Outward Bound 1: Post-Diaspora Earth

I'm going to switch gears and write some posts about a custom sci-fi setting for awhile. You'll want to use a system such as Traveller (any flavor really), Cepheus Engine, Stars Without Number, or Thousand Sons.

In retrospect the collapse was inevitable once the warp drive was invented.  Based on the gravity control technologies that allowed humanity to colonize most of the Sol system, everybody who had enough money to burn had their own private starships constructed.  Terrestrial nations with overpopulation issues started crash colony programs.

When vast sums of people fled the ecologically ruined Earth, the economic vacuum was unlike any in recorded history.  Many historians compare it to the Bronze Age Collapse in its almost total ruination of sophisticated industry and technical knowledge.  Nearly a third of the 48 billion people living on Earth left in order to escape the Coriolis storms, oppressive heat, and local resource shortages.  Skilled labor and the incredibly affluent were among those who left. 

With so many planetside resources and manpower drained to fuel this exodus, Earth's orbital habitats known as the Islands took up much of the slack.  The Islands shepherded the formation of the SolUnion and established the capitol on Luna.  The industrial and agricultural might of the Islands and Luna formed the core of the SolUnion, with the Outer Planets forming the backbone for powering the system with their hydrogen and helium fueling the ubiquitous fusion power generators.

It took nearly a century for Sol to recover and claw its way back to where it was prior to the collapse.  In that time, many people immigrated off of Earth and to the expanding colonies elsewhere.  A great deal of effort was expended to terraform Earth back to the garden world it had been during humanity's pre-industrial era.  Once economic stability had finally been achieved (or at least a stability that was similar to before the Collapse), thoughts turned to rediscovering the people who fled the system.

Alpha Centauri was able to provide the technology to start Project Heyrdahl.  They had not suffered as Sol had, and they had provided a lot of technical knowledge that allowed Earth to recover lost industries.  They provided the schematics for the prototype Warp-5 drive, capable of crossing 5 parsecs (~16.3 light years) in a single standard week (168 hours).  Exodus-era drives were only capable of 1 or 2 parsecs in a standard week.  While the Centaurans had the knowledge for Warp-3 and Warp-4 drives, they lacked the production facilities to build any.  With Sol's industry restored and even improved in several key areas, both the Centaurans and Solars could begin building improved starships.  It all led to the creation of Goddard-class Expedition ships, the core of Project Heyerdahl.