System: 2190

As the outposts in space grew into colonies, human civilisation stretched beyond the cradle of Earth for the first time. By mid-century Cis-Lunar space, Luna itself, Mars and the Belt were all playing a significant part in a society that encompassed all of Sol System. As it would again when the extrasolar colonies became the Human Archipelago, the horizon of human endeavour leaped outwards.

This new Solar society was dominated, at first in power and always in numbers, by Earth:

The solar system was polarised socially and, by the 2190s, physically by the immortality treatments. The independence movement was growing in power again on Mars.

Increasingly, ownership of the Great Dream of colonisation was held by those outside Earth's atmosphere. However, the people with the muscle and power of 10 billion souls were not about to let everything Earth had paid for go quite so easily...

Cynics came to suggest that the Great Project, colonisation, was just a publicity stunt to take humanity's eye off what was really going on behind the scenes.

Critically, the UN and its Transnat-controlled media networks controlled the flow of information that the unadventurous found out. Full Transnet newsgroups and information was, of course, made available to all, but only those with the inclination made use of these facilities to find out the truth, and so most of Earth swallowed the propaganda sent them by the UN.

• The Decline of Eurasia
• Development of Cis-Lunar Space
• Development of Mars
• The Belt
• The Martian Underground
• New Additions to the Solar Family

The future of Ad Astra