2500—Challenges and Opportunities
Internally, the rise of populations was beginning to lead to the rise of a professional class—universities were founded and the slow process of making use of hte still preserved libraries was started.
And a slow process it was. Reading the documentation was one thing—turning it into machines was another. For over 200 years most communities had done well enough with simple technologies, and technicians who were more or less apprenticed—now attempting to produce an industrial order proved difficult, indeed.
One of the largest issues was the simplest—the inhabitants by and large had what they wanted. New Rio, even with it’s 85 million, had fewer people on it than had existed at any time after the age of bronze on earth, and in most communities, founding a new steading, or even a new village, meant hopping in a ATV and driving for an hour or so—true, the best sites might have been taken, but on a world with over 120% earth’s land area, “second best” was very good indeed. Even so, their was a slow drive to start regaining the old technologies, and by 2520, Rio and at least five other colonies had once again gained the ability to enter orbital and system space.
But it was on Rio and later, Maxwell’s Landing that the first steps towards what would become a defining characteristic of Colonial society evolved: The Corporation.
Most of the Colonies had little in the way of high level government—founded by those with every reason to distrust government, most Colonial charters were firmly against vesting too much authority in the hands of the planetary “authorities” and so they had little—the settlements were more or less independent. But in order to re-establish some forms of the more advanced technology, more in the way of organization and resources were needed. So, on both Rio and Maxwell’s Landing, groups started to form corporations—organizations where the founders, usually those bankrolling them but just as often workers, would contribute shares, in the promise of sharing in the benefits when the corporation became profitable. Just as had been the case on Old Earth, the main benefit of these organizations was their longevity—they would endure beyond the lifespan of any particular founder. This would have major implications for the future.
But in teh beginning, their influence was minor—investment wasn’t easy to come by, and only the best corporations endured. New Rio’s MaxTech invested and worked hard to develop a line or rugged and inexpensive VTOL and ground vehicles, and by 2520 had also built the first fusion powered shuttles to be constructed since the arrival—although it only built 10 of them, their being little demand for more. In addition, MaxTech started the dlow and difficult process of determining how to reactivate the mothballed fleet of jumpships left in high orbit, a task of no mean difficulty. On Maxwell’s Landing, Common Dreams, Ltd, did much the same thing, though they suffered from the fact that the colony ships had been parked in a lower orbit, and had long since fallen to earth.
But Three factors helped these nascent companies along the first was that the growing populations now had a small but growing professional segment and their “major cities” while laughable compared to the far off inner sphere, were at least large enough to start to create a culture that prized growth—and luxury. That was the second factor—with prosperity came a desire for luxury goods and the new corporations were increasingly able to fill that need—and that gave rise to a wealthy class of businessmen.
And there was the fact that with ever larger populations the dangers of disasters grew, as was shown by a series of major storms on Rio—which resulted in MaxTech and several other corporations showing a better face than the largely ineffectual central government. No power was directly deeded to them as a result of this, but that prestige translated out into more money and more importantly more and more children from the (still very large) families migrating to the cities to try thier hands at a new way of life. Given the still impressive growth rate, the worlds of the Colonies found themselves able to absorb quite a bit in the way of consumer spending.
But even so, it wasn’t until 2560 that the rebuilt jumpship Drake made the Journey to Maxwell’s Landing, there to exchange news and a few representatives—and not until 2600 were more than 10 jumpships operating, with a single new jumpship being produced at the Rio orbital yards every two years. It was, however, enough.
The Colonies were no longer a group of independent planets, but a community, however loosely linked.
