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Mike Whittlesea, for UK magazine Speed & Power

Member States of the United Sol System

(c. 30th century CE)

The United Sol System (top flag) is an entity that fills the same essential function as the United Nations of Earth: it is a pan-governmental organization conceived to deal with issues that affect internal interplanetary relations and/or the system at large. The USS is a member of, and serves as the primary seat of, the interstellar United Nations of Humanity, which is in turn a member of the United Spacefaring Sophonts Coalition (multilayered decentralized government is the most practical form of organized government in space).

Left column, top to bottom:

Inner System Territories, with the flags of Mercury (left) and Venus (right) Territories below

Free Democracy of Ma'at, a multi-body nation composed of several large inner-system asteroids (Apophis, Eros, Icarus, and Phaethon)

Earth-Moon Union, in turn composed of the United Nations of Earth and the Lunar Territory

People's Republic of Mars, which includes Phobos and Deimos Territories

United States of the Solar Belt, which is composed of hundreds of main-belt asteroids including Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea

Right column, top to bottom:

Jovian System Federation, including the lunar-planetary states of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io

Saturn Alliance, including the Ringshadow Federation of aerocities on Saturn and the lunar-planetary states of Iapetus, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, and the Joint Authority of Titan

Uranus Coalition, including the Tilted Sky Confederacy of aerocities on Uranus and the lunar-planetary states of Titania, Oberon, Ariel, Umbriel, and Miranda

Moons of Neptune Alliance, including the lunar-planetary states of Proteus, Nereid, Larissa, Galatea, Despina, and the Republic of Triton

Outer System Territories, with the flags of Pluto-Charon (left) and Terminus (right) Territories below (also including Eris, Haumea, and Makemake Territories, not shown)

Bonus: flag of the United Nations of Humanity itself, composed of hundreds of member star systems across a sphere of influence nearly twenty parsecs in diameter.

hey folks, I wrote a thing and I’m proud of it! it’s a short sad story about a man dying alone in deep space. check it out!

Mercury is a small, airless world in the deep inner Sol system, the closest planet to its sun and consequently a world of thermal extremes. Its solar day is over 1400 metric hours long, meaning that any point of the surface is exposed to sunlight for 700 hours or more. Because of this Mercury isn't an especially populated world –just under twenty million souls live and work almost entirely beneath its rocky crust– but the surface facilities shine brightly because there is no atmosphere to dull their light.

Much of Mercury’s 19.4 million inhabitants are concentrated in the capital city of Lóng Cháo, embedded into and under the surface of Rachmaninoff Crater (seen here on the terminator line, in the northern hemisphere). Its orbital space, however, is busier, serving as a hub for the ore traders hauling raw materials from one side of the solar system to the other.

Mercury is an autonomous territory of the United Sol System, as part of the Inner System Territories. Its flag, an inverted monochrome depiction of its penumbra, is shown below the main image.

more worldbuilding stuff! photobash of a future human-inhabited Mercury, plus its flag, created for my hard science fiction setting Astra Planeta. done using assets from Space Engine.

Venus is the second planet in the Sol system, an Earth-sized rocky world with a dense, hot CO2 atmosphere and aggressively volcanic surface. The only habitable zone of Venus is a relatively thin layer of atmosphere some fifty kilometers above the surface, where the temperature and pressure closely resemble conditions at sea level on Earth.

Because of this air layer, the skies of Venus are swarming with aerostat habitats to support its 25.4 million inhabitants (seen here as a scattering of hazy glowing dots in the thin crescent of twilight). The largest aerostat is the capital city of Najam Alsabah, nestled in the lower stratosphere. One of the key drivers of Venus’ growing population is its wealth: the territory has become quite prosperous over the last several centuries due to the harvest and export of valuable, rare chemicals such as nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous.

Venus is an autonomous territory of the United Sol System, as part of the Inner System Territories. Its flag, a bicolor high-contrast depiction of its vast atmospheric cloud waves, is shown below the main image.

at last, some more worldbuilding stuff! photobash of a future human-inhabited Venus, plus its flag, created for my hard science fiction setting Astra Planeta. done using assets from Space Engine.

writing sci fi is fucking exhausting bc i have a whole degree in aerospace systems now so my brain simply Will Not let me write a scene without doing the setting justice

I'm starting to come back around to Astra Planeta in a really substantial way, and if you don't mind I'm gonna think out loud here for a little.

Astra Planeta is categorically hard science fiction, in that it adheres to the definition of the genre: the scientific and technological elements presented in the world's canon are within the realm of what we consider possible with our current collective knowledge of science and technology. However, ASP breaks the mold of hard science fiction by being optimistic in three key ways: technological, social, and existential.

Astra Planeta is technologically optimistic in assuming that any engineering problem standing between us and efficient interstellar travel can be solved. According to the canon timeline, fusion power is relatively commonplace by the mid-21st century, and by the start of the 22nd century humanity have developed a proper torchship. Human health issues stemming from long-term space travel are easily resolved with high-power magnetic shielding and centripetal pseudo-gravity, plus a touch of good ol' genetic therapy to keep the body strong and healthy. Wormhole technology is developed for instantaneous communication by the 22nd century, and by the end of the 23rd century humans have begun to unlock faster-than-light travel by engineering our first warp drive. In the few centuries between the first spaceflight and the first extrasolar mission, humans figure out (non-cryogenic) stasis, perfect closed-system environment maintenance, and build AI with thought patterns so similar to people they might as well have souls. We have our cake and eat it too. All of this is within the scope of "scientifically possible," though certain parts are hotly debated in academic circle. But the rapidity with which we achieve these milestones is shamelessly optimistic. It has to be, or else the premise of the setting falls apart.

Astra Planeta is socially optimistic in assuming that humanity, as a global entity, can overcome -or at least overlook- the cultural divisions which set people apart and cooperate as a singular civilization. I've talked about this extensively elsewhere, but one of the keystones of the project is the thorough demilitarization of planet Earth and all her nations. By the end of the 21st century, "war" is a word that has passed out of the news cycle and into history books. It took some doing, sure, but in this reality humankind was faced with the imminent degradation of their home planet and collectively decided that there were bigger fish to fry than each other. Complex issues left unresolved for generations were gradually untangled and sorted out, with a lot of patience and a bit of nihilism. Implanting a profound sense of human fragility into the global consciousness helped give them all a sense of perspective. Nothing can last forever. There's no point to being the best. The only solace we have in the vast and indifferent universe is each other, and isn't it important, then, to make life better for ourselves and everyone around us? This is how we finally reached the stars: together. Upon making contact with other sapient beings, we carried this lesson with us and did our best to befriend them. Astra Planeta operates on the principle that the Great Filter is the shedding of tribalism, and assumes that the human species is smart -and kind- enough to achieve this.

Astra Planeta is existentially optimistic in assuming that life is not rare in the universe at large, and thus there are not only dozens of worlds nearby which harbor biospheres, but there are also several advanced, peaceable civilizations in close proximity -both in space and time. Statistically, the number of civilizations in the setting implies a maddeningly large number of contemporary civilizations present in the galaxy at large, which does not line up with current evidence whatsoever. It breaks from expectation not only with first contact happening at all, not only with first contact going relatively well, but with multiple first contact events all going relatively well. It assumes that mutually intelligible communication is possible for all contact events, and that most contemporary civilizations share our basic morals and aspirations in some sense. All of these elements are, given our current hypotheses on alien life, immensely improbable –but not impossible. Granted, this isn't baseless contrivance purely to make the setting interesting; there is underlying justification for most of the more conspicuous contrivances. For example: taking our planet Earth's biosphere as a point of reference, it seems likely that if complex life exists anywhere in the universe for a long enough span of time, it will evolve some degree of sapience. Odds seem to be very slim that any of these hypothetical sophonts would develop advanced technology, and even less to the point of globalization and multi-planetary society. But the fact remains that they could, and in a universe where life is far more abundant than expected, a small fraction of biospheres generating spacefaring civilizations still makes for quite a few spacefaring civilizations. ASP does not posit that the clockwork of reality has a conscience and is merciful –it is often explicit in stating that the universe simply is what it is. What it does posit is that, however statistically improbable this may seem given our current level of understanding, the cosmos is practically teeming with life. Without this concession to "realism," the premise of the setting falls apart completely.

All three of these assumptions are crucial to the Astra Planeta canon, as their interplay forms the diverse interstellar near-utopia that is the United Spacefaring Sophonts Coalition –which, of course, the setting centers on. As mentioned, ASP does not assume that the forces of nature are kind; the randomly catastrophic nature of the universe is the prime source of narrative conflict here. But Astra Planeta stands as my monument to hope: a world that is better, but still interesting.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk :)

FTL in Astra Planeta

All known interstellar civilizations in the Astra Planeta canon are capable of faster-than-light travel, in some cases (skae and Calypsians) thanks to the teachings of humanity, but mostly because of their own scientific merits. The only known form of macroscopic FTL travel is the warp drive, which has historically been achieved a few hundred years into each civilization's spacefaring age since the physical and engineering challenges that must be overcome to actually make a working prototype are extremely complex.

A warp drive works by bending spacetime in such a way as to simply amplify the vessel's real velocity; it doesn't actually generate any acceleration. An object's real velocity at warp drive activation determines its FTL velocity, but it takes time to accelerate to that real velocity at a safe acceleration (one standard Earth gravity). What results is a tradeoff between the time spent speeding up and slowing down, and the time spent in warp, which varies depending on distance and real velocity.

Finding the optimal interstellar vector utilizes a simple asymptotic formula (created by @catgirlbionics, thanks again!) involving three variables: the distance to the target in lightyears (d), the warp amplification factor (a), and the maximum real-space velocity of the object as a decimal value of the speed of light (v). This function equates to the total flight duration in days (T).

(707.646*v)+((d/(a*v))*365) = T

By plugging in specific values for (d) and (a), and then deriving the function, its positive local minimum will be equivalent to the shortest possible travel time and ideal velocity for the given interstellar vector. For example: a modern Generation VI warp drive has a maximum amplification factor (a) of about 4000, and the distance between Sol and Alpha Centauri (d) is about 4.34 lightyears. Using these values in the formula results in an optimal velocity (v) of about 0.0237c, and a minimum travel time (T) of 33 and a half days!

Warp drives have limited usefulness due to the enormous amount of power they require and the peculiar effects of bending spacetime. Acceleration must be accomplished in real-space or else the exhaust from the engine will reflect off the drive's event horizon and cook the ship, and the same goes for any heat radiated by the vessel. This is why warp drives typically operate in "stuttered" format: an interstellar flight is composed of multiple FTL segments interspersed with periods of real-space STL flight where the ship dumps the heat accumulated by the drive into space via radiator.

Warp drives are not the only method of circumventing the speed of light. Wormholes are also physically possible; however, the largest stable wormholes ever documented are of atomic scale, and anything with rest mass passing through the singularity will cause it to collapse. Wormholes, therefore, are only used to facilitate FTL communication in the form of ansibles, passing extremely narrow laser beams around a network of linked wormholes to achieve near-instantaneous communication.

Because of their nature as loopholes in relativity, both technologies incur some very bizarre effects when it comes to temporal reference frames. Ansible connections where one end is moving at relativistic speed create a combination of wavelength shift and frame dragging that render it impossible to communicate in lockstep; a warpship with a relativistic real-space velocity will result in some time-disparity between passengers and their destination upon arrival. However, it's generally agreed that these complications are a small inconvenience compared to an interstellar society without FTL, where time-slips of decades or more would be a haunting reality.

The planet Earth is the third planet in the Sol system, a vibrant terran world with a diverse biosphere recovering from a near-miss ecological collapse. It has six major landmasses surrounded by vast oceans of liquid water, and its atmosphere is a comfortable nitrogen-oxygen blend at a pressure that is dense enough to protect but not enough to crush. It also has one relatively large, airless, rocky moon, called Luna (or simply "the Moon.")

Earth is also home to an indigenous sophont species: humans, one of the founding members of the Coalition of Spacefaring Civilizations. Because of its deep pre-spaceflight cultural history, it is one of a minority of worlds divided into nations, hence its primary governing body being the United Nations of Earth -the ancestor to most of humankind's modern administrative structure. Being Earth's only natural moon, Luna was the site of humans' first forays into extraterrestrial exploration, and today is an industrial powerhouse under the flag of the UN Autonomous Territory of Luna. The Earth-Moon Union (EMU, for short; top flag) is composed of the United Nations of Earth (bottom left flag) and the Autonomous Territory of Luna (bottom right flag), with its primary seat being Midway Station located at the L-1 gravitational stability keyhole between Earth and Luna.

As the birthplace of the human species, the Earth is the most populous and powerful asteropolitical entity in the Sol system, and quite possibly in the entire United Nations of Humanity. Earth itself has a population of just over 8 billion, which has stayed relatively stable since the 21st century. Together with the Moon’s 240 million inhabitants, the total population of the EMU is about 8.4 billion, almost four times that of the next largest entity in the system (Mars).

While Luna’s primary industry in the modern day is mining, Earth’s rich cultural and biological history makes it a tourist destination renowned across known space, though it has stringent biosecurity. For many, it is even a spiritual experience, some going so far as to make it their life’s goal to retire on Earth and connect with the home of their ancestors. Centuries of ecological engineering and conservation have managed to avert the effects of early human industry, restoring the world to a natural balance and even reviving many species driven extinct by human error. Today, one can watch herds of mammoth roam the Siberian tundra, visit dodo birds on Mauritius, or experience the return of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 30th century Earth is a good place to be, and humanity is collectively proud of their home: the cradle of the Diaspora.

hey look, more art! been a hot minute. photobash of a future Earth and its well-settled Moon, plus their flags, created for my hard science fiction setting Astra Planeta. done using assets from Space Engine.

STAGE THREE, EVERYBODY GIVE IT UP FOR STAGE 3

This is where things get COMPLICATED. Damn thing looks like an eldritch horror but I'm PROUD of it. Two more phases to go.

Additional notes:

Added perpendicular dashes in a network line to show a connection that bypasses a given marker(s), due to the limits of 3D space being represented in 2D. Hopefully this is intuitive.

The orange links in the network are systems and routes claimed by the Rimor Corporate Conglomerate.

The darker green links in the network are systems and routes claimed by the Xib Zjhar. Their systems do not link to any others because they are an isolationist culture.

The purple links in the network are systems and routes claimed by the Allied Tribes of Calypso. Very few systems are under their jurisdiction due to their inexperience with spaceflight and the rarity of their required environmental conditions.

Yeah, I know I forgot Furuhjelm 46. I'll fix it later. And yeah, I know Xi Bootis is well beyond the 20ly-boundary. I put it there bc I had the G/K binary marker copied and was saving myself some labor later.

LP 816-60 should have a Worldtribe designation, probably a Qaryn number. I'll fix it later.

Multiple brown dwarf systems are potential candidates for Calypsian habitation, but I have some stuff to figure out about them first.

I'm in the process of giving the Diaspora star map a much-needed aesthetic overhaul. It's turning out pretty well so far! Here's the first stage: up to 10 ly from Sol.

Some notes:

all stars (four and eight points) signify an individual star, colored according to its spectral type.

eight-pointed stars are the homesuns of sapient species.

stars with rings have at least one planet. green rings indicate native life present; red rings indicate prior terraformation by the extinct Hemeran civilization.

the two other markers, one white dot and one white dot with an angled ring, indicate rogue interstellar planets.

the map is arranged by right ascension (celestial X coordinate) and distance, so the +/- number above each system is its declination (celestial Y coordinate).

the arrows at the center indicate the directions of the galactic core and rim, using the symbols of Sagittarius and Orion, respectively (although this map is aligned to right ascension which means the plane we're viewing is actually almost perpendicular to the galactic disk)

October 4, 2181: The UNSS Skyward Spirit ignites its massively powerful fusion drive in cislunar space, beginning its 24-year round trip to Proxima Centauri. Visible on the Moon are the cities of Byrd, Guǎnghángōng, Apollo City, Tsiolkovskiy, Tycho, and Shackleton, as well as many smaller settlements, all connected by the lunar rail system. Off the sunward limb of the Moon one can also spot the city-station Tsukuyomi in low orbit, with half a dozen vessels in its vicinity. Taken by an unknown photographer at dawn on the west bank of Lake Tanganyika (DRC), using a telescopic lens.

a rare Spy Art appears! photobash of the moment humankind started their very first journey to another sun in my hard science fiction setting Astra Planeta. edited in Paint.NET using a screenshot from Space Engine.

Rewrote this for WorldEmber '23 and put it up on the WorldAnvil page as its own article. (Yeah, I edited the original post here too.) It might be one of my personal bests, alongside Apotheosis.

Alone Together

Every now and then, someone will ask, "why is it still called first contact?" They think they are clever, apparently, by pointing out that we already know intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, and so it should simply be called 'contact.'

But it is clear that they do not understand the weight these words carry.

Far back in 2145, humankind made first contact on a small, airless, inner moon of Uranus. Except... no one was there to greet us. All we found were the remains. Within a week, our understanding of life in the universe had gone from hopeful optimism to somber concern: had we really been so close to contact, only for our elder and only counterparts to vanish? Research on the ruins revealed that the ancient starfarers had wiped themselves out in a catastrophic civil conflict, and we feared what that meant for us. We resolved, then, that we would do better, not only for ourselves but for the ones who had come before us and lost their way. We had given up one kind of loneliness -that of simple ignorance- for another, far worse kind of loneliness: that of the sole survivor.

Our loneliness was not to last, fortunately. In 2191, the crew of the Arete mission to Proxima Centauri encountered a species of lifeform on the frigid moon Calypso which exhibited unusual intelligence, and in time discovered the great settlements they inhabited. After two years of study, the Arete explorers established rudimentary two-way communication with the Calypsians and grew a conversational relationship with the people of one nearby settlement. Humankind was overjoyed: here, at last, were the interstellar neighbors we had longed for.

But eventually the Arete mission had to return to Earth, and the Calypsians would not achieve interstellar radio transmission for a hundred more years. Even once they were able to commune with us across the great void, we found that our species were too different to have much in common aside from scientific interest. Thus, we were faced once more with a new and uniquely tragic kind of loneliness -almost that of estranged cousins.

In 2220, our prayers seemed to be answered at last by a stray radio signal from Tau Ceti. Though it took time, we were able to decipher its meaning and sent a return message, followed by a probe. The initial course of contact was slow, as is always the case with remote contact from across the emptiness. Over patient years of interaction, we learned how to communicate with the skae, and eventually sent a crewed mission to their homeworld of Ra'na: Andromeda One, the first of many.

We discovered the skae were a younger civilization than us, by several centuries, and so took responsibility for teaching them to be more like us. We taught them the secrets of nature and technology that they had not yet uncovered- of black holes and quarks, of the microchip and the fusion reactor. They accepted our gifts with wonder and gratitude, and in turn taught us their ways of terraformation- new methods to accelerate the healing of our own world and transform others from dead waste to bountiful gardens. Together we founded a coalition, to unite all civilizations seeking starflight under the common purposes of curiosity and betterment. But although this was everything humanity had ever wanted, we still felt the pangs of loneliness: the burden of the elder and mentor.

It was our good fortune, then, that elder civilizations were watching us. Just a decade after founding the USSC, Earth received a radio message from the star Epsilon Indi. It was a direct greeting, excited and hopeful. "We are shyxaure of Delvasi and ziirpu of Virvv. We saw you," they said, "and you have done well. We have ached to reach out for centuries, but worried over what would follow if we did. The alliance you have forged with the people of Tau Ceti is assurance that we are, truly, alike in thought. We are proud to call you neighbors, and hope to soon call you friends."

While we waited for their embassy ship to arrive as promised, humanity reveled in passing a test we had not known was ongoing. We had proven ourselves worthy of contact, worthy of inclusion into the interstellar community... and yet, a new loneliness seeped through the cracks of our joy. We had anguished in isolation for so long, all the while our cosmic seniors watched from not so far away. For hundreds of years, we had not realized there were new friends just beyond the horizon. And so, in secret, we mourned this loneliness: that of what could have been.

In the centuries that have followed we have discovered even more sapient beings around us: the rimor of the Eridani Network, the Xib Zjhar of Xiilu Qam, the pluunima of Niima. We are connected to each other in many ways, but the most important of these is simply that we share the gift of sapience. In this vast and quiet universe, any fellow intelligence is infinitely precious because we are the only ones, as far as we know. Every contact event is first contact, all over again, ​because every new civilization that we encounter will expand our horizons just enough for us to wonder: "was that last contact? Is there still someone else out there, or is that the end of roll call? Are we alone together, now?"

This, the grandest and most poignant of all mysteries, is why the motto of the Coalition is "solum habemus invicem et stellas" – "we only have each other and the stars."

"We're finally out of the cradle. Of the hundred billion humans who ever lived, we're the first to stand beneath an alien sky."

— CDR Anna Wilson's first words on Mars; Oct. 3, 2018 CE

The Ares program was a crewed spaceflight project led by NASA, in collaboration with other members of the United Nations Aerospace Coalition, that succeeded in its milestone goal of landing humans on the surface of Mars. From its announcement in 2010 it took another eight years of preparation, training, and construction before the first mission was ready to begin.

Ares 1 was launched in mid-2018 and reached the red planet a few months later. At 10:45:33 UTC on October 3rd, 2018, commander Anna Wilson of the United States became the first human being to ever set foot on Mars and the first living thing on the planet in almost four billion years. Ares 1, and the four missions to follow, greatly enriched humanity's understanding of Mars. Ares 5 returned home in early 2028, ending the first crewed Mars exploration phase and opening the door for the next.

The Ares program was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to humankind at the time, and captivated the public imagination for over a decade. Like its predecessors Apollo and Artemis, it is widely recognized across the 30th-century human diaspora as a key reason for humankind's modern status as adept starfarers, best expressed by Commander Wilson in her first words upon touching the Martian surface: "We're finally out of the cradle."