Earth 2 - Colonization

The population and economy of Mars increased dramatically during this period.

In 2077 the United Nations had put together a fund which relocated 1000 people a year to a martian colony. As the price of launches decreased, the number of colonists a year increased to 10,000. Many war refugees took this offer to escape war torn regions.

During this time period, the United Nations Martian Settlement Committee put together an impressive fund to reward anyone terraforming Mars. At the end of each two year period the sum the Committee collected was distributed to the corporations and individuals who had contributed to terraforming. It became common practice for ships to be scuttled on Mars because the ship owners would be paid a small amount for the heat that the scuttled ship added to the atmosphere. Sometimes more than a trillion dollars was invested into terraforming each year.

Due to the climate crisis on earth, it was illegal to mine radioactive ore on the Earth's surface. The need for radioactive elements for nuclear reactors during the energy crisis prompted lots of uranium mining on Mars's surface.

Smelting furnaces in Martian orbit were used to smelt minerals from asteroids from the asteroid belt.

Various governments supported colonies of scientists to research Mars. These early colonies eventually became important technology centers. Many were re purposed for terraforming innovation.

It became trendy for billionaires to move to Mars with a group of employees from their own or other nations. These formed the Villas, consisting of 250-5000 settlers living in domes or underground. These villas often became more powerful as some of the second generation residents would find ways to make money, often via industry/technology, uranium mining, or UN sponsored terraforming.

#### **The Newton-Diana Lunar Elevator Project**

The United Kingdom championed a project to build a space elevator from the moon to the Lunar-Terran Lagrange Point 1. They received loans from China & Russia and the EU. The loans were payed back over a several years after the completion of the project, and interest was paid in the form of reduced prices for transportation. The Hierarchy and the EU were competing at this point for economic hegemony, so both were willing to give an advantageous deal to the UK in order to outplay one another.

The project was used to inspire unity and pride in the Commonwealth Dominion. The nations who directly supported the project (not just offering loans) were given administrative voting and profit sharing proportional to their investment. The investment proportion was as follows: UK - 52%, Canada - 20%, Australia - 12%, New Zealand - 7%, India - 2%, United States - 2%, Malaysia - 1%, Singapore - 2%, Hong Kong 2%.

The UK bought a space station from Canada and added a series of nanotechnology manufacturing plants, renaming the satellite Diana. They then claimed Lagrange 1 by buying a minor space station from India and simply replacing it with Diana.

They already had a minor scientific station on the equator.

They constructed the space elevator by building a series of nanofiber cables at orbital manufacturing satellites together at the Diana station. This project had a series of unique challenges. It is said that the cost of manufacturing projects is increased according to four factors, high quality control, expensive materials, research and development, and government red tape. The Newton-Diana project that had all four. Each fiber had to be created as a single perfect one piece strand and everyone knew that the entire project could fail if there were even a few molecules out of place could doom a thread, thus intense quality control was needed. At this point the world had a lot of experience with orbital manufacturing of graphene and nanotubes, but it was still expensive to produce and entirely new technologies had to be created in order to create these perfect threads. Furthermore, because other countries were investing in them, and this was a primarily government funded program, there was a lot of bureaucracy to deal with.

One reason the UK was able to keep R&D costs down was because of their spies who stole research from China, Russia, and the EU, all of which had done research on the feasibility and techniques for space elevators, though they mostly focused on Earth.

The United States primarily supported the project by giving the UK access to orbital nanotechnology factories at reduced rates and using its military to help with logistics of shipping parts to the Diana satellite. In return they were allowed to keep a small base to dock a few small ships at the Diana satellite and another small base for infantry at the base of the space elevator in the town of Newton. They were also given a limited number of highly reduced price shipments between the two bases each week.

#### **The 太阴-阶梯**  **Project**

The Chinese government championed a project to build a space elevator from the moon to the Lunar-Terran Lagrange point 2. While the project officially began seven years after the Newton-Diana project began, research was conducted long before it was initially announced, actually being seriously conducted upwards of five years before Netwon-Diana began. Chinese was actually extremely important for the success of the Newton-Diana Elevator. Early Chinese research was stolen by British spies and used by the British to accelerate the project. Some historians estimate that the knowledge taken by the British accelerated the project by anywhere from 5 to 20 years. The reason Britain finished the elevator first despite China's research advantage was because they were able to rely on independent and competitive corporations where as China's government owned businesses were constrained more by bureaucracy and political posturing.

### Interbellum America

####