Human technological development

A timeline of human technological development (and some bits of related context) throughout history, including major breakthroughs, to help conceptualize when given technologies should be available at a given time. As a further note, technologies can exist for years or decades in a form that is not feasible or cost-effective to reproduce on a mass scale, and it will only be with time that they mature to a useful state.

2000s

 * The first Lunar and Martian colonies are established, as well as outposts in the asteroid belt.


 * Breakeven is reached in thermonuclear fusion reactors, though it will take time for reactors to become efficient enough for mass usage.


 * The first AIs.

2100s

 * Human settlement of the Jovian Moons begins in the early half of the century. Space colonization becomes cheaper, more viable, more comfortable, and thus more attractive.


 * Minor bio-alterations of humans and animals to adapt to long-term spaceflight and low-gravity habitation becomes commonplace. Further mass genetic engineering projects, headed by the nascent UEG, virtually eradicate cancer and select congenital diseases on Earth and Mars by the end of the century, and other Solar colonies by the 2300s. Lesser corporate projects experiment with life extension, the uplifting of simians and cetaceans, and even human cloning. However, as rampant alteration and genetic engineering -- particularly by Martian corporations -- raise widespread concerns, laws are instated to curtail uncontrolled and potentially harmful technologies.


 * Cryogenic suspension chambers become viable for the months-long journeys between planets.


 * The terraforming of Mars begins.


 * The first space elevator on Luna.

2200s

 * Space elevators are built on Mars, though a major disaster postpones their construction on Earth.


 * There are several advances throughout the century on subluminal space travel, bringing the outer Solar System closer to the inner worlds and enabling expansion to the Outer Planets and even the Kuiper Belt; by the later half of the century, interplanetary travel takes mere days, or weeks at most, rather than months. The first inertial compensation technology is also developed in this era.


 * Space habitation becomes safer, more convenient and more viable; O'Neill cylinders and Stanford toruses take off, pioneered by a pair of orbital engineering megacorps. Still, the development of slipspace travel at the end of the century would shift focus away from space habitation and it would never quite take off on a mass scale, even as it remained part of humanity's toolkit.


 * Human life extension therapies and organ cloning begin to become more viable, extending the human lifespan in developed regions of Earth and the Solar system.


 * 2291: the first functional prototype for the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine is unveiled, after decades of research, development and experimentation as well as over a century of theoretical basis. Still, the first slipspace drives are unreliable and inefficient, and it will take decades of further development for the technology to advance to a state enabling mass interstellar travel.

2300s

 * 2301: Earth's first space elevator is opened in Mombasa. Over the next century, East Africa becomes one of the hotspots of global commerce, along with South America, Cuba and the Southeast Asian archipelago, with tethers springing up in Havana, Quito, Aranuka, Pontianak, and Singapore.


 * Surface-to-orbit transit continues to mature, and the first precursors to Pelican-style multi-use SSTO shuttles are developed.

2540s

 * Artificial gravity plating pans out across the UNSC and commercial vessels, though carousel sections and thrust gravity remain common.

2550s

 * The reprieve provided by the war's end allows the continued development of various technologies engineered during the war but never implemented en masse, as well as a handful of new discoveries; many of these will be implemented by the 2550s and 60s.