CS: Far-future Scenarios

### **Far-future (250+ years)**

It was simple to predict 300 years in the future for soothsayers of the year 600 AD/CE: there wasn't much science, much less research and development. Indeed, between 600-900 AD, not only was there very little development in terms of technical capacity (or social forces or political boundaries, etc.), there was arguably some regression – at least in Europe, where the post-Roman downfall led to the stagnation that history has since dubbed the Dark Ages.

In the modern era, it's fantastically difficult to predict the future, at least with any degree of confidence. Only time will tell the difference between confidence and accuracy. When will we hit the next major plateau of development? How long will it last? What will be discovered that we have no idea about right now? In the far future, assuming we haven't regressed after blowing ourselves back to the stone age, portions of technology may follow Clarke's Third Law:

> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
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> - **Arthur C. Clarke,**Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)
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The technology at this level will indeed be magical, and plenty arcane, but not necessarily dependent on mystical forces (unless one counts quantum mechanics as a mystical force...). Inspiration at this level is squarely in what some call "Space Opera," including both the *Star Trek* and *Star Wars* franchises.

## **Situations and Expectations**

### **Power Generation**

One of the major developments will be the progression past fusion power. Fusion may be able push slow growth across our own solar system but it's unsuitable for forays more distant. There are several theoretical contenders for the first steps past fusion and a campaign could address the transition to (or competition between):

* Antimatter: all one needs is a way to cheaply produce and contain the most reactive fuel in the universe...
* Zero-point Energy (ZPE): squeezing juice from the fabric of the universe itself.

### **Long-distance Travel**

Casual SciFi fans often underestimate just how far a single light year is, much less the effects of stacking that distance for a long-haul. Generating power is only part of the challenge: there needs to be greater understanding in how to go fast. As some engineers put it, humanity needs to break through the "luxon wall."

Once we've managed to exceed "c" humanity runs into the same problems it's already known, but now with new levels of miscommunication and xenophobia. Even if humanity is the only intelligent species in the galaxy, once folk are "out there" – they'll start evolving in new directions.

Speculation's default far-future scenario leans on the Mediocrity Principle. Not necessarily that humans are mediocre, but rather that we're probably close to average in most categories. Wonderfully, that means we could well find a larger galactic community – and we'll fit right in. Humanity joins the federation of planets. Here, piloting skills and transportation systems now contend with interstellar distances.

* Variation: history shows that contact was made a long time ago and largely suppressed for sake of politics.

### **Terraforming and Geoengineering**

As higher modes of power are researched and eventually tapped, eco-engineering merges with terraforming to create whole new levels of arguments as people call for Planet Earth to be our first laboratory for planetary-scale geoengineering.

* Venus is terraformed to the point of reversing and increasing planetary spin to approximate 24-hour cycles. Who gets rights to colonize and homestead? Who objects when the idea is floated to drag Mercury over to be Venus' moon?
* Once Mercury stops being Sol-1, how many others fear the end of Mars (and maybe Earth) when Callisto is tugged from Jupiter's orbit to be a natural Martian satellite?
* How would success at terraforming affect the drive to exploring?