Human technological development

A timeline of human technological development 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, as well as outposts in the asteroid belt.

2100s

 * Human settlement of the Jovian Moons begins in the early half of the century.


 * Early cryogenic suspension chambers are developed for the months-long journeys between planets.

2200s

 * 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.


 * 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.

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.