A Time-Line for my Hard Sci-Fi Stories

I have finally written enough fiction set in the same consistent future (or at least two possible futures) that I finally felt the need to write a time-line. Each entry is accompanied by a link to the story to which the entry refers. The following acronyms are used:

WI	Whose Image?
TBtS	The Bridge to Space
TRQ	The Right Question
DD	Deadly Debris
TNBTtBT	The Next Best Thing to Being There
INFtF	If Not For the Fall
TLoEN	The Land of Eternal Night
CtRI	Condemned to Repeat It
JtA	Journey to Alfasfere
DP	Designing Paradise
MatSPoHHRWS	Miranda and the Space Pirates or How Haven Rock Was Saved
C	Crossroads (an article)
IE	Improbable Events

1964: Bruce Franklin born. TBtS
1969: Man lands on the moon. At Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Studies, Professor Gerard K. O'Neill begins to investigate the concept of settling space by means of orbital habitats.
1976: Gerard O'Neill's The High Frontier is published.
1981: At the age of 17, Bruce Franklin builds his first mass-driver model. The crudely-fashioned, mechanically-switched model proves to have unexpectedly-powerful accelerating capabilities. TBtS
1990: An unnamed individual dies, goes to heaven, and discovers that God is actually a dinosaur. WI
1996: DoD space probe Clementine beams back first preliminary evidence of ice at the Lunar South Pole. A later NASA probe, Lunar Prospector, confirms the discovery.
1997: CAD Architect Wendell Drake submits his Paradise One Space Habitat design for Princeton University's Space Development Conference. The design becomes an extremely popular one once orbital habitat construction begins. However, Wendell does not live to see publication of his paper, dying of natural causes that same year. DP
Now: Someone stands up and says, "We shouldn't be spending so much money on sending people into space when we could instead be spending it to solve all of our problems right here on Earth". C
Time-Line Cleavage
Next: Everyone else says, "Yeah, that sounds right. Let's do it." C	Next: Everyone else says, "Sit down and shut up. Let's all go into space. It'll be fun!" C
Late 1990's: A time of increasing paranoia, and a turning away from rational modes of thought. INFtF
2000: A year marked by an explosion of end-of-the-world cults. INFtF	November, 2000: A second Space Shuttle accident, this one involving an explosion on the launch pad, once again sets back the NASA space program. TBtS
2001: Calendar notation changes from Anno Domini (AD) to New Age (NA) CtRI	2001: Bruce Franklin first makes a name for himself by designing and building an underground, magnetically-propelled transcontinental mass-transit system for Acceleration Inc. TBtS
2003: Dallas, TX becomes the first of several cities to be destroyed in an act of nuclear terrorism. The Fighters for Economic Equality, a North African group, claim responsibility. INFtF	2003: First section of Sky Bridge completed. With an acceleration of 30 G's, only fuel and raw supplies can be launched to Earth orbit, but this becomes a lucrative business. TBtS
	2005: First extension of Sky Bridge is finished. Acceleration is reduced to 20 G's, and satellite launching becomes possible. TBtS
	2006: Second extension of Sky Bridge completed. Acceleration to Low Earth Orbit is now only 10 G's. After two nearly-disastrous attempts to man-rate the launcher, the third try launches Bruce Franklin and Reggie Deitrich into space. TBtS
Late 2010's: The Second Energy Crisis breaks. INFtF	Late 2010's: Bruce Franklin and Reggie Deitrich are stationed at the L-1 Port, working on habitat design. When an orbital collision results in the Earth becoming ringed by an unpassable wall of debris, stranding everyone off-Earth at the time, they invent Sweepers: giant counter-orbiting foam spheres which clear out Low Earth Orbit. DD
	Early 2020's: Working for LunaCorp, Bruce Franklin and Reggie Deitrich design and build the ice-launching mass-driver for the Darkcrater ice mine at the Lunar South Pole. Bruce stays on as Engineering Manager, Reggie as Assistant Manager. With the help of Eileen Peterson of Harvard University's Space Psychology Department, Bruce resolves a curious increase of violence at the remote installation. TNBTtBT
Mid 2020's: Resource depletion, combined with soaring poverty and its attendant population explosion and mass-starvation, cause the collapse of the social infrastructure. INFtF	Mid 2020's: Bruce Franklin moves to the GEO-18 space station where he creates Franklin Enterprises. Reggie Deitrich remains on the Moon to pursue development of electromagnetic Lunar launchers. In a joint project with American Spacecraft, Bruce successfully develops worm-hole technology. TRQ
	Late 2020's: Free-fall assembly worker Mark Fairbanks must rescue a farm animal from a very unusual predicament in Bernal Alpha, the first permanent habitat in High Earth Orbit. IE
	2030: Bruce Franklin retires to New Brazil, one of the first Model Three Bernal Spheres. Reggie Deitrich settles in the lunar crater Tycho, where he sets up a nightclub named "Tycho's Nose". TBtS
	2031: First Jupiter expedition departs aboard Discoverer One, a modified Model One Bernal Sphere. TBtS
2053: Irrationality and mysticism reign supreme. Court trials for conspiring with "Grays" become common, and hundreds are executed for the imaginary crime. CtRI	2053: Someone with the initials TAH discovers a nickle-iron main-belt asteroid. 2053TAH is eventually converted via the Cole method into the Anderson's first primitive colony, which they name Haven Rock. MatSPoHHRWS
2060's: Humanity's social level regresses back to near that of the Middle-Ages. Referred to by Second-Civilization historians as The Great Fall. INFtF	2060's: As law enforcement becomes more prevalent and effective in High Earth Orbit, space pirates move outward to the Asteroid Belt to remain beyond the law. MatSPoHHRWS
The Second Dark-Ages INFtF	2081: Someone with the initials GKO discovers a carbonaceous-chondritic main-belt asteroid. 2081GKO's raw material would later help the Anderson clan to build their New Pennsylvania habitat in 2100. MatSPoHHRWS
	Early 2090's: Wendell Drake, father of the Paradise One habitat design, is revived from suspended animation. Predictably enough, he wastes little time immigrating to a Paradise One orbital habitat, where he enjoys a retirement lasting well into the middle of the 22nd Century. DP
	Mid 2090's: The ice mines at the Lunar South Pole become mined-out, and Darkcrater becomes a ghost-town. MatSPoHHRWS
	October 16th, 2097: Citing intolerable interference in their religious freedoms, the Bowman, Tanaka, and Franklin clans, led by the Anderson clan, depart from New Brazil on the William Penn to homestead in the Asteroid Belt. Although they are not the first group to settle here, historians generally credit this event with leading to the vast Belt Civilization of the 22nd Century. MatSPoHHRWS
	September 13th, 2099: The Haven Rock settlement successfully repels a pirate attack. MatSPoHHRWS
	Mid 22nd Century: Always preying on the outer edges of the human frontier, space pirates move outward from the Asteroid Belt to the Oort Cloud. JtA
	Late 22nd century: The first interstellar crossing is attempted in a dual-sphere, anti-matter powered, multi-generational starship, but all contact is lost during the Oort Cloud passage. JtA
	23rd Century: The Habitat Design Study Program dispatches Gary Decker to Nightworld, a space habitat unique for not using sunlight. When he fails to return, an investigation reveals the inhabitants to be vampires. They are ultimately defeated by a Silkworm missile of Saturn-5 proportions, trailing a fiber-optic bundle three meters in diameter, the far end of which stands at the focus of a 15-kilometer-diameter solar concentrator. TLoEN
	44th Century: The first interstellar spacecraft ever built finally arrives at Alpha Centauri, 1,840 years late. The ship had been attacked by Oort Cloud pirates, had lost most of its reaction mass, and thus had attained only a fraction of the velocity originally planned. Beta-sphere had lost its electrical utilities, and was cut off from the rest of the crew. During the lengthy voyage, the Beta-sphere inhabitants had regressed to a hunter-gatherer existence. JtA
89th Century: Calendar reverts back to traditional Anno Domini notation.
10,698: Second-Civilization population is 2 billion on Earth, 543 billion in orbital habitats. While on an expedition to Earth sponsored by the Earth Archeological Foundation, Dr. J. L. Tammerott ventures into the Dallas ruins, and discovers that Pre-Fall Civilization knew more about High Frontier concepts than what had previously been appreciated. INFtF

E-mail me!

Return to