Biology has come a long way in two centuries, especially the sciences of genetics and medicine. Thanks to advanced computing techniques, most of the genes in most relevant organisms have been categorized and understood, meaning that genetic manipulation is much easier to control. Thanks to this, many genetic illnesses like Parkinsons and Sickle Cell Anemia have been entirely wiped out. Additionally, advanced understanding of genetics has led to the development of the gene chip, a computer chip that contains all relevant information about a person’s genetics, making it much easier for doctors to prescribe medications that will work well with an individual person’s health.
Through developmental biology and materials sciences, most hospitals in the Solar System now contain cloning wings, where scientists construct artificial organs and body structures to replace damaged ones. Where nowadays getting a transplant can take months or years, now a new organ can be obtained within a few days, and patients no longer need to worry about organ rejection. Advancements in robotics have also made minimally-invasive surgeries common and easy, reducing recovery times for patients. Invasive surgeries still exist for extreme injuries, but are much less common.
Diseases still exist in the Solar System, especially in asteroid colonies and other places far from hospitals. Antibiotics are almost never used now, as the bacteria that prey on humans resist all of them. Nowadays, most medicines used to cure bacterial diseases use genetic engineering to render bacteria sterile or make them right-out die. Certain fungal diseases also prosper in space, especially ones resistant to radiation and that can grow at the low temperatures present in human settlements. Usually, though, these illnesses can be cured, and people seldom die of diseases.
A big problem in space is radiation. Without the Earth’s atmosphere, many space colonists find themselves exposed to deadly radiation doses all the time. Some colonists deal with this by taking pills that contain anti-radiation compounds, while others have been genetically-modified to have resistance to radiation. Cancer is still common in the human race, but many cheap and powerful therapies exist, meaning that much less people die of it if they are diagnosed properly. In most cultures in space, screening oneself for cancers is as common and accepted as washing your hands. This, combined with many other factors, has reduced human aging. A fifty-year-old in 2230 is about as healthy as a thirty-year-old in 2021 is, and people regularly live to the age of a hundred and forty.
On the other hand, advances in biology have led to some less-savory outcomes in the form of genetic modification of humans and animals. Many animals such as cows and chickens have been modified to produce more meat, leading to the “box cow” phenomenon, though eating meat is actually pretty rare in space since animals are so much work. Human genetic modification has been used both to cure diseases and to create what can only be referred to as chimeras, humans with genetic modifications from other animals. Most large states ban this sort of modding, but it is still popular in some societies, where people modify themselves for aesthetic or utilitarian purposes. Soldiers of an asteroid state may have increased muscle mass or more durable skin and tendons. Some have modifications to their eyes that allow them advanced night vision or distance judging. There is also a subculture of folk who will use genetic modification to create bizarre aesthetic appearances, such as modding their eyes to change shape or their skin to produce scales instead of hair. This is morally-grey at best and is usually looked down upon.
Biology has also revolutionized food production. Vertical farming and bacterial genetic modification allows for lots of food to be made in a very small area. In the Outer Colonies (a term used for colonies farther from Earth than Ceres, excluding Sakhrat-Allah), cyanobacteria are a major food source, while lab-grown meat and gmod plants are used closer to Earth to provide protein in diets. Seaweed is also a major food source now, as it can be grown easily in small spaces, as are insects.
Computers of the future are vastly different from computers of today. The cracking of quantum computing and the advanced materials of the asteroid mining age has led to breakthroughs in tech that make computers faster and more powerful. With the speed of quantum computing and new materials, terabytes of data can be transferred in the blink of an eye, and massive calculations can be performed that make AI much more effective. Technologies like voice recognition and image recognition are effectively solved. AI can also perform much more complex tasks requiring thought and creative thinking, though humans still perform many high-paying jobs. Jobs such as manufacturing, construction, mining, and agriculture are performed almost exclusively robotically, with a single mine or factory requiring only one or two on-staff humans. Meanwhile, architects, businessmen, chefs, doctors, engineers, lawyers, pilots, researchers, and many other kinds of workers have much of their job done for them by machines and computers which they supervise. Things are even crazier on Earth, where driving and shipping are entirely autonomous and it’s actually illegal to drive a car on a road manually.
Computer modeling has been drastically improved as well. With the invention of extremely powerful computers came the ability to model humans really well, so that virtual spaces can be used to mimic real spaces. Computers can model how human demographics will react to a product, how human emotions will change in response to a stimulus, how drugs will affect a certain organism, and how humans will interact with 3D objects, allowing for improved safety of architecture.
The speed of computers combined with the advanced modeling has also made a breakthrough humanity has been waiting for since before our current time— personality. Human brains can now be modeled in such a way that they can create a person with emotions, memories, and free thoughts. The first of these was Erdoch, an AI built by a Martian company in the year 2200. Erdoch did not live very long due to a technical glitch, but while alive it was essentially a person, capable of feeling emotions and creating new ideas. This has, perhaps unfortunately, been run with by many people, and has made entirely AI people exist around the Solar System, though they are very rare. Making a realistic human body has been possible since the 2060s at least, and this means that artificial humans can be made by those with the proper resources. This has been used in everything from warfare to psychology to prostitution. Sentient AI can also be put into computers, however, and can be made to run spaceships or do other human jobs. At the current time, though, sentient AI is so expensive to make that humans are still needed for many tasks.
In robotics, materials science and engineering combined with advanced computer programming has led to incredibly sophisticated robots, capable of doing all sorts of autonomous tasks. Battery technology is such that robots can hold a charge for weeks or months without producing their own power. Self-sufficient robots capable of repairing damage and responding to new environments made space mining possible. Construction, search and rescue, prospecting, drilling, surgery, mechanics, and many other jobs are performed by robots capable of performing tasks and noticing issues that humans never would. Robotic soldiers outnumber human soldiers 100 to 1, taking all sorts of shapes.
Prosthetics have come a long way too. Due to brain-computer interfaces, humans can now use the internet with their brains, see images in their visual feed, and perform all of the functions of a smartphone in their mind. Prosthetic limbs are common in the Solar System, and are better than biological limbs in basically every way, even being able to use metabolic energy as power. Cyborgs live normally and comfortably amongst humans, though some conservative humans are prejudiced against them. Humans of 2230 think of cyborgs the way we think of gay or transgender people, just as another possible form of human.
From the days of rockets and shuttles, spaceflight has become something almost unrecognizable from its original form. While nowadays we construct ships on Earth, where air resistance and drag are important to consider, spaceships of 2230 are built in space, allowing them to be much more advanced and operate totally differently. In space, there’s no air resistance or drag, so aerodynamics isn’t a factor when considering ship design. All of the power that a space cruiser can muster has to come from its thrusters or from a source of power available in space such as sunlight. Generally, the former is more accepted, as space travel engines can be made very efficient. Some ships still use chemical engines, but these are normally landers and shuttles that need to travel planetside to pick up supplies or the like.
Generally, when you’re considering space travel, there are three kinds of engines you can use: ion thrusters, photonic propulsion, and antimatter propulsion. The physics that makes these work are
nuts, so I’m gonna simplify and you can look it up yourself if you want more.
Ion thrusters work by firing a stream of xenon gas and electrifying it, causing it to repel a magnet and pushing the ship forwards. This technology already exists in 2021, and is used to power satellites and other small objects in Earth’s orbit, but in the future they become much more efficient and can be used to thrust large craft. Ion thrusters are generally used by small, nimble ships such as fighters, satellites, or yachts. It’s possible to travel long distances with them, but it takes
forever, as the top speed of an ion thruster is about 220,000 mph and space is big. For a while, though, this was humanity’s only option, and traveling between Earth and Mars took about four months. Ion thrusters are commonly used also as weapons in the form of ion cannons, which concentrate the xenon and superheat it into a plasma, blasting and burning whatever it hits. Ion thrusters and cannons do not work on planets, as the other ions in air cause them to fail.
Photonic propulsion is faster than ion thrusting but is more energy-intensive, requiring tons of electrical power. This works by firing a super-powerful laser into a solar sail, a light, thin, and flexible material that can absorb the momentum from light and convert it into thrust. This used to be used a lot in space travel, as it can get you from Earth to Mars in only 4 days at a speed of 670,000 mph, but nowadays it is so costly and cumbersome that it is almost never used. Laser grids do get used as weapons, though.
Finally, antimatter propulsion is the fastest and most efficient way to travel through space. This works by essentially making a huge explosion to thrust a ship forwards. When matter and antimatter collide, they explode and release a shitload of energy, and through advanced materials science this has been harnessed to be used for thrust. Antimatter propulsion is extremely fast, with the average ship moving at 4.5 million mph and the top-of-the-line military cruisers moving at up to 70 million mph, blowing the other two forms out of the water. Antimatter propulsion is crazy expensive, though, so it’s used for large cruisers and cargo ships. Antimatter thrusters do not work planetside, and even trying to use one planetside would cause an explosion that would likely destroy whatever planet you’re on.
Basically every ship out there has a nuclear reactor onboard that makes the power needed for thrust, though many ships also employ solar panels to power other things on the ship and take the burden off the reactor. Most ships have advanced auto-pilots that can run most onboard processes, as well as maintenance bots that can make repairs, so not a lot of people are needed to run a space cruiser when compared to, say, a modern-day naval ship. Cargo crews are usually only two or three people, while military ships can be a few dozen.
Guns, guns, guns. Is there anything humans like more than blowing shit up or killing each other? Apparently not, because from 2021 to 2230 humans have improved the art of blowing each other to smithereens like it’s their only job. The gun is an efficient and deadly weapon, but humans have made tons of improvements upon it, making more deadly weapons using more advanced technology. Some of these weapons are in their prototype stages today, such as railguns, but others came about only as a result of centuries of work into the art of making each other miserable.
Most weapons of the future require massive amounts of electricity and as such require supercharged lanthanum batteries. You can think of these like a second ammo source that needs to be reloaded less-frequently. When it comes to projectile weapons, future soldiers have two primary options: railguns and laser weapons. Railguns work by using magnetic coils to accelerate an object to terminal velocity. The projectile hits with an incredible amount of force, exploding in the process. A laser weapon, meanwhile, concentrates a super-powerful beam of light until it can burn through basically anything you point it at. Railguns have better range, while laser weapons tend to be more accurate but lose power the longer they’re fired. Laser weapons also heat up more rapidly than a railgun, meaning they can overheat if fire is sustained. Due to a variety of advances, both weapons tend to come at about the same size as current guns and are just as lightweight. Traditional firearms are still occasionally used in combat, but only in cases when a railgun or laser weapon is too destructive.
Other weapons exist as well. EMP grenades can disable enemy electronics, while microwave weapons use a satellite dish to concentrate microwaves on a target, causing them pain without killing them. Have an enemy hiding behind cover? Use a handheld guided missile. Have an enemy in close proximity? Use a lanth-TASER, a suped-up taser with enough electrical energy to kill someone on contact. Want to blow someone up for cheap? Use a battery-powered grenade that superheats a lanthanum battery and creates an explosion twice as big as a modern-day fragmentation grenade and four times as hot.
But why shoot people with a gun when you can kill them with your bare hands? Advances in robotics have led to exoskeletons being lightweight and highly-efficient, making a soldier much stronger than they would be alone. 2230 exoskeletons can be worn under clothing and are cheap to make, nearly quintupling the strength of their wearer when used correctly. With armored gloves and a powered exoskeleton, a soldier can punch holes in brick walls, lift trucks, and beat opponents to a pulp without needing a gun at all. When connected to armor, a soldier with an exoskeleton becomes a force to be reckoned with.
When it comes to armor, there are a few options. Your general armor is composed of hyperlite plastic, a lightweight plastic based on starlite that is shock resistant and heat-resistant, as well as several other materials like graphene, carbon fiber, and aerogel. While a railgun would turn even the most advanced modern-day armor into shrapnel, starlite-graphene-aerogel armor can take the hit about as well as a plate carrier can take a modern-day rifle round. In a pinch, hyperlite can withstand temperatures of up to 10,000 degrees Celsius. For lighter armor, Non-Newtonian Fabric (NNF) can be used, a material that becomes harder when hit by a projectile. These materials are light enough to be used for a pilot’s jumpsuit or a politician’s shirt, and can provide about as much protection as a plate carrier. A direct hit from a railgun will still turn the target into goo, but they can withstand near-misses and hits from normal bullets very well.
In space, ion cannons get used, weapons that propel a stream of electrically-charged xenon concentrated into a beam. Railguns and lasers also get usage, as well as missiles of all kinds. Since there’s no atmosphere in space, nuclear weapons have less of the stigma that they do on Earth, and they get used from time to time in space battles alongside other missiles.
Then there’s the grand-daddy of them all, the most powerful weapon ever devised by humans— the antimatter bomb. Antimatter bombs are nuts. By causing matter and antimatter to collide, they convert mass into energy (this is what E=mc^2 means by the way). To put this into perspective, the strongest nuclear bomb ever detonated, Tsar Bomba, had a blast force of 50 megatons of TNT and weighed 60,000 pounds. To replicate the same explosion with antimatter, you would need two and a half pounds. An antimatter bomb dropped on DC would turn the Mid-Atlantic United States into a bay. One dropped on London would make most of Western Europe disappear. An antimatter bomb wouldn’t just blow up a country— it would most likely end life on Earth. As such, the antimatter bomb is heavily-guarded, and they are not allowed within Earth’s orbit.
