| Technology Achieved | Technology Unavailable |
|---|---|
| Wormhole / Jump Drive (star-to-star) | FTL Travel, FTL Comms, FTL Telemetry |
| Fusion Power, Advanced Batteries, Portable Nuclear Generators | Cold Fusion, Antimatter |
| Non-Volitional AI, Advanced Robotics, Quantum Computing | AI Singularity, Two-Way Neural Interfaces |
| Space Elevators, Asteroid Mining, Artificial Habitats, SSTO | Gravity Generators, Personal Teleporters, Tractor Beams |
| Vehicle-Borne Chemical Lasers, Advanced Coilguns | Energy Shields, Personal Laser Weapons, Plasma Weapons |
| Advanced Gene Therapy, Tissue Engineering, Cybernetics | Mind Uploading, Cybernetic Reprogramming |
| Nano-Scale Material, Polymer-Based Electronics | Grey/Red Goo Nano Machines, Time Travel |
But instead of lasers and non-nuclear warheads streaking across the void, this post is about infrastructure and logistics - it may appear less exciting but it's much more important.
Hopefully this should also explain why TV in the future is black and white.
The Limitations of STL Communication
So, while pseudo-FTL travel is accomplished by starships making jumps between solar systems, there is no means of communicating faster than the speed of light. That means you can't effectively form any sort of conversation with someone in another system, or even on the other side of the same system. There is no FTL telemetry, and everything you know is second-hand information.If an Orion Union space station in the Lirin System is being attacked by members of the Perseus Libertarian Republic, the Union commander can't call his friends in the Kwatee System and ask for reinforcements - the message would take years to reach the next star system, by which time the space station is probably going to be a string of junk orbiting the nearest celestial body.
The Internet... in Spaaace!
Imagine you have two Internet applications - a wiki and an email service.Communication between a planet's colonies is achieved over the local ColNet - pretty much the same as the Internet that we in the 21st Century are so familiar with. So long as a settlement has working infrastructure, they can communicate over whatever means they have available (copper, radio, laser, and satellite). Wiki pages are up-to-date with content created and updated by people on your colony; and you can email people in your town, in the big city, and on the other side of the planet.
Communication between planets and stations in a star system is achieved by a conglomeration of networks that form a StarNet. StarNets are maintained by radio- and laser-equipped satellites; even though they communicate at the speed of light, the distances they transmit over are vast, so there is usually a long delay before information reaches its destination. A wiki page written by someone on one planet won't be available to someone on another planet for hours - or even days - after its creation. Similarly, while email is still faster than physically posting something to someone, even at light speed it will take a long time to cross the gulf between planets.
Finally, the distances between solar systems is so great that a true network cannot reliably be formed, but updates do get through via a sort of interstellar postal service. So you might get an update to your wiki from the next star system over, but it's a few weeks or months old; and you can email your second cousin twice removed who lives in that other star system, but you can't guarantee when they will receive the message.
Interstellar Postal Service
This is how you send email across the stars. This is also why computer screens tend to display very few colours or even end up being monochromatic.Virtually all jump-capable starships are built with a datavault outfitted with an array of data ports, many of which erroneously claim to be universal standards compatible with a wide variety of cables and connectors.
When a ship leaves a spaceport, they can accept data from the local StarNet and store it in the ship's datavault. When that ship arrives in another solar system and docks at one of its spaceports, it can dump the data in its datavault to the local StarNet. This way, your email and wiki pages can be transmitted across the stars.
Local/Interstellar Traffic
Data can be tagged as local or interstellar by its creator. In this case, local refers to "in system" and interstellar means it should be transmitted to a StarNet in another solar system. You need to know the unique identifier for the star system you want to send your data to, but this should be a matter of public record (unless you're in the Crux Empire in which case you'll probably find that THIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN RESTRICTED FOR YOUR PROTECTION by the local authorities).Within a certain threshold, there is usually no cost to releasing data to your local StarNet. Beyond that threshold, a user has to pay per-kilobyte. Colonial communication service providers might advertise a "massive" monthly data limit of 2MB per user to the local StarNet - this would probably be a very costly subscription service.
The cost to send data to a remote StarNet is also priced per kilobyte. Due to the limited size of the run-of-the-mill starship's datavault, it is expensive.
File Size Limits
The price-per-KB for interstellar data transmission means that most such messages are kept short and simple. It also means that most data transmitted between solar systems is text-only; sending images, audio, and especially video to another StarNet is very expensive. Compression is an important technology.Images and video sent to other StarNets is commonly low resolution and/or has a low colour count to reduce file size. This means a lot of 8-bit, 4-bit, or monochromatic pictures and videos. This, in combination with the large amount of text-only data transmitted between systems, means that machines monitoring StarNet data rarely have sophisticated screens capable of sixteen-million colours - most of what they display is text, occasionally accompanied by low-resolution black-and-white images.
Encryption
Encoding information is a luxury usually only afforded by large political bodies and the mega-rich. Encryption usually relies on both a message's sender and receiver to know the same cipher. Ciphers are changed regularly, with the keys and schedules established in-person long before any messages are actually sent, and patterns in message text are avoided.Empty Datavault Fine
There is a fine for jump-capable starships leaving a spaceport. This fine can be wavied if the starship reveals its projected route and destination, and if it accepts a certain amount of data destined for a remote StarNet that is on their route.There is also a fine for jump-capable starships docking at a spaceport. This fine can be waived if the starship delivers a certain amount of data from a remote StarNet.
This means that removing a jump-capable starship's datavault, taking off in a hurry before a data transfer has been completed, or being cagey and secretive about where you're going, can cost you quite a lot of credits in the long run. Most starship crews and captains are quite happy to reveal their plotted course and act as interstellar postmen in addition to whatever they normally do.
Data Sorting AI
Colonies with spaceports and space elevators will usually have a low-level AI postmaster to sort through the massive amounts of data circulating the ColNet, the local StarNet, and incoming/outgoing data from/to remote StarNets. This AI is responsible for rectifying conflicting data, sorting data into an acceptable chronological order, and routing and prioritising outgoing data. Beyond these tasks, the AI is usually as dumb as a sack of hammers.Data Smuggling
Sometimes you don't want the local postmaster AI to know anything about your messages. Just knowing that someone in an Orion Union system sent a message to someone in a Crux Empire system would be enough to raise eyebrows. Sometimes there are messages that a party cannot afford to have intercepted or lost, and sometimes people want large amounts of information sent at a higher-than-normal priority.Data smuggling is a thing. Hidden datavaults with hardened encryption, proprietary transmission protocols, secret data partitions, and many more cunning ideas have been employed by data smugglers - those who have a hand in getting information from one place to another by cutting out the middle men and ensuring that as small an audience as possible has access to the data along the way.
This is Boring/Why is this Important?
Keeping players interested in a setting means thinking about the foundations that it stands upon. If the PCs cannot send a FTL distress call when they are caught by surprise, then there should not be an interstellar Amazon catalogue/deliver service either.The more thought that goes into fleshing out a setting, the more immersed players will be when their characters explore that setting.
There is also an interesting juxtaposition of high technology and low technology. Information restricted to a local ColNet can be as vaired as you like - it can essentially be like the Internet of today, filled with colourful web pages, animated GIFs, funny cat videos, audio logs, the lot. Information in a StarNet, however, looks more like the kind of thing you would expect from the first Alien film, with low-res monitors, monochrome text-only displays, and lossy 4-bit or 8-bit video.
Espionage and security becomes very WWII and Cold War with codes, ciphers, and interception taking over from where encryption once reigned as king - and that is far more interesting to deal with than just "hacking into the mainframe" when you are after information that someone else doesn't want you to have access to.
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