Spacers

Spacers are a sub group/culture that has developed in the Sol system during the late 21st and early to mid 22nd centuries, following a temporary insulation of extra-cislunar settlement from Earth.

Spacers are ferociously independent when it comes to self governance and have resisted early attempts by some of Earths nations to reintegrate their settlements and nations into their 'home countries'. Generally, Spacers are community minded, and tend towards socialistic political structures, with a severe dislike for Earth corporations.

The vast majority of Spacer nations are part of the United Nations. Technologically, they have an advantage to Earth in all space related technologies, as the nature of the 'Era of Insulation ', left Earth with minimal scientific and engineering work done on space technologies.

Spacer History

Space Elevators and Asteroid Mining

During the first three decades of the 21st century, human settlements on the Moon and Mars were initially created by the major space powers, which changed when India constructed the first space elevator in the Maldives, followed by an Indonesian/Singaporean space elevator on the island of Batam. These space elevators, build with technology shared by the Titanians, allowed the quick and cheap transport of people and material into orbit, which further opened up the Sol system to humanity.

With this, the idea of asteroid mining gained massive interest from various investors and startups, which over the next decades would expand into orbital production facilities using the materials mined on various asteroids. It also allowed various independent groups to try and make a living with asteroid mining, but also food production and transport services, as well as just ideologically coloured settlements of groups wanting to be left alone.

Had the population of human settlements numbered 25.000 by 2025, it had grown massively to 24.6 million by 2085.

Beijing Impact

The Beijing Impact of 2087 was a local destruction event that lead to the destruction of much of Beijing and the decapitation of the political leadership of the Peoples Republic of China, as well as the poisoning of much of the surrounding areas around the impact by various highly toxic carbonyl compounds.

Source of the impact was a robotic interplanetary transport lighter originating from a PRC asteroid mining settlement on 3360 Syrinx, transporting 250 ktonnes of iron, nickel and cobalt carbonyls as well as 1 ktonne of platinum group metals to Cislunar space. Originally meant to aerobreak and then dock with a PRC orbital factory, the lighter arrived six months ahead of schedule l, at high interplanetary speeds. Protected by a heat shield meant to survive several aerobreaking maneuvers, it entered Earth's atmosphere and by chance impacted near the PRC governmental district, during a session of the National People's Congress, destroying it, and spreading it nominal payload over most of the rest of Beijing.

The near complete decapitation of the PRC government lead to the loss of centralised control over China, with many provincial governors seeking to rebuild the government under their leadership. In many cases they were able to subvert the PLA leadership in their province, leading to the two decade long PRC civil war, which eventually spread to include India, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Vietnam and other nations neighbouring the PRC.

It would end with the split of the PRC into three more or less equally sized nations, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China and the Peoples Republic of Nepal, each retaining the claim of being the 'real Chinese nation'.

It is currently believed that one or more Chinese dissidents modified the lighters navigational software to deliberately destroy Beijing.

Era of Insulation

In the wake of the Beijing Impact, Cislunar space found itself insulated from the rest of the Solar System. This was the result of several reasons that came together, but can equally be connected to the Beijing Impact.

1. The blockade of interplanetary traffic by the majority of Earth's powers, fearing a repeat of the Beijing Impact on their capital cities. The blockade allowed no traffic in or out of Cislunar space.
2. The blockade, in combination with the PRC Civil War, lead to a planetary economic crisis that was worse then the 1930s and 2010s economic crisis. The PRC Civil War lead to a blockade of major production centers on mainland China being blockaded by the various parties, as well as a switch of those production capacities to war materials. The interplanetary blockade in turn prevented materials from asteroid mining from arriving in cislunar space and the orbital production facilities. This lack of revenue brought the collapse of the entire field of asteroid mining companies and cislunar production companies. This in turn lead to a crisis in the banking sector and so on.
3. The PRC Civil War and the use of orbital assets in it, lead to a limited Kessler Cascade, as the various involved parties destroyed or attempted to destroy other parties orbital assets. As it is for Kessler Cascades, this had an impact of the orbital assets of other nations, but fast acting by other nations made it possible to limit the Cascade. The Cascade also cut the Nairobi space elevator at 25.000 kilometers above Earth's surface, casing two dozen climber cables to wrap more then halfway around the planet, causing heavy destruction along the impact path.

In the main part, it was the economic problems on Earth that lead to the Era of Insulation , as there was simply no money available for companies and nations on Earth to keep more then radio co tact with settlements outside Cislunar space.

Survival Period

As such the first decade (2087-2098) after the Beijing Impact is generally known as the Survival Period by Spacers.

Without shipments of food and other thing needed for survival in space, the majority of asteroid settlements found themselves at the very edge of survival, as only a relatively limited number of the oldest and largest settlements were self-sufficient in the area of food and water and only a few of those had a surplus of food and water that could be exported to other settlements.

As such, many of the smaller asteroid mining settlements were abandoned and their population evacuated towards other, larger settlements that had both food and water, if not always the space for the refugees.

In general, a sense of mutual support developed among the remaining settlements as they began to share resources and help between each other, helped along by the Titanians and the Mars Republic, with the Ares Soviet Republic occasionally helping.

By the end of the Survival Period, the food and water situation had stabilised and the human population outside Cislunar space had consolidated in 133 settlements, with a slight decrease of the populations to 24.1 million thanks to the failure of some settlements that had been unable to procure food, water or replacement parts, or where a transport carrying them had arrived too late.

Corporate Intervention

That the majority of Spacers view Earth corporations as 'parasites', can be laid firmly at the feet of asteroid mining and aerospace companies that have been a victim of the economic crisis. In many cases these companies were fighting for their own survival and against bankruptcy as investors and shareholders sold their shares or wanted their money back.

As such many of the smaller to medium asteroid mining settlements, most of which would later be evacuated, received orders to continue mining and stockpile the materials mined, even as food, water and other supplies dwindled. In some cases middle management in the settlement were ordered to lie about the situation.

Thankfully, in most cases those middle managers did not follow their orders, though sometimes for selfish reasons of personal survival. Though there was at least one case where a middle manager was spaced after it was discovered by the technicians and miners that they had been lied to and communication censored.

In other cases aerospace companies that build life support and other systems began to use stricter DRM and other measures to make money from their fabricators and fabricator patterns. Within a year the first fabricators were jail broken and patterns pirated to cheaply produce the parts. This in turns made the companies try to file legal action, which failed in many cases as there was a clear danger to human life.

This alone lead to the development of the Darwin Open Source Fabricator, with the help of the Titanians, and the equally open source Habitat Construction Kit, which allowed open source production of habitats up to Kalpana size and are constantly updated.

Local Governance

Typically, the local middle management found itself overwhelmed by having to deal with the situation. They proved to be under qualified to keep the peace and to provide for the people under them. While there were cases of managers getting past their problems and even helping their settlements to strive, in many cases it came down to other to provide leadership and support for their communities. Usually those leaders were already heads of worker associations, unions and guilds that had formed in the various settlements.

Generally, the management and the leaders worked well together, allowing to set up local governance as directives from the main offices on Earth eventually stopped coming, or became increasingly nonsensical when it came to actual survival of the population of a given settlement. This was especially true with settlements that had to be abandoned and evacuated.

Over the Survival Period, these local governance councils transformed themselves into actual forms of government, many of them basing their law codes on the laws of their 'home countries'. However, the situation forced many of the settlements into communal modes of governance, with a strong socialistic bent, though the majority of the new governments turned into full democracies by the end of the Survival Period.

Many of those local governments needed help setting up and as such looked towards the largest and oldest settlements, all of which had already existing local civilian governance institutions to administer their populations, but followed different models.

Ceres, for example, was administered by a German-French institutions and laws under the aegis of the European Union, while Vesta was administered like a United States territory. Other systems existed as well, like the already independent nations of the Ares Soviet Republic and the Mars Republic on Mars.

As such the surviving settlements based their local governance on these already existing models, receiving help from those places.

But that is not to say that these models weren't modified and had to adapt to the new circumstances of the Era of Insulation . In all places, even in those with an American background, there was a push towards communal and more social local politics, especially in the wake of the economic crisis experienced by the settlements.

Economic Crisis

At the beginning of the Era of Insulation , the economy outside of cislunar space was rather limited and heated towards resource extraction and transport to cislunar space. With the blockade of cislunar space, the limited Kessler Cascade and finally the economic crisis on Earth itself, that economy slid into its own crisis within a year, compounding the other problems of the Survival Period.

Without any market to sent the extracted resources, production halted and with the collapse of the entire asteroid mining sector on Earth, the workers and middle management in the various mining settlements lost their jobs, but we're unable to return to Earth. Only the evacuation to larger settlements was possible in many cases.

This left the new local governments with two major problems.

1. A raising number of unemployed from the resource extraction, transport and fabrication sectors.
2. The question about who owned the structure and systems of any given habitat, with the bankruptcy of the previous owner.

The latter was in all cases solved pragmatically, with the local governments deciding that the habitats and their systems had become public goods, though it meant that the local governments were now responsible for maintenance and extension. This went counter to what was happening on Earth where ownership majorly fell to various banks, before moving to speculators who believed they could profit when the crisis was over.

The unemployment on the other hand was a larger problem, that lingered for a longer time. As a consequence, many local governments began to implement a Basic Universal Income, to allow the unemployed to live in reasonable comfort, while trying to find employment. Some of these unemployed began to work for their local governments in various roles, like maintenance or law enforcement, while others tried to move into other, more creative areas.

The ressource extraction and transport sectors would start to return to their previous status by the end of the Survival Period, mostly thanks to new customers in the outer system, as the Titanians began to their first serious attempts of building space settlements with their Stapledon Globe Habitats (named after Olaf Stapledon, for describing a similar habitat in his 1937 SciFi epic Starmaker). It lead to the formation of new local asteroid mining companies, mostly in a cooperative model, owned by the workers.

While the fabrication sector began to recover as a result, the release of the Darwin series of Open Source Fabricators allowed everyone to own their own desktop fabricator and fabricate just about everything from toothbrushes to personal electronics, as feedstock for the fabricators was plentiful and cheap in the asteroid mining communities. Larger Darwin series fabricators could be bootstrapped from the desktop fabricator, allowing everyone to set up small 'fab shops' with Darwin fabricators of larger classes. It formed the base of a thriving ecosystem of open source and cheap fabrication patterns, most of which outperform similar high cost commercial patterns from Earth.

It is believed that the main driving forces of this open source ecosystem are the BUI almost all non-cislunar nations have, as well as the informal kudos social credit system that has developed amongst Spacers.

Another problematic sector of the economy during this time frame was banking and money transfer, which had been heavily centralised on Earth, with money transfers having to go through Earth banks. When these got into their own crisis, financial transfer requests from outside cislunar space started to be given lower and lower priorities until they stopped being processed at all.

Initially many habitats moved to try and process those transfers through Martian banks, but those where quickly overwhelmed. The only other method left was to form local banks and other financial institutions. Many of these new banks and institutions were founded on various forms of cooperative banking, with the German Volksbank model being the most popular, where every customer owned a piece of the bank along the 'one person, one vote' model.

This allowed a new decentralised financial system to develop outside Cislunar space.

Consolidation Period

The Consolidation Period followed the Survival Period and lasted from 2098 to the late 2110s, and was a period when the new lifestyle, culture and political climate of the Spacers consolidated itself, turning them into a distinct cultural grouping within the Sol System.

Work Culture

With the high number of unemployed at the end of the Survival Period, and the introduction of Basic Universal Income across the vast majority of habitats and settlements, work culture among Spacers changes dramatically.

Due to the requirements of space born work, namely a high education leven and technical skills to operate, overlook and maintain high tech equipment, and an abundance of those with those skills among the unemployed, many sectors of work changed their work times, allowing multiple people to work the same job. Generally work times dropped from eight to ten hours per week day down five to six, based in the job in question, allowing the employment of 33 to 50% of workers.

Additionally, the creation of local governments and local governmental structures and institutions soaked up those who had skills in management and were interested in the work, creating a highly motivated work culture within government.

Others decided to strike out on their own, using their skills in other ways. One thing that happened was that the profession of the 'inventor' made a comeback amongst Spacers, as they dove into 'inventing' new systems and technologies or improved on others, mostly as a way to give back to the community and to satisfy their own curiosity and work ethic.

Cultural workers and content creators was another field where people began to work, as they organised cultural events, organisations, and worked for the community, or began to work artistically, writing fictional and non-fictional works, poetry, music and created other forms of art, from pictures, movies to videos and games.

By the end of the Consolidation Period, the 'problem' of unemployment had all but disappeared as many of those that had Ben considered 'unemployed' worked self motivated in various sectors and fields.

Population Growth & Genemods

Following the Survival Period, birth rates climbed and the population numbers roade steadily, even faster then before the Survival Period. And that without any immigration from Earth. This was a sign that the majority of the population felt safe again and that they could raise children in the new, changed environment.

However, it was not a simple case of just growing population numbers for baseline humans. Instead, the majority of parents and parents-to-be wished to improve their children's survival chances in case such an even would happen again, as well as prevent some of the problems with the space environment they had themselves. As such, they increasingly requested genetic, modified gene-expression and transgenic modification of their children, sometimes even before conception.

While initially something of a free for all of genetic changes, some of which had negative effects in the long run, a basic 'Spacer Package' of inheritable genetic and EU genetic changes emerged.

1. Increased lung capacity (modified gene-expression)
2. Increased blood cell count (modified gene-expression)
3. Shorter body for reduced body volume, and resulting reduced caloric needs (genetic)
4. Increased radiation resistance coming from bacteria (transgenic)
5. Increased bone density and massive reduction of osteoporosis (genetic)
6. Increased muscle density and massive reduction of muscle dystrophy (genetic)
7. Reduced body hair cover (modified gene-expression)
8. Various modifications to reduce the chances of developing various forms of cancer and degerative age related diseases

Of course there were a few unintended consequences of those genetic modifications, which were, in the majority, benign. The reduced body hair cover for example lead to a stronger expression of hair growth on the head. For biological females, this expressed itself in thicker hair, while in addition the biological males experienced very strong facial hair growth, which in turn lead to a culture of carefully trimmed, shaped and luxurious beards.

Another benign side effect was that one transgenic modification lead to Spacer skin glowing a light neon green under UV light. Increased bone and muscle density, while massively reducing the effects of micro and low gravity environments boosted the bodily strength, so that Spacers can operate normally even under up to twice Earth standard gravity.

The modifications to improve oxygen intake and retention in tissue and blood, lead to the development of barrel chests and the blood that clotted quicker at injuries. It also allowed a Spacer to 'breathe vacuum' for up to two and a half minutes, if they are untrained, enough to get to a safet station or put on personal vacuum gear.

The better general health of Spacers, be it through genetic changes or healthy living, has currently increased their median life expectancy to 150 to 160 years, and though it is expected that newer generations might push the median over 200 years.

In the end the result of the genetic modifications lead to a Earthers calling Spacers 'dwarfs' as a derogatory term, after the race from fantasy, a term Spacers quickly started to use on their own, taking control of the use of the word.