First Age of Colonisation

In the First Age of Colonisation, Humanity returned to the Moon for Exploration and later for Colonisation to establish a stable base for expansion to Mars. This age saw the invention of many crucial pieces of technology that are still in use today, most notably the EM Drive, Nuclear Fusion Reactor and Aquaponics systems. This was also when Space was seen as a place for living, not as the final frontier. Space travel was commercialised at this time, with passenger flights departing mainly from major cities on Earth, but the first commercially available starships had not yet become available. Even later in the era when the EM drive had been perfected, interplanetary travel was still relatively slow.

## Timeline

#### **Causes for the First Age of Colonisation**

The primary cause for the First Age of Colonisation was the gradual degradation of Earth’s natural environment, gradually forcing government agencies and corporations to form their own space programmes and expand to reap the untold riches of outer space. The 2020s and 30s proved to be the most important decade of this expansion, with NASA’s Artemis programme paving the way for future missions. By 2030, the first colony was established on the Moon, along with SpaceX’s infamous attempt to land the first Humans on Mars, for which they were woefully underprepared. Records are incomplete for the time period of 2029 to 2041, all that is known is that SpaceX’s vision for a colony on the surface of Mars finally became a reality, and a manned mission led by Hugo Álfarez was sent to the moons of several of the Gas Giants. In the late 2020s, Earth’s environment reached a critical point, where the melting ice caps caused sea levels to rise, drowning low-lying island nations, flooding coastal cities and rendering hundred of thousands of square kilometres of agricultural land useless and infertile. Densely populated developing regions such as India felt the impact of the Environmental Collapse the most, with millions of homeless people living in cities such as Delhi being displaced and forced to flee.

#### **First Colonies**

The first colony ever established was a small city on the surface of Earth’s moon. While this was groundbreaking, and ushered in a new era in readily available nuclear power and a massive explosion in technological innovation, the colony was entirely dependent on Earth for resources, financial support and a steady flow of new settlers. In 2034, the first ever child was born on the Moon. This event was historically seen as the moment when the seed of Humanity’s first colonial venture into Space finally and irreversibly took root, setting in stone our inevitable future among the stars, and transforming it into not just a place for science and testing, but a place for families and living. This highly boosted the morale of Earth’s population, impressing upon them that other colonies were entirely possible, and in November 2042, the first colonial mission to Mars launched, arriving April of the following year. Unlike the disastrous first attempt, the crew were now adequately equipped for the harsh Martian conditions. The EM Drive was discovered in 2044, effectively halving the transit time from Earth to Mars, and later advancing even further to allow a burn sustained for months, or even years. The engine operated by trapping electrons inside a long tube and directing their EM Emissions, similar to the operation of a traditional rocket. The electrons bouncing around within the engine accumulates in power, gradually speeding up to speeds far beyond anything a traditional rocket could achieve, however it would still take months or years to reach the outer edges of the Solar System, meaning that effective infrastructure could not operate at long range. Following the invention of the EM Drive, an exploration mission led by the first ever flight-ready AI model departed in 2045 to set foot on the moon Titan of the Gas Giant Jupiter. This mission yielded the discovery of microbial life in the world’s dark oceans. The discovery of these creatures was declared the first discovery of an alien life-form. Unintelligent and trivial as it was, this further stoked the flame of space exploration, and now that Earth was borderline uninhabitable, this led millions more to emigrate to the offworld colonies and live on the frontier of advancement. The offworld population on the Moon and Mars reaches half a billion, along with another fifty million living permanent in orbit of any one of the Colonies, mainly on vast facilities in Low Earth Orbit. In 2077, Venus, the last of the three core worlds was finally explored by a manned vessel, an airship that hovered high in the atmosphere. The crew stayed for three weeks, monitoring the airship and deploying several navigation beacons. Humanity did not return to Venus for decades after this, with the most ambitious colonisation effort ever made by the United Nations being made in August of 2097. This effort was successful, and thousands of colonists moved to the outer reached of Venus’ atmosphere in November of that same year. This was the last massive colonial effort of the age. In 2097, a small cloud settlement was dispatched to Venus, using similar technology to the Airship twenty years before. The vessel carried one thousand initial colonists, and arrived safely two months later, and Venus is declared a Human colony. Over the last years of the 21st Century, more colonists emigrated to the fledgling colony on Venus. The last major colonial development of the century was the Colonial Trading Corporation leasing both the minuscule moon of Mars Phobos and a large area of the Asteroid Belt to support their Asteroid Mining ventures. As CTC’s monopoly over the natural resource industry grew, many campaigned for acts restraining the power of the megacorps.

#### **The Leavesden Act**

In response to the public outcry for the regulation of the activity of the expanding megacorporations, the United Nations (the United Nations of Earth’s forerunner) passed the Leavesden Act in 2100, which disallowed any corporate entity from owning assets with a combined value of over a quadrillion in their home planet’s native currency. This act was passed with much resistance, mainly from the Colonial Trading Corporation and Infinitech corporation. The act was formally decommissioned in 2214 when United Nations of Earth Credits UNEcr became the universal currency of all Human colonies.

#### **Asteroid Mining**

The third and final massive innovation of the First Age of Colonisation was the development of Asteroid Mining Technology. In June of 2081, the newly formed Colonial Trading Corporation dragged a Near Earth Asteroid into low orbit to be processed and refined into usable commodities. The asteroid (its exact name has been lost) was mainly comprised of Gold, Nickel and Terbium. These, at the time, were the primary materials necessary for circuit fabrication. Once CTC had demonstrated its effectiveness, many other large corporations began to develop their own asteroid mining programmes. CTC leased a large area of the Asteroid belt, and constructed infra-structure on Mars’ tiny moon of Phobos. Many of CTC’s records of this time period are redacted. The only released information is that over 20,000,000,000,000 tonnes of resources were sold and processed, making large scale surface mining redundant.

## Long-lasting effects

#### **Effects of the First Age of Colonisation**

The most notable effect of the First Age of Colonisation is obviously the settlement of the three Capital Worlds. Mars, Mercury and Venus. Beyond this, asteroid mining became almost entirely ubiquitous over surface mining. Several critical technological and scientific developments also took place, the most notable being the invention of the now universally utilised EM Drive. Many of today’s megacorporations originated in this time period, most notably the Colonial Trading Corporation and Infinitech corporation.