System: 2230

By 2230 Humanity was already settling into its new pattern in the solar system. The Transnats no longer reigned supreme on Mars or Ceres, where they were reviled as symbolic of all that was wrong on Earth.

The authorities on Earth insisted that the Belt should not be held responsible for the devastation wrought by Shiva, which was 'clearly the work of a small group of insane fanatics'. Despite this official position most Earthers were deeply suspicious of Ceres. This suspicion was reciprocated after the unjustified reprisals against noncombatant habitats.

Similarly on Mars, there was widespread hostility to Terran space. Both Mars and Ceres maintained massive defensive facilities against invasion from space. Here Martian gee helped immensely, in that by the simple injection of rubble into the course of an aerobraking ship, that ship could be forced to abort its manoeuvre and would rapidly leave Martian space.

The Martian government, such as it was, was enthusiastically attempting to build an anarcho-socialist utopia, where people helped each other to the best of their ability and available resources. This was much easier than in earlier ages, as technological developments over the preceding 200 years had freed those with the technology and resources from the need to work onerously hard in order to provide for themselves or to acquire luxury goods.

That is not to say Mars was or is homogeneous in its peoples, just that their core values and attitudes towards other people and outsiders from other villages are very similar.

Cis-Luna space remained the prime economic location in the solar system, as processing point for bulk raw materials inbound from Luna, Mars and the Belt. Here any mass reduction took place before transfer to the beanstalks and the Terran surface.

The future of Ad Astra