Terro-Humanity and future history IYTU

[BwapTED]

Which Earth nations colonized other worlds? (This assumes you aren't doing something like ''a long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away...)

Does any nation or cultural group have a special place in your future history?

• Yanks/Brits/Russians/Chinese in Space (one major power dominated)
  
• Competing national colonies, a la 2300 AD
  
• A ''one-world'' Terran Federation type thing

• That was all so long ago that it's mainly question for ancient historians

• Something else?

I haven't decided for sure, but one idea I'm kicking around for an ATU involves the early colonial efforts being reliant on mountaintop equatorial mass driver systems/spaceports.

In that future history, three power blocs enjoyed a long lead in colonial efforts:

• Association of Southeast Asian Nations
• African Union
• Union of South American Nations

 

[epicenter00]

"Competing national colonies" is the closest to my ATU.

I posit that Earth has to conquer near-earth orbit in order to seriously start considering colonizing other worlds. Colony ships are built in orbit using materials that are primarily mined in space to save the prohibitive additional cost of shipping things up the gravity well in a pre-gravitics Earth.

As a result, though the major powers may dominate Earth orbit, they're not the only players in space. The cost of building a colony ship isn't so expensive that only a few nations can do it. Colonies are sent out by individual powers (China), groups of nations pooling their resources (European Union), and alliances of nations sharing technology and facilities but sending independent ships (American-Canadian-Australian Space Alliance).

However, they're not the only players sending out colonies. A number of pro-colonization NGOs also exist to help groups of very small nations send out colonies, usually through backing of philanthropic groups, private donations, and technology donations from major nations. Included in these NGOs are any number of larger, wealthier religious groups.

 

[Daidoji Dave]

Something I find intriguing is the idea that by the time a generation ship becomes practical it may not be earth or nations as a whole, but private groups launching them: cults, secessionists, vegetarians sponsored by billionaires, and other like-minded groups. They likely would draw from one nation for identity and allegiance, but they wouldn't only be "Americans (or whoever) in space." If anything, they'd be more than a little weird by stay-at-home standards.

From a discussion of minimum population size to prevent inbreeding:

I question the general assumption that such a mission would "need" to maximize the genetic diversity of the colonists. In fact, many potential groups of interstellar colonists might prefer to reduce their genetic diversity.

Imagine a small group of people with the sufficient motivation to divorce themselves from humans on Earth, launch across interstellar space for thousands of years, forcing their descendants to live within a tiny habitat, with the expectation that their common offspring will colonize a new planet a hundred generations hence. The kind of internal discipline necessary to motivate such a scheme is more like a cult than an open society.

Maybe less the UN Unity mission from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and more Amish in Space.

 

[BwapTED]

I'm using sleeper ships rather than generation ships.

 

[Golan2072]

In my Outer Veil setting, initially the assorted Earth governments had little interest in space, or the capability for much space exploration; once the private sector reached out to space and colonized it, they became little more than "flags of convenience". Most colonies had a national flag upon them, but the people running it were one corporation or the other, and the Earth nation-state had very little actual power over interstellar colonies. The only quasi-government of interstellar importance was the Inter-Stellar Trade Organization (ISTO), and it only intervened to prevent open corporate warfare, and, otherwise, acted as a coordinating body between the megacorps. When the Space Bubble burst, chaos ensued, and the result was an overall interstellar government, sponsored by the Earth nation-states, called the Federated Nations of Humanity (FNH).

The various Earth nation-states still exist as members of the FNH and enjoy a degree of autonomy (think States in the USA). On the other hand, the distances involved usually create quiet an amount of balkanization on the high frontier, and most power is in the hands of local (colonial or appointed) leaders, rather than the distant FNH and its old Earth nation-state backers. To the average colonist, Earth and its nations are a thing of the past, compared to new colonial life. Cultures may be preserved on the Outer Veil (i.e. the high frontier), and ethnic groups (and movements and NGOs and so on) might deliberately colonize far-away worlds, but old Earth isa very far away place for most second or third generation colonists.

In my Visions of Empire setting, Earth did not, initially, colonize other worlds; the Reticulan aliens colonized Earth, forging treaties with the Earth government and eventually putting them into a (pro-alien) federated framework. The (relative) trauma of alien domination forged a great unity among Humans - after all, different as we are from each other, we are still Human, and not... Strange Things from Zeta 2 Reticulii with a-sexual reproduction. So when the Terrans rose and broke the Reticulan yoke, they forged a united government - the United Terran Republic. Nationalism in this setting (and it is a very strong force) is pan-Terran rather than that of any of the old, pre-contact nation-state.

 

[Jason M Durkish]

By the time humans colonized space human culture had become a mixture of American and Chinese cultures .

 

[mike wightman]

I don't think the EU or Indian governments would agree with that. And since the US still has no manned space program not reliant on the Russians I would put the Russians ahead of the US in potential space colonisation, not to mention their's is the most mature technology.

Russia and China have manned space flight, India is likely to launch a manned mission before the US gets living bodies back into space.

Over in left field the UK government is investing in Skylon, which has the potential to be the ESA next generation launch vehicle, and it is a reusable spaceplane that could revolutionise the space business.

So the likely players in the space exploitation game in the near future are Russia, China, USA, ESA and India; probably in that order.

That's assuming we avoid a Twilight War or aren't contacted/make contact with an extant galactic civilisation...

 

[MichaelSTee]

In the setting I'm writing up (more imagining than writing, mostly, and also more as a background for my own fiction), a transplanted human race (similar to Vilani) discover Earth around the year 2002. They've only been in space a hundred years or so, and have a few colonies of their own, and have contacted several other minor human races. They don't take over Earth, just try to influence us, and they don't give us starships. But we happen to get a few anyway (by hook or by crook), and reverse-engineer them to build our own. So several Earth nations start colonizing other worlds by about 2010. USA, UK/Canada/Australia, Germany/France/Italy, China, Russia, Japan, India, Arab states, Brazil start colonies, as do other minor human races. Within 50-75 years, some of these start clamoring for independence; sometime later the Earth-bound peoples form a world government, and this nation and the Vilani-like nation establish a hegemony over the many human worlds (like Pournelle's Co-Dominion). Later, this federation will become an oppressive state. The "present day" will be during this time, as many colonies are looking to secede.

I might change the discovery date of 2002 to something earlier, maybe 1980 or 1990 - still debating this.

 

[Jason M Durkish]

I don't think the EU or Indian governments would agree with that. And since the US still has no manned space program not reliant on the Russians I would put the Russians ahead of the US in potential space colonisation, not to mention their's is the most mature technology.

Russia and China have manned space flight, India is likely to launch a manned mission before the US gets living bodies back into space.

Over in left field the UK government is investing in Skylon, which has the potential to be the ESA next generation launch vehicle, and it is a reusable spaceplane that could revolutionise the space business.

So the likely players in the space exploitation game in the near future are Russia, China, USA, ESA and India; probably in that order.

That's assuming we avoid a Twilight War or aren't contacted/make contact with an extant galactic civilisation...

Some of that could work in my universe .
Since the Eastern Orthodox Church is one of the major religions of my gaming universe .
And the reason I have my human culture be a mix between American and Chinese is I see both America and China becoming leaders . Is that I see both cultures leading in economics and technology .

 

[SnichtheWalrus]

Mixture

India would be a big player I would think. Same with religious colonies sponsored by Roman Catholics/Sunni and Shia Muslims/Hindus and so on. I also think many Japanese would be living in Lagrange Points and stations since they are used to less personal space.

 

[aramis]

My most recent ATU was lacking in specific Earth references. The concordat has only a vague idea that the racial homeworld is "Dirt." And they've found three worlds that essentially translate as such... well, the PC's in the first J2 ship in a millennium did. They are, however, strongly flavored by the players who worked them up. Kamaj is a hybrid of Kentucky, general south-east US, and pacific islander... It was never established that the Earth they sought was our Earth...

And there are vague remnant religions not actively discussed, all of which are derived from Terran sources, but the history includes a "God-Emperor" who destroyed every religious text they could find.

But there are also Cetaceans, Simians and Vargr, all of whom have legends of being from "Dirt"... or in the cetacean case, from "the ocean called soil"...

 

[BwapTED]

I don't think the EU or Indian governments would agree with that. And since the US still has no manned space program not reliant on the Russians I would put the Russians ahead of the US in potential space colonisation, not to mention their's is the most mature technology.

Russia and China have manned space flight, India is likely to launch a manned mission before the US gets living bodies back into space.

Over in left field the UK government is investing in Skylon, which has the potential to be the ESA next generation launch vehicle, and it is a reusable spaceplane that could revolutionise the space business.

So the likely players in the space exploitation game in the near future are Russia, China, USA, ESA and India; probably in that order.

That's assuming we avoid a Twilight War or aren't contacted/make contact with an extant galactic civilisation...

Yeah, before I veered towards my ''equatorial mountaintop star ports/launches" model, I had a similar list.

It's easy for me to imagine the EU unravelling. That may affect future space plans, and could doom the ESA.

I suppose, maybe, the French on their own...

2300 AD style.


It's also easy for me to imagine the USA undergoing a civil war or violent revolution.

China, India, or Russia might enter a period of major trouble.


I think any of those major powers could get knocked out by future events.










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I rather liked the Co Dominium stuff by Pournelle (also Niven and Stirling).

That looks like a good fit for Traveller.