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

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


 * Orbital travel becomes increasingly viable. The gold rush for the riches of the Solar System begins with the mining of near-Earth asteroids.


 * The first Lunar and Martian colonies are established, as well as mining outposts in the asteroid belt. By the end of the century, the Lunar and Martian colonies have already become fairly thriving and attract more and more settlers.


 * The first experiments with AIs.


 * In the latter half of the 21st century, escalation of Earth's ecological crisis as well as subsequent global unrest and population displacements, coupled with the challenges of policing the expanding frontier of outer space, prompt the United Nations to become increasingly involved in overseeing Earth's national governments and corporate entities. This gradual centralization of power leads to protests and unrest, even some governments seceding from the United Nations; this escalation of tensions culminates in a limited thermonuclear exchange in the War of 2090. However, the aftermath of the conflict only further consolidates the UN's nascent status as Earth's global superpower.

2100s

 * The frontier of the Solar System expands as settlement of the Jovian Moons begins with the first Europan colonies in the early half of the century. Journeys to the outer system take months, and the distant Jovian colonies mostly exist in isolation from Earth and Mars. Heavily influenced by the corporations that settled them, Europa and Ganymede develop peculiar techno-nationalist movements that culminate in the rise of the militant Frieden in the mid-22nd century.


 * Nuclear fusion becomes a viable energy source.


 * Minor bio-alterations of humans and animals to adapt to long-term spaceflight and low-gravity habitation are first pioneered and enacted. Further (and highly controversial) 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. Corporate projects experiment with life extension, nanotechnology, the uplifting of simians and cetaceans, and even human cloning. However, as rampant alteration and genetic engineering -- particularly by Martian and Jovian corporations -- raise widespread concerns, particularly after the devastation wrought by such technologies in the Interplanetary War and its ancillary conflicts, laws are instated to curtail uncontrolled and potentially harmful development, especially in nanotechnology, bio-augmentation and uplifting.
 * After several technological crises in the off-world colonies, there is a tug of war underlying human political discourse, with two opposing (if broadly-defined) factions -- the Cautionaries and the Exaltationists. Over time, these factions took the form of numerous discrete movements (both secular and religious) and political parties, and both encompassed a wide spectrum of views from moderate to extreme. The most radical Cautionaries called for a return to planet-bound life and shunned modern medicine and other amenities, while the moderates merely wished to regulate cybernetics, AI and genetic engineering more carefully. Meanwhile, the extreme end of the Exaltation movement were hardcore transhumanists hoping to leave behind biological existence altogether, though many were "softer" social utopists, dreaming of futures where AI and widespread bioengineering had eliminated human inequalities and the systemic problems of traditional societies. Another group, albeit sometimes lumped together with the Cautionaries, were the Moderationists, who acknowledged the benefits of certain bio- and cybernetic technologies, but still called for careful oversight and regulation on the part of the UEG and its protectorates. And it was this side that more or less won out. While the most heated debates had died down by the later half of the 23rd century, the divide between the two sides never truly did, and the constant back-and-forth between their descendant incarnations continues to act in the background of UEG policy-making.


 * The terraforming of Mars begins. Still, enclosed warrens and domed arcologies remain the only viable form of habitation for nearly three centuries. The Jovian Moons have not so far been significantly terraformed, apart from tentative augmentations to their magnetic fields to protect from Jupiter's intense radiation belt. As well, the existing settlement on Europa and Ganymede in particular would make extensive terraforming efforts difficult without extensive population relocations.


 * 2180: the nascent UEG announces its first super-project: VISTA, the Vast Intra-Solar Transport Array, an AI-controlled system of high-volume cargo and resource transport orbiters powered by solar sails, to effectively expand human habitation out to Saturn and beyond by enabling constant support to faraway colonies as well as transit there and back. The first skyhooks are built in conjunction with this system over the next several decades. This also lays the foundations for what would later be known as the SolNet as a unified network, whose oldest components still survive in the 26th century.


 * The UEG launches a large-scale climate engineering project on Earth to reverse the effects of global warming over the preceding two centuries, including deglaciation, elevated sea levels, desertification and extreme weather. While technologies developed over the past century have began to mitigate the ongoing damage to Earth's climate, the effects of the crisis persist. Still, it will take over two centuries for Earth's ecosystem to stabilize back to a roughly mid-20th century level.

2200s

 * 2209: The Venusian terraforming project begins. While run by a dedicated group with lofty goals, the effort would be abandoned around a century later with the discovery of FTL travel and the possibility of settling on Earthlike exoplanets. Still, Venus would retain some subsurface habitats and aerostat colonies in the upper atmosphere.


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


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


 * The "golden age" of the Solar System: Space colonization becomes cheaper, more viable, more comfortable, and thus more attractive. 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 weeks in the outer system, rather than months.


 * 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 stabilize as mainstream technologies, extending the human lifespan in well-developed regions of Earth and the rest of the Solar system by several decades.


 * The SAGAN Grand Interferometric Array is constructed, a vast AI-networked series of multi-spectral telescopes spread across light-minutes on numerous Kuiper Belt objects and artificial platforms. Capable of surveying exoplanets with unprecedented detail, SAGAN would chart many planets in nearby stellar systems for later settlement.


 * Antigravity plating is first developed, though it never becomes widespread in its intended use - providing artificial gravity on ships and habitats - due to its mechanical complexity, usage risks and energy-inefficiency at the time. Several decades later, derived technologies would be installed on certain starship types to enable them to "float" in planetary atmospheres without the constant application of thrust.


 * 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. By this point, the theory of slipspace has existed for nearly two centuries, with solid proof of the para-dimensional realm existing since the late 2100s, but the trick of actually boring a hole into space-time and sending a human through in one piece turned out to be a challenge. Before Shaw and Fujikawa's breakthrough in 2291, many scientists had already given up on the possibility of a functioning slipspace incursion apparatus as a pipe dream. Had their group not succeeded, it is possible that the UEG and other powerful entities may have significantly cut the funding for slipspace projects and instead focused on the development of intra-Sol space habitat colonization as well as slower-than-light interstellar travel. By the time Shaw and Fujikawa break the news, the UEG's plans for the first interstellar colony ship are already underway, as is the vetting process for potential colonists. 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.


 * 2310s: First extrasolar colonies. The colonization of what would later be known as the Inner Colonies begins with the launch of the UEG's first faster-than-light colony ship. Several more waves of colony ships would follow over the next five decades. With settlers carefully screened from among Earth's "best and the brightest", these early efforts are experimental and often risky endeavors, with several colonies struggling to maintain themselves or failing altogether. However, each colony site serves as a learning experience, and these learnings would give rise to plans for the next stage in interstellar colonization. Meanwhile, various ongoing terraforming and settlement projects in Sol die out with the flight of the the best and the brightest to the stars; only the largest worlds retain enough momentum to maintain themselves. In this era, even what would later be regarded as "short" slipspace jumps routinely take months, and starships are rare and priceless; this means for most colonists, the extrasolar journeys are one-way trips.


 * 2350s: a further breakthrough occurs in Shaw-Fujikawa drives, making them safer and more efficient, though even short jumps still take months. This spurs the launch of the UN-sponsored Odyssey Fleet in the 2360s. Still, regulations and restrictions abound for both colonists and contractor companies.


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


 * 2380s: Artificial gravity: Functional artificial gravity generators unrelated to the prior "dead end" technology of gravity plating are first developed and soon installed on the first habitats, whereas at first their use on starships remains limited. Rather than localized artificial gravity, the generators create an entire gravitational environment across a station or ship, along with providing reliable and effective inertial compensation. This marks a major change in starship design, with the decks of artificial gravity-equipped ships arranged much like in traditional seagoing vessels, whereas spacecraft up until then had had their decks stacked perpendicular to drive thrust along with rotating carousel sections for simulating gravity while not under thrust. Most, if not all, ships introduced since would use the new design paradigm. Still, thrust and carousel gravity would remain in parallel use for over a century, depending on the manufacturer.


 * 2390s: a major revision of the UN Colonial Charter removes many of the strict regulations previously placed on colony contractors, and reduces the amount of UN involvement in colonization projects; the UEG having realized it had already stretched itself too thin with dozens of ongoing settlement projects, later known as the Inner Colonies. Coupled with the maturation of spacefaring and colonization technology, this makes star travel and the establishment of colonies far more available and attractive to the wider population and smaller, less stringently screened corporate operators. This is widely regarded as the birth of the Outer Colonies, though the directly UN-sponsored colony projects of the past decades continue, albeit at a much slower pace.


 * 2390s-2410s: the later-infamous Inner Colony Wars (although not known by that name at the time) are fought on several of the first extrasolar colonies, marking the first notable human conflicts to take place outside the Solar System.

2400s
Following the Inner Colony Wars, the early decades of this century were a time of relative peace and prosperity, with resources from the nascent Outer Colonies bringing wealth to the rapidly-growing Inner Colonies and Earth. The most optimistic Earther ideologues and academics termed this golden age the "Pax Humana" - a purported era of indefinite peace and prosperity among mankind. Belief in the UEG's unifying mission, which had begun to wane prior to the advent of interstellar travel, was now at an all-time high, and even many Outer Colonies enjoyed its benefits at first. However, by the last three decades, cracks already began to show in the gilded bubble.


 * 2457: The Phoenix-class colony ships are introduced as the next generation of colonial support vessels, and one of the first major ship types outside the civilian market to use a "modern" deck layout, with the decks arranged in the direction of the thrust rather than perpendicular to it.


 * 2468: The Martian orbital asteroid-facility Chiron, a former commercial spaceport since abandoned, becomes a UNSC Marine and Naval Special Forces training ground and extreme-conditions test lab.


 * 2490s: the mounting Insurrection in the Outer Colonies spurs the rapid deployment of hitherto-untested space warfare technologies, such as the spinal-mounted MAC gun. While these are not the first space battles in human history, they are the first to be fought with modern propulsion, weapons, armor and inertial compensation technologies, and serve as the crucible in which the UNSC's space warfare technologies and doctrine are forged for decades to come. While some of the technological and tactical paradigms set by the Insurrection will serve the UNSC in the war against the Covenant, others will prove useless, even detrimental, against the aliens' weapons and tactics. Thus, the Covenant War ushers in another technological and doctrinal paradigm shift, albeit one that will only fully take effect over the three decades following the war.

2500s

 * 2506: The first successful flash cloning of the human brain and neural network.

2510s

 * 2511: The first successful human memory transfer to a flash-cloned "blank" brain.

2530s

 * 2534: The first generation of blast-resistant impact plating and combat uniforms developed specifically to counter directed-energy attacks, rather than ballistic strikes, first become standard-issue among the UNSC Marines and select Army units, having been tested over the previous years mostly by select units regularly engaged in high-intensity combat. The technology would undergo several developments over the following two decades, and old models remained in service alongside the new for years or decades on end in various units.

2550s

 * 2552: Project: MJOLNIR reaches its fifth phase with the incorporation of an AI-processing crystal layer into the Mark V and its tandem project on Earth, dubbed the Mark VI. While both versions of the suit remain in use over the next two decades, the second generational upgrade of the Mark VI, introduced in the later half of the 2550s, will meld the unique advances of the Materials Group's Earth and Reach teams - i.e. the Marks VI and V, into one integrated system.


 * 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 over the 2550s and 60s.


 * Salvaged Covenant technology and/or the express knowledge exchange with Covenant artificers in numerous independent and corporate operators begin a decades-long explosion of divergent and syncretic technology trees. Many such efforts never lead to anything viable or mass-produced, though some do.


 * 2555: The release of the SPI Mark III, now widely known as MIRAGE, formalizes various upgrades made to the Mark II suits over the years, and becomes standard-issue for the remaining Spartan-IIIs, with offshoots issued to a handful of other units over the coming years, including unaugmented Naval Special Warfare teams and select ODST and space assault specialist units.


 * 2559: The launch of the first Endymion-class cruisers at Neos Atlantis' shipyards marks the beginning of the implementation of the post-war Fleet Modernization Program.

2570s

 * By 2070, most UEG-controlled worlds are linked into the commercial Slipnet. Common citizens can now send messages to other colonies in a matter of hours or days at most, a feat that used to take weeks or months.