History of Human Spaceflight

It is the year 2985. After a millennium, several wars, dozens of scientific breakthroughs and a lot of perfection of space travel, humanity has grown into an interstellar type I civilisation. This article will follow the history of spaceflight, from low Earth orbit to interstellar travel.

Era I - Airless Engines

It is the mid 20th century, and scientists have found out that mixing a fuel and oxidizer in a chamber creates thrust without the need for air intakes. This marks the first era of space travel. After a few decades and lots of research, the first satellite would be launched into space. By accumulating enough height and lateral velocity, and clearing itself of the atmosphere, the Sputnik probe could stay in flight without having to keep any engines running. However, space is still full of drag-inducing particles, and Sputnik would later fall down and burn up in the atmosphere.

Era II - Advancement in Several Technologies

Later on during the 20th century, after the invention of the heat shield and many manned flights, space agencies would learn how to connect 2 craft in orbit in a procedure known as docking. Advances in docking and resource conservation technology would also allow the creation of vessels made to stay in space for months at a time - space stations - and also allow for crew to stay onboard these for years, assuming said space station gets resupplied every few months. One of the most known space stations, the ISS, served as a place for science to be done where gravity had to be minimal. For example, how plants grow in space. The ISS was mostly created by using a new type of rocket: a space plane. By strapping 2 boosters with parachutes on them to a tank that fuelled a space plane that could glide back to base, you could reuse a rocket and save resources by not having to rebuild the entire thing after every launch. At the turn of the 21st century, this technology was perfected, allowing more of the rocket to return to base by having boosters fly back and make a powered landing, fairings to be caught by gargantuan nets and upper stage rockets to burn back to a trajectory that hits the atmosphere. This tech would massively decrease launch costs, paving the way for civilian space travel and space infrastructure. Civilians could travel around the globe in only a few hours for no more than the cost of a 21st century airline ticket.

Era III: Infrastructure and Civilian Space Travel

In the mid 21st century, plans were made to create massive skyhooks that would sling spacecraft to other planets, like a massive battery turning its angular momentum into velocity. Cutting rocket size by 90% and rapidly reducing interplanetary transit times, skyhooks would be established around Earth and Mars, rapidly speeding up colonisation of Mars and the exploration of planets that incur bigger Delta-V costs than others. Trips between Earth and Jupiter would take mere months, and the Moon only took hours to get to. All of this made space extremely cheap, and so civilian tourists would begin exploring the Moon. The amount of people in space would grow exponentially, and so did corporates wanting to profit off of the abundance of precious resources on the Moon and beyond. With many space mining corporations existing by the late 21st century, hydrogen would be a lot more abundant, leading to the creation of metallic hydrogen, a revolutionary rocket propellant.

Era IV: New Propellants

Metallic hydrogen engines are extremely efficient, allowing kilometers of Delta-V to come from propellant tanks the size of a small bus. Rockets became cheaper, the range of spacecraft increased, further expanding Human influence and ability to collect resources. At the conclusion of the 21st century, spaceships began being constructed in orbit, allowing heavier stuff to be transported like reactors, something necessary for powering magnetic inertial confinement engines, an extremely efficient engine that, although its low thrust, could take a small craft to dozens of kilometers a second, further expanding human influence. However, orbital construction also allowed humans to take the next step in space travel.

Era V: Interstellar Travel

Project Daedalus was finally made possible. Using a massive engine capable of reaching several fractions of the speed of light and colossal tanks full of fuel necessary for fusion, spacecraft capable of reaching Sol’s neighbouring stars were sent out. Due to the decades between stars, crew would be put into suspended animation. In the mid 22nd century, there would finally be self-sufficient interstellar colonies. Bussard ramjets would eventually be constructed, allowing heavier stuff to be carried through interstellar space at much higher speeds. This would prove to be the future of space travel for the next millennia as modern vessels still use miniaturized Daedalus thrusters for intrasystem travel. Cutting further on storage and mass, the introduction of Bussard Ramjets allows for much easier interstellar travel as resources are utilized in-situ, straining hydrogen from the tenuous gas between stars and removing the need for massive tanks of fuel.

Era V2: FTL

A lot of money was sunk into R&D over the coming decades, contributing to the first FTL ship, the IXS Enterprise. A few years later, the IXS Enterprise would set off on its maiden voyage. It went from Earth to Neptune in a day, showing a promising future for interstellar travel - the Alcubierre drives were thought to be the future of space travel, however as the true technical details came to light it was found to be massively unreasonable for undertaking interstellar journeys; exorbitant amounts of exotic matter and power were required to run requiring large amounts of storage space and limiting the reach of the spacecraft to colonised star systems. Including this, bursts of radiation when dropping out of warp due to a build up of particles near the edge of the warp bubble became a safety risk. A ship in warp for long enough to traverse a larger star system could irradiate a planet as it drops. The final nail in the coffin is the cost of producing exotic matter, as doing so requires melting down a reactor, generating an uncontrolled explosion, and capturing the matter generated in the turmoil with a magnetic scoop. Doing such is costly, requires constant production of reactors to explode, and is massively dangerous, limiting the production of EM to very few systems including Sol and Pi3 Orionis.

Era VI: Stagnation

It has been several centuries since interstellar travel became a thing. Although Daedalus propulsion has been perfected and drag on Bussard Ramjets reduced, light speed still remains a barrier that has only be beaten very few times. Many propulsion systems have been created although none of them go faster than light speed. Era VI is the current era, and although Humanity has had several centuries to expand its bubble of permanent presence, now being 110ly in diameter, Humanity has yet to advance itself to the next era.

The Present

With skyhooks getting tiny magnetic inertial fusion powered spacecraft between planets in days, spacecraft travelling between the stars in mere years and corporations trying to make money off of any resource they can get, Humanity has a very strong hold on the local bubble of stars around Sol and beyond.