Golden Age of Space Colonization

The Golden Age of Space Colonization, variously known as the Golden Age, the Space Age, the Solar System Gold Rush, the Second Space Race, or critically characterized as the Space Bubble, was a period of human history that began in the 2040s, and ended in the unrest of the 2130s. It preceded the ZGene crisis and the Interplanetary War.

With the drastic reduction in orbital launch costs and new interest from pioneering attempts, humans begin to spread throughout the Sol system. The first settlements were founded on Mars, the Jovian Moons, and the other satellites of the system. As commercial efforts rushed to get infrastructure and habitation into space, the rise of space-borne industry and advances in manufacturing enabled increasingly ambitious industrial projects in space. With less of a need to ship materials from Earth's gravity well, interplanetary missions and space colonies became increasingly viable. For a time, the resources of the Solar System fueled unprecedented economic growth. The unique challenges of permanent space habitation and the desire for raw materials led to a new technological renaissance. The creation of ever-improving habitats, mass launch-assist systems and increasingly efficient rockets, permanent orbital infrastructure, AI developments, and medical advances that overcame the various health aliments eventually saw millions of people living in space by the end of the century. Indeed, it was an optimistic time for many, and represented one of the greatest leaps for the human race. In this regard, the Golden Age has been compared to the later the Pax Humana of the 25th century.

The period was far from worry-free, however. On Earth, the planet was plagued by habitability disasters; while space colonies provided some relief to the ongoing population explosion, this was far too little to make a difference in the grand scheme of things as pollution, mass extinction, and global warming were all still major issues. The various nations were far from unified, and while the United Nations became more involved over the period, it remained ineffective at nullifying the threat of nuclear weapons or warfare. In addition, the colonists of space also become disgruntled, with the truth of ZGene sparking outrage in 2132. This in turn led to extreme political ideologies taking shape, eventually leading to the founding of the communist Koslovics and the fascist Frieden.

The Golden Age saw the "Scramble for the Equator", or the focus of Earth's geopolitics and commerce shifting to the equatorial regions as they allowed the most efficient surface-to-orbit transit. This led to unprecedented development in several equatorial countries, but also the old powers attempting to exert their influence over those countries. Starting in the mid-21st century, global (and extraglobal) geopolitics were shaped increasingly by nations' access to (or control over) equatorial launch sites, as this played a major part in their access to spaceborne resources. However, control of these launch sites was not often more directly exercised by corporations than the nations they originated from. For much of the Golden Age, South America was the world's launch capital in terms of volume, with East Africa and the Indonesian archipelago trading places for the second and third.

The optimistic frontier spirit of the Golden Age was reflected throughout the culture and media of the time, which saw a revival of interest in space exploration alike that seen during the first Space Race. The Golden Age is frequently romanticized and remains a popular subject of literature, art and entertainment centuries afterward in the genre of "Frontier Romance" or "Solar Opera", which commonly depicts life in the early days of space travel in an idealized fashion.