Space Age

The **Space Age** or the **New Age of Exploration** from the middle of the 21st century to the 22nd century, was an informal and loosely defined American historical period marking the time period in which extensive interplanetary and interstellar exploration and development emerged as a powerful factor in American culture and the beginning of post-scarcity economics. It also marks the rise of the period of widespread adoption in America of colonialism and late capitalism. Many planets and systems previously unknown to humanity were discovered during this period, though many were already inhabited. From the perspective of many non-Americans, the Space Age marked a period of American tyranny from their dominance over space.

The term "Space Age" was originally used to describe the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States during the 1960s, however the term fell out of usage by the turn of the millennium. Exploration and Development of Space had started as early as the 2020s with private efforts to establish mining and manufacturing on the Moon and colonize Mars; however most define the true start date of the Space Age with the end of World War III and America's dominance over all military and by extent nationalist activity in Space.

The Space Age also featured colonial expansion—and its accompanying ideologies—by the United States of America—and to a lesser extent Mexico—during the late 21st and early 22nd centuries. The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of off-Earth territorial acquisitions. For much of the first half of this era, colonialism was exclusively defined by US expansion into off-Earth colonies thanks to a post-war military hegemony over space.

## Overview

*Main article: Timeline of space exploration*

The United States began systematically developing Cislunar Space from 2018 driven partly by the patronage of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. Under Musk's direction as CEO of SpaceX, a new, fully reusable spacecraft was developed, the Phoenix, which could fly further and faster by being refueled in Earth Orbit, and most importantly could be flown hundreds of times without need for extensive maintenance. In 2021 Lunar Energy Ltd. reached the Moon using this vehicle. In 2023 NASA funded the first human mission to Mars. To prevent conflict over space resources, the Outer Space Treaty was amended in 2025, formally granting private businesses rights to claim resources and administer lands beyond Earth, but maintaining the ban on territorial claims by nation-states.

## Background

### **Early human exploration (1958-2011)**

A prelude to the Space Age was a series of American and Soviet (Russian) missions to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and the Moon during the middle of the 20th Century. The threat of nuclear war between the two powers led to an arms race that focused primarily on creating more accurate and comprehensive means of surveillance, communications and weapons delivery, which both powers saw as culminating in space. The Space Race that emerged from this arms race, saw both powers make important first steps toward practical space travel, and culminated in the American landings at the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969 by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

By the start of the 1970s however, digital communications had advanced sufficiently to enable reliable unmanned surveillance and communications via satellites positioned in LEO, and US and Soviet space programs were retasked to see to the deployment and maintenance of assets in LEO. This period saw the development of more reliable rockets that were entirely controlled by national governments, and the first reusable spacecraft to service satellites in orbit.

## Cislunar Space (2018-2067)

The development of fully reusable spacecraft in the 2010s and the emergence of the nano-satellite industry led to a boom in human activity in Cislunar Space. By 2018 the number of annual launches had doubled, and by 2021 the first commercial flight to the Moon had taken place, with a permanent base being established at the Sea of Tranquility in 2023 by Lunar Energy Ltd.

In-Space Services were the driving force behind this rush to Cislunar space. As the Earth had become increasingly dependent on space-based communications and navigation technologies for economic and military activity on Earth, the need to maintain those assets became an important driver for private and government investment. The earliest in-space servicing companies were primarily responsible for satellite refueling.

By 2050, the US Geological Survey estimated that 25% of all raw materials used on Earth were mined in Cislunar space, and the computer and pharma industries had become dependent on in-space manufacturing and research. The GDP of the Lunar and Orbital Economies exceeded 25 Trillion-USD, largely controlled by the US and Japan who had committed the most resources toward capturing asteroids and developing infrastructure in space.

### **Asteroid development**

Deep Space Industries became the first company to purchase a beyond-LEO flight from SpaceX in 2019 to land a crew and mining robots on 3753 Cruithne in 2021. The Cruithne contract is widely seen as the beginning of the so-called "Space Boom," in which a surge of space startups emerged to take advantage of the exorbitantly low launch costs offered by reusable launch systems.

By 2021 three asteroid rendezvous missions were carried out by three separate companies, and a dozen more were planned over the next three years. Boeing, Northrup-Orbital, and Lockheed all began work on similar reusable launch systems over the next three years in a bid to produce competitor spacecraft to SpaceX, and the US government directly encouraged competition and set goals for human missions to Mars. Cislunar space was seen as the means to energize the sluggish economy of the era and asteroid mining allowed satellite manufactures to produce more ambitious spacecraft that could be refueled during service and remain in space for longer periods of time.

Asteroid mining immediately adopted the practice of positioning asteroids into parking orbits in stable gravitational pockets around the Earth and the moon, either to serve as anchors for the first elevators, or quarried in clusters for mining. Planetary Resources, Transastra, and Cismico were the largest asteroid mining concerns during this period, and employed a variety of techniques including optical mining to extract valuable voletiles for spacecraft propellant.

### **Lunar colonization**

The establishment of Tranquility Base in 2023 was seen as the next frontier of the space economy and dozens of companies emerged in the hopes of taking advantage of the Moon. The US government's support for a manned mission to Mars actually saw a significant degree of opposition from the business community as it was feared the Mars project would take valuable resources away from efforts to develop the Moon and Cislunar space as a whole.

By 2025 four bases had been built on the Moon using RedWorks In-Situ 3D printing systems and Tranquility Base was rapidly expanding as new businesses leased space for everything from bio-science research to tourism. Flights to asteroids and the Moon, along with the surge in LEO traffic forced the Booker administration to propose major changes in space regulatory policy and converted the Office of Commercial Space Transportation into an independent agency, and awarded the first federal contracts to reduce the presence of debris in orbit.

Japan joined the US as the second nation to settle on the moon in 2028, beginning construction of Horikoshi Base in the Sea of Moscow. By 2030 it housed a permanent staff of 1000. The establishment of Horikoshi Base also saw the debut of Japan's H-5 Super Heavy lifter and the Sunflower-class spaceship. In 2031 Tranquility City was semi-formally established as a company town, placing additional strain on the Outer Space Treaty.

While both the US and Japan held relatively equal sway over Cislunar space, the Moon was increasingly seen as being dominated by the United States. American Lunar colonies were home to 70% of the lunar population, controlled 83% of all Helium-3 reserves, and the Tycho shipyards that birthed the Orbital Command Stations serviced the creation of fleets of ships, both civilian and military. Meanwhile, Japan's bases were predominantly military or research in nature, and were positioned on the Far Side of the Moon. American dominance of the Moon was largely responsible for continued American dominance in Space. The Asteroids were too vulnerable to serve as bases for military operations (though Japan was certainly challenging that with their facilities on the Akiyama asteroid at L3), while the Moon was far more defensible and control of its Helium-3 industry allowed the US to field and fuel its Orbital Command Stations that surrounded the Earth and had been used to blockade Japan's sea and space assets to devastating effect.