Space blues

The nostalgy of what could have happened

About 300 years ago, many believed salvation to come from the stars. Countries and billionaires would spend billions to build giant spacecrafts that would send a selected few far into the infinity of space in the hope of finding a new home. Some succeeded and ventured out, never to be seen again. When it became obvious that the future was in the exploration of parallel dimensions, space lost its attractiveness. NASA programs were terminated, space construction sites demolished and the public diverted its eyes from the sky. Aside from the occasional launch of satellites, not many things are related to space nowadays. That does not stop some nerds and nostalgics to miss a time they never knew, grieving what could have been.

Forgotten tech

Three centuries is a very long time. Even in an hyperconnected world where nothing is truly lost forever, it is hard to retrieve information this old. The only bits of knowledge that were preserved concern the launching of communication and meteo satellites, but those are confidentails. Everything regarding inhabited space travels has been buried deep as the space engineers joined the I.D.E.A. and the former astronauts enrolled as the first explorers. And early I.D.E.A. explorers never lived long. The secret of this technology is sleeping, archived in the depth of Terra's antique internet. Not only it is not accessible through the overnet, but the old internet is a mess. The indexes are all cryptics and most pages unpractical when they are not simply unreachable.

Theoretical knowledge is not the only thing that has been lost. Blueprints and fabrication techniques are encoded into machines that produces the satellite parts in series, but the savoir-faire is definitely lost and nobody would know how to make new blueprints. Everything in the satellite's making is automated to the point the operator has nothing more to do than press a button and the chosen type of satellite and a rocket is launched the next week. Every part of the process is opaque, hidden in underground facilities.

In with the old

A group of people from various places decided to band together and bring back the old science of spacefaring. They have very few to work with: some historical films, salvaged documents and retro-engineering of some fallen satellites. It feels to them like they are starting from scratch, reliving the struggle of 20th century engineers that flew blind in the field of discovery. The road is hard and long, but eventually they will get there. Some of them want to stay loyal to the ways of old and use hydrogen-oxygen fuel, whereas others prefer to make full use of the technological progress and exploit the newly discovered sources of energy.

The biggest success yet of these individuals known as the Spacefarers is the elevation of a fully functional satellite. Although it is not their own but one they repaired, their knowledge is only growing and they hope to be able to build a space rocket in the following years.