HELIOVERSE

An alternate Solar System in which the Apollo 13 mission was a complete success. This event kept up the momentum of the space race and the Cold War. The Soviet Union did not fall in the twentieth century. Humankind has a lunar colony by the year 2000, and millions of people live there by the end of the twenty first century. In the next 300 years, humans have settlements on hundreds of moons and four planets, with unmanned rovers and probes spread across the rest of the Heliosphere. The drive for territorial expansion led the USA and the USSR, along with Communist China, a Korean-Japanese state, PanAfrica, South Africa, and ESA, to focus their efforts on building the necessary infrastructure for the frontier. The hunger for extraterrestrial territory postpones the information age indefinitely.   Scores of Orbiters, A thorough network of Waystations, and heavy resource-gathering operations sprung up inside the Belt and among the Gas Systems of Jove and Stern. Companies with a goal to support this cause were subsidized by the various governmental factions. This made possible a wide array of affordable, modular technologies that made life on any surface (not to mention the void) possible for a human in good health. Among these inventions are the ubiquitous Atmask and Oz tank, allowing for respiration in toxic atmospheres or no atmosphere at all. Presscuff technology eliminated the need for cumbersome Suits in favor of more adaptable garments. Finally, and perhaps the most important, is the OnBody. This is a Personal Life Support System whose brand name has become a synonym for its kind. It connects the respiration system with the pressure system, records and recalls up to two custom settings, and reads additional custom protocols via a universal diskette drive reader (DDR) slot.   The age of exploration gives way to the age of prosperity, which in turn ushers in the age of the zodiac, then the age of war, the Static Years, and then an age without end.