The Confederation Handbook

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Each arcology produces its own food in factories and vats, the land being unfarmable, with the tapegrass coverage now total. Imported delicacies account for 30 percent of imports in revenue terms.

  Government

  Earth is now officially a republic with a single government, Govcentral. Consolidation of regional governments was a gradual process throughout the twenty-first century, aided considerably by the steady globalization of markets, uniform communication and data access, and the European federalist movement as well as other regional associations. With the introduction of fusion power, currency variations began to level out, effectively producing a uniform currency from 2075.

  The various legal and administrative mechanisms for a global government were in place by the end of the twenty-first century, and the actual consolidation took place in 2103. At the time there was considerable resistance from nationalists across the globe; however, the worsening ecological crisis required a uniform response from the authorities. The arcologies were also established by this time, allowing for considerable regional autonomy while alleviating the fear of direct rule by “foreigners.” Each arcology was so obviously independent that the loss of democratic accountability to some distant bureaucratic council wasn’t a convincing argument against consolidation.

  To begin with, Govcentral was pitched as being nothing more than a central international legal body and political congress, with a small police force. It soon evolved from this starting point to become a super-federalist state with the power of direct taxation (originally required to raise money for Earth’s strategic-defense network). A security service was also established at that time, with extensive investigatory powers to help neutralize any remaining terrorist threat from die-hard nationalists. This has subsequently developed into the Govcentral Internal Security Directorate, which is charged with safeguarding the republic from all threats.

  Each arcology has its own Parliament (and mayor) and each continent has its own assembly, both of which exert considerable authority; but they are all accountable to the Govcentral senate. A new president is elected directly every six years, and is responsible for setting the annual budget.

  In reality, the entire structure is over-bureaucratic and hopelessly inefficient. However, due to its monolithic size and the length of time it has now been in operation, any major change seems just about impossible.

  Environment

  The environmental damage caused throughout the twenty-first century by industrializing what was the “Third World” with cheap fusion power and advanced cybernetic production systems—so that everyone could enjoy a Western level of consumerism, medicine, and energy consumption—has left a catastrophic legacy. Although toxic pollution was tackled with a reasonable degree of success, the heat pollution produced by 38,000,000,000 people living in the comfort of a universal industrial civilization is now impossible to dispose of. Officially, Govcentral policy is to restore the planet’s ecology to its pre-twenty-first-century state, but the sheer scale of the problem and the enormous potential cost means that the reclamation programs are chronically underfunded.

  Despite all these problems, life for the population overall is very reasonable, certainly compared to the twentieth century. Didactic education has effectively eliminated illiteracy, while standards of living inside arcologies are comparable with many industrial planets, and is in fact slightly higher than the Confederation average. Unemployment is officially 9 percent, and crime is kept broadly under control by the police, with drug-and gang-related crimes the most common offenses.

  Energy

  Earth is totally dependent on clean fusion to provide power: the deuterium– He3 reaction. Without a steady supply of He3 from Jupiter, the fusion reactors would have to switch to less clean reactions such as deuterium–deuterium, producing a large waste-disposal problem. Whatever their source of fuel, the fusion plants simply cannot be switched off. The arcologies are the only habitable places on the planet, and they are totally technologically dependent. Govcentral has no way out of its reliance on the Edenists for provision of He3, and has come to accept this situation. In turn the Edenists see themselves as morally bound to continue supplying the Earth, come what may. The Govcentral–Edenist political alliance is the strongest (and oldest) in the Confederation, and together they form the largest single voting bloc in the Assembly. As a result, the value of the commerce between Earth and Jupiter, on its own, exceeds the GDP of many industrialized planets.

  Transport

  The only links between the arcologies are the vac-train routes—tunnels maintained in a high vacuum, running magnetic levitation trains. Aircraft simply cannot operate in Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, and the only surface vehicles left in operation are heavily armored transports used by ecology crews. Vac-trains provide a fast, ecologically sound transport system, with the trains reaching up to Mach 15 on some of the longer trans-Pacific routes. They were developed in tandem with the arcologies, and all the previous roads and surface-rail networks were allowed to decay.

  Orbital Towers

  One unique aspect of Earth is that surface-to-orbit spacecraft (spaceplanes or the newer ion-field flyers) have been banned. Again, heat pollution is the reason. While the contribution which hypersonic passenger aircraft fleets made to global warming remains debatable, the impact of 8,000 spaceplanes aerobraking into the atmosphere on a daily basis is not. Earth is therefore the only planet in the Confederation to have built orbital towers, starting in 2180 with the African tower. There are now five of them, handling all passenger and cargo traffic to and from the planet.

  The O’Neill Halo

  This is a ring of 974 asteroid settlements, in orbit (120,000km) above the Earth, with a population of 435m. Every settlement comes under the jurisdiction of Govcentral and has its own democratically elected council; the Halo has its own congress (the same as any continent) and forty-five representatives in the planetary senate. The first asteroids were funded by companies eager for new business ventures and the high profit levels resulting from microgravity manufacturing; and though über-capitalist culture still thrives, Halo corporate legislation is less restrictive than on Earth. This fact has helped to build the Halo into the largest concentration of non-Edenist manufacturing in the Confederation, with a technology equal to that of the Edenists and the Kulu Kingdom, producing 62 percent of Earth’s export earnings. Now that many of the first asteroids are mined out, producing often three or four caverns per rock, the Halo settlements accommodate the largest asteroid populations to be found within the Confederation, with up to 400,000 people living in the largest.

  The Halo Economy

  Power for the asteroids comes from a mix of fusion and solar panels. Fusion tends to be used for the biosphere heating and lighting requirements, and for heavy industry, while solar panels are employed for the smaller (free-flying) industrial stations. Between 2125 and 2230, large starship assembly stations were built by Govcentral to provide Earth with its colony ships for the Great Dispersal, giving the Halo an early advantage in this field, which it has capitalized upon. Starships remain its premier export, and its maintenance, support, and refit industries are second to none. Contracts with the Govcentral Navy (the largest single defense procurement agency in the Confederation) form an essential financial pillar for the astroengineering companies, which allows them to tender extremely competitive prices.

  The Sol system’s location at the center of the Confederation, Earth’s vast consumer markets, the starship industry, trade with Jupiter, the asteroid belt, Luna, and Mars, all contribute to making the Halo the second greatest spaceport in the Confederation (after Jupiter), with 12,000 starship movements daily. Halo citizens enjoy a much higher standard of living than their cousins on Earth.

  Independent Asteroid Settlements

  There are 1,820 independent asteroid settlements in the Sol system: 1,485 in the main belt, 183 in the Jovian Trojan points, 137 in the Apollo Amour asteroids, 3 in the Oort cloud, and the remaining 12 distributed acr
oss the outer system. Total population is estimated to be 1,200,000,000. Most of these settlements are fiercely independent. Since 2150 they have been founded by Halo inhabitants who wanted to break free of Govcentral restrictions, groups from Belt settlements which became overpopulated, and various other breakaway movements.

  As with the Confederation as a whole, just about every ideology and religion can be found among the settlements. The Belt Alliance is the unifying government, although it is a very loose union, and non-political, with 764 actual members and most of the others affiliated. It is the Belt Alliance that provides the representation for settlement citizens in the Confederation Assembly. The main function of the Belt Alliance is to fund and maintain a naval force which contributes to the overall defense of the solar system.

  The Moon–Mars Partnership

  This constitutes a separate, and unique, political entity outside Govcentral’s sphere of control.

  History

  Mars is the only planet in the Confederation to be terraformed. With the development of the ZTT drive, and now an abundance of “standard” terracompatible planets, the entire Mars project is a historical aberration which will probably never be repeated. The project’s origin can be traced directly back to the establishment in 2020 of the first Lunar industrial base.

  The Clavius moonbase venture was intended to mine and develop the substantial quantity of sub-crystal ice and other volatiles (mainly nitrates) which had been located around the Moon’s poles. It was the first ever large-scale commercial (i.e. non-governmental) space project, and its importance in the subsequent development of human space exploration cannot be understated.

  Initially it was intended that the Lunar icefields should supply the newly established, and proliferating, low-Earth orbit (LEO) microgee factories and their dormitory modules with water and other chemicals at a much cheaper rate than lifting them from Earth. This initial premise was met swiftly enough, and the parent companies rapidly expanded the operation to supply reaction-mass fuel (hydrogen) to inter-orbit spacecraft, and soon after (2030) to the first interplanetary ships. As a result, Clavius was expanded and another three bases, Zach, Schiller, and Plato, were established.

  The first asteroid-capture mission (of a stony-iron rock) in 2040 was a critical point in the future of the Lunar bases; their parent companies bid for the asteroid’s biosphere contract. Given the prodigious quantity of water and nitrogen and carbon required for even a modest biosphere, the only alternative was a dual-capture mission, with a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid as well as the stony-iron one being brought into Earth orbit. So naturally the moonbases won the contract, and immediately began scaling up their operations by a factor of twenty.

  Even before the first asteroid arrived in Earth orbit in 2047 three more capture missions were launched by new consortiums. Jupiter flights were in preparation, and proposals for possible asteroid belt settlements were under consideration. Mining output from the Moon rose from about 10,000 tons a year in 2040 to over 500,000 tons by 2050. Then it tripled again in the next twenty years.

  By 2045 it was obvious that the moonbases were going to be permanent; far from reducing the Moon’s importance, as many finance analysts had predicted, the arrival of the asteroids in Earth orbit was going to enhance the Moon’s economic and financial status considerably. Plans for more substantial habitation complexes were drawn up and implemented. Until this time the mining bases were little more than company camps, equivalent to the twentieth century’s oil-rig platforms. Now, though, underground cities were bored out under the regolith, powered by fusion generators.

  What was at that time the most ambitious geneering project to date was undertaken to adapt the children of the Moon’s inhabitants to the low gravity field. Calcium-production rate was increased, and muscles in general and heart muscles in particular were strengthened against atrophy. Such adaptations were reasonably successful: certainly the first children to be born with them lived to an age comparable to their equivalents born on Earth at the same time. Subsequent improvements enhanced life expectancy considerably.

  The Moon’s population is now 100 percent the product of geneering, a program of modification second only to the Edenists. Unfortunately, although its people are perfectly adapted to their low-gravity environment, they are uncomfortable in higher gravity. Unless gestated in a one-gravity field, adaptation is a very long and arduous process. Though their muscles and bones don’t waste away, they are not strong enough initially to withstand the higher gravity field for long periods of time—a fact which came to play a major part in the decision to terraform Mars.

  Over the next thirty years another fifteen cities were established, making a total of twenty-two, with the Lunar population increasing to 1.5m. Full civil independence was granted to the city settlements in 2055, and the Moon was admitted to the UN Assembly the following year. Following its elevation to nationhood, a local Parliament was formed, which began to formulate long-term policies. Until this time the Moon was virtually a one-industry territory. This helped facilitate an inter-city (effectively an inter-company) pricing arrangement, so that bulk chemical exports were universally priced. Moon material was marketed and distributed through a single organization, the Lunar Export Board (LEB). Mining machinery and launch systems were also standardized. Such collective arrangements contributed greatly to the sense of community which led to the subsequent social development of the new nation.

  The most important priority of the new Parliament was to diversify the Moon’s economy away from mining. Such manufacturing systems as there were at that time tended to concentrate on equipment needed for the mining operations, and for the larger machinery used to bore out and maintain the big city chambers. Technology research programs were started, and companies were given advantageous start-up packages. Ten percent of the revenue from the LEB was allocated to developing new industries appropriate to the lunar environment. This objective proved a difficult task, because competition from the O’Neill Halo for markets was tough, and the Halo had the advantage of microgee facilities as well as offering its workers a full-gravity environment when they came off shift. But with continuing investment from the LEB, and an expanding highly educated workforce, a great deal of progress was made towards complete technical autonomy.

  2090 proved to be a turning point for the Moon, just as much as for the Eden habitat. In both cases the Moon’s mineral and chemical exports were 2m tons a year, and a small market for manufactured goods had been established. The O’Neill Halo had seventeen asteroids, with another eight on their way to Earth, and still more planned. However, with regular supplies of He3 arriving from Jupiter, and its price about to go down with the advent of the first operational cloudscoop, fusion was becoming extremely cheap and widely available. It was looking obvious that a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid-capture mission was now a practical proposition (nuclear explosives couldn’t be used, since a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid didn’t have the tensile strength to withstand the shock wave; instead a continuous thrust engine of some kind had to be attached which would slowly maneuver the asteroid into its new orbit).

  The Lunar Parliament advanced two far-reaching proposals which were put to the entire population for a referendum:

  1. Now that fusion will, in the near future, effectively end our monopoly of supplying water, carbon, and nitrogen to the O’Neill Halo, we advocate that the LED fund a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid-capture mission in order to retain its traditional business of supplying these chemicals to the Halo. Public ownership of the LEB shall be formalized, making every citizen a shareholder, so that all future profits accrued from its ventures may be distributed equitably. The Government shall retain two-thirds of the equity, and remain in charge of policy.

  2. With the advent of such a mission closing down our indigenous mines, we must determine new goals for ourselves and our descendants. Clearly our physiology prevents us from returning en masse to Earth; and even the Halo asteroids in their present configuration o
ffer limited habitation prospects. As we do not, under any circumstances, contemplate fostering our unborn children to another culture and then simply withering away ourselves, we advance two options for your consideration. The first is to capture a stony-iron asteroid and place it in the Halo. This asteroid will have a standard biosphere, but will be spun up to a rate which provides a lunar gravity level on the cavern floor. This will allow us to transfer all our industrial capacity to the Halo, and abandon the Moon. Thereafter we will become a fully fledged Halo nation, able to expand our domain accordingly. The second option is of an extremely long-term nature: the terraforming of Mars. Owing to the sheer size of this goal, commitment to achieving it will have to be total, which in practice will require a vote in excess of 70 percent. We estimate that one-third of our resources will have to be dedicated to that project over a period no shorter than five hundred years. No other conceivable goal would be as hard to realize, nor as rewarding to succeed. The result will be an entire planet uniquely suitable to our descendants.

  After these propositions were made, one month was allocated for public debate. During that same month, Eden declared independence, and launched its buyout of the JSKP.

  In all probability, it was Eden’s declaration of independence, or more likely the response from Earth, which settled the debate for the Lunar electorate. The Unified Christian Church promptly excommunicated the Edenists, and the JSKP board launched a legal battle against the buyout which took seventeen years to resolve (in Eden’s favor).

  Because of their large sense of community, amplified by the way they cooperated in promoting their single major industry, and their physiological diversity from “Earth humans,” the Lunar cities chose the Mars option.