system, mineralogical analyses, identification of the deposits and of the sites suitable for the construction of permanent infrastructure. When a deposit sufficiently rich in precursor materials was located, a second phase was set in motion, which provided for the dispatch of automated industrial modules. The success of this model considerably reduced the cost of expansion: instead of transporting from the Earth every component needed for the construction of a new installation, the MC began to send plants capable of using local resources to produce structures, spare parts and building materials directly on site.

Despite this, the human cost of expansion remained high: interstellar voyages required long periods far from the Earth, exposed the crews to accidents which, in the absence of external assistance, could easily prove fatal, and took years from the lives of technicians, scientists, explorers and skilled workers. The crews departed knowing that they would remain away for years; there were even those who, out of necessity, accepted postings in colonies from which the return was not guaranteed or proved economically prohibitive.

2066-2070

The first economically significant discoveries rapidly altered the objectives of the interstellar programmes. Some systems contained concentrations of precursor materials far higher than those accessible in the Solar System; others possessed enormous quantities of metals, volatile compounds or easily exploitable energy resources. The possibility of building a significant part of the infrastructure directly on site made it profitable to maintain permanent installations even several light years from the Earth. Thus the first extrasolar industrial districts began to form.

The initial structure was almost always the same: an exploratory mission located the system; a consortium obtained the exploitation rights from the authorities of its own Hegemony; cargo ships carried energy systems, machinery and habitation modules; finally, extraction and refining plants were built, intended to finance the subsequent expansion. In some cases several Hegemonies found themselves claiming the same systems simultaneously, giving rise to disputes which led to the first armed clashes fought in space.

The difficulty of establishing effective control over territories several light years distant favoured the spread of overlapping concessions, bilateral agreements and exploitation zones of uncertain legal status. As a direct consequence, the military fleets began to accompany the industrial expeditions with greater frequency, while the private military companies assumed a growing role in the protection of the plants, the convoys and the colonies.

Interstellar expansion nevertheless remained strongly dependent on logistical and organizational aspects. Warp travel had made previously prohibitive distances crossable, but had not eliminated them. Ships, crews and materials continued to require weeks, if not months, of actual travel: any breakdown, accident or interruption in the supply routes could therefore isolate a colony for considerable periods. Not all the ships given up as lost were ever found again: in an age of experimental routes and minimal operational margins, a disappearance without explanation was considered simply part of the price of expansion.

A limit that no generation of drives had overcome contributed to making the isolation deeper still: there existed no way of transmitting information faster than a ship travelled. Every message, order or piece of news crossed space aboard a carrier and reached its destination already weeks old, so no extrasolar settlement had the possibility of communicating an emergency and receiving assistance in good time. For this reason, a colony’s capacity to produce energy, food, components and building materials locally became one of the principal criteria used to establish its sustainability.

The new geography

The increase in the number of systems explored made it necessary to develop a common convention for organizing known space. The galaxy was divided cartographically into great Quadrants, in turn subdivided into Sectors; each Sector comprised numerous Systems, identified through astronomical coordinates and standard designations.

The Solar System remained the principal demographic, financial and political centre of humanity, but gradually ceased to coincide with the whole of the human economy; permanent commercial routes now linked the Earth to the first extrasolar industrial districts. Cargo ships carried precursor materials, refined products and industrial components towards the Solar System, while in the opposite direction travelled machinery, specialized personnel, technologies and new colonists. The distribution of resources thus began to determine a new economic geography: systems devoid of habitable planets could acquire enormous importance because of the presence of a single deposit, while worlds apparently favourable to human settlement remained marginal if too poor in resources or too far from the main routes.

Within the space of a generation human industry had passed beyond the boundaries of the Solar System. The principal reason remained the same as that which had given rise to the first space race: to find the resources needed to produce more Voidmass, and to use that Voidmass to reach resources still further away.