Science Future Timeline part 1

This is still potentially fluid, and isn't intended to read as a story or history, it's a rough timeline with main events.  We haven't added every technological advance.

Science Future timeline

Part 1

Mid 21^st century China arises in power; the phony Eurowar over the fate of the European Union leads to several nations seceding from the Union.  China establishes several space stations, and manages to get a colony on the moon. They mine Helium-3 for fusion power.

2040 the NewSSR arises as Russia tramples the former  independent ex-soviet states under foot, annexing them. 

2042 Britain elects hardline NeoImperialist government

2044 Siberia declare independence as Siberia Free State, and train missiles on Zurich to bring pressure to bear on Moscow from men with soft voices and hard currency.

2044 Britain agrees to work with Europe in space, and other scientific projects, and for practical reasons reluctantly agrees to a pact with the NewSSR, forming SovESA.  America signs treaties with Canada, the ABC nations and Mexico for space exploitation treaties, and forms the AMpact.

2045 Japanese scientists succeed in creating cyber bees by using nanotechnology and bee DNA in house flies after bees have been virtually wiped out world wide, and tests are carried out in north Africa.

2046 the cyberbees are a disaster when they become psychotic and start killing people with what has become a very enhanced sting. 

2047 American attempt at a Mars landing, using nuclear rockets.   It was meant to impress the other AMpact countries.  It fails

2048 SovESA, largely through the efforts of Russia, send a rescue mission using ion drive, and rescue the American mission.

2048-2060 a lack of confidence in the government in America leads to a partial breakup of the Union and the Southern states form a religious dictatorship called God’s Nation, opposed to tinkering with ‘God’s Heaven’.  The devastating 8,2 Richter Scale earthquake in what used to be San Francisco in 2051 added to both the breakup, and the belief of the religious right that it was God’s Wrath.   The remains of America in the North brokers a treaty with Canada to combine as CanAm.  Putting the Can first was part of the agreement Canada hung on to.

2052 French and British scientists announce a European success in the cloning of the few remaining bees and those held in cold storage which had died,, and the ability to repopulate the world with 5 different species. They hope to reintroduce more over time. Due to the exigencies of damaged DNA,  the honey bee flatly refuses to pollinate anything except lavender, on which the experimental subjects were raised.  The other species are less picky, fortunately.  New DNA is worked on to hope to make honey bees ready to accept other plants, especially New Zealand Manuka, for its medical properties.

2050s the colonisation of Mars, largely by SovESA run projects.  The beginnings of the new language EngSov; most Europeans already knew English but the NewSSR tended to be rather ubiquitous.   The language uses a lot of contractions and linguistic short cuts to make it easier to convey information fast, a necessary thing in a hostile environment.

2065 the general Middle Eastern War.  CaAm has too many of its own problems with border incursions from God’s Nation to intervene. Someone throws a nuke, and much of the Middle East ends up as radioactive glass, including Pakistan, which may have been covertly nuked by India.  If it was India, this backfires, due to radiation drifting, and the country is forced to ask for foreign aid.  Britain sends a team of advisors, and if India is not quite a British protectorate, it comes close. 

2067 in a show of co-operation, and to help India’s economy, the first British/Indian space habitat is launched.

2070 the unified field theory is declared, formulated by a team of scientists from Harvard with other nationals involved.  Doctors Lyn Harcourt and David Balls [CanAm], Stig Nordstrom [Sweden] and Raj Wali [India] are the scientists involved. This leads to the Nordstrom-Wali drive, generally known as anti-grav transport, which is, however, expensive and too cumbersome for most practical purposes.  Being in America, however, the technology is immediately put to use to make gravball stadia,  making a novelty game played exclusively by space dwellers into a big business game.  Sponsorship by such giants as Maccola, who have the lion’s share of fast food and soft drinks, is inevitable.  Gravball forms the ‘and circuses’ part of bread and circuses.

2130 The inauguration of ISPaG, the International Space Patrol Group, to police the many space stations in the solar system.  Even China signs up to this, and opens new domes on the Moon to colonisation.  It is rumoured that those colonists whose faces don’t fit, end up taking a brief walk outside without a suit, but no substantiation of such rumours can be found.

This is the period in which the Mike Gregg stories are set, shortly after the founding of ISPaG.

2160-2165 Russo-Chinese war

The Japanese came in on the side of the Russians, and set off several controlled Tsunamis to overwhelm the Chinese, apparently as a live test of this new technology.  Disruption was caused as far as India, now running its own affairs again, and there is almost world war.

British Prime Minister, Atlee Tebbit, one of the British Ruling Class, declares that as Britons dislike everyone equally, he will negotiate a settlement. [NATO long since fell into disuse].  Some accusations are made that the British are too closely associated with SovESA, but though Britain is currently nominally involved, and pays into the space program,  Britain is in other ways not associated with Europe, and has returned to the old concept of free trade.  Indeed, some say that they are a nation of free traders more of the ilk of Francis Drake and John Hawkins and the Royal Navy are no better than pirates.  Britain is shocked by such allegations and carries on in the same way.

This is the last point in which Britain has any political muscle at all, with a powerful wet navy, but no serious space program beyond an unwilling interest in SovESA.

Peace is achieved, partly because Japan is appeased for their earthquake control technology, which frightens the living shit out of everyone else.

2166 CanAm spy William Wilkin Williamson steals the Japanese earthquake data, and while Japan is negotiating with Russia over what parts of China and Korea they will own, Tokyo is devastated by an earthquake, and CanAm president Russell P. Hobbes dictates his own terms, and concludes a treaty with China. 

2166-2180 this is the beginning of the rise of CanAm, renamed Canamerica, which uses the data from Japan to make controlled earthquakes/eruptions on a small scale on the Pacific rim both relieving pressure from Mount Rainier, and bringing up mineral wealth from the mantle, using a weapon of war as a means to wealth. This is largely under the auspices of Seattle Dragon Enterprises [SDE], of whom W.W. Williamson is CEO, having stolen the Japanese data for his own purposes but donating enough of it to the government to stop Japanese imperialism before it begins.

2181 SDE [Seattle Dragon Enterprises] establishes a presence on Mars with wholly owned subsidiary Mons Minerals, to use the earthquake technology to exploit Olympus Mons controllably.

2200Canamerican companies have been looking into terraforming, and postulate a program to set light to Jupiter for greater heat on Mars, turning it into a brown dwarf.  Technology is still theoretical at this point.

2250 Jupiter is sparked by the joint efforts of several scientists on Mars, who won the race to making the technology work, as Mars feels increasingly isolated from Earth and its internecine warfare.  With terraforming beginning, including the throwing of some icy asteroids onto the surface to create standing water, and Mars beginning to bloom, Mars feels confident it can go its own way.

2254 Marspact declares itself independent; the loose confederacy of asteroid miners are a signatory to it, and Earth must buy some minerals at least from Marspact, even though the SDE mantle-mining equipment has relieved some of the pressures on mineral-raped Earth.

2255-2261 Canamerica reabsorbs the former God’s Nation, now a collection of primitive tribes, and outlaws public expression of religion.  Canamerica goes on to absorb Meso- and South America. 

Russia absorbs into their co-prosperity sphere such of the middle east as remains [the –stans, Iran, northern Iraq and the surviving parts of Pakistan and North Africa] and eastern europe. SovESA breaks up as Europe protests the militant and blatant expansionism, and Europe in desperation makes treaties with China and Siberia, who already have treaties. Britain, not wanting to be absorbed, returns to Europe on the condition that the Commonwealth as a whole is included.  Europe is not about to turn down the participation of Australia, New Zealand and India.   China is afraid of Canamerica too. There are now three main powers,  the Euro-Sino-Australasia zones, rather separate and vulnerable, the Russian juggernaut, and the Canamerican extents.

As the terraforming of Mars continues, Europe, Russian and Canamerica decide to send boatloads of political prisoners to Mars as they can now just be dumped there and left to fend for themselves.  Mars does not like this.

The prisoners who have been turned loose and can’t so readily be returned, as the ships bringing them do not use scheduled space ports, are rounded up, and made to swear loyalty to Mars alone; and if they do not, they are made into slave labour.  NOT an edifying period of civilisation for anyone involved.

2264 Mars sends an ultimatum to Earth to stop sending their misfits to Mars.  Canamerica has some idea of what Mars might be capable of doing as an ‘or else’ and apologises, and asks if Mars will be open for settlers for those who do not like the regime.  Terms are agreed, which include ‘no religion imported’ as Mars is officially atheist.

Russia takes no notice of the ultimatum other than to tell Mars that by rights they are a Russian colony, and on the 25^th October, with carefully chosen irony, Moscow ceases to exist, destroyed by one of the devices used to light Jupiter.

Russia, and the rest of the world, got the point almost immediately.

2266 Mars dictates terms to Earth.  Nations are outlawed, and the Solar Government is formed with representatives from all the major renamed regions, and the headquarters of government is at Mons City, Mars.  Mars slaves are freed, and offered the chance of citizenship or to return to Earth. 

Of those who choose to return, they are taken to South Africa which is neutral with some European affiliation and left to decide where to go from there.   Nobody said that returning to Earth meant they were going to return home.

starting to terraform Mars