Dark Earth: Space - The New Frontier

Does the British Ministry of Space exist in the Darkearth verse (i hope without the Black Budget).

And what are its American (if they have one) and others counterparts called.

With the British one the oldest and the Chinese one the youngest i presume.

Chapter 1: Reach for the Skies


Prehistory to 19th Century
In the beginning, beyond the Earth without form, was void. Throughout the distant ages of prehistory and the long count of days ere began the long march to civilisation, the stars stood silent in their far-off mystery, shifting on their stately dance through the heavens for purposes beyond the ken of mortal man. Long after the age of the dragons from their epoch of golden glory had faded, the elves first emerged through the trees from the faerie mists of twilight and gazed above in marvel and wonder at the procession of the night skies. Over the millenia, their mastery of the arcane allowed them to reach beyond the terrestrial realm in myriad ways, but ever did the heavens did seemingly remain above and beyond them, at least as far as the tales told of them for countless centuries were concerned.

The time of the elves waned as the earth grew cold once again and new races rose – giants, dwarves and at last, that strangest and most unlikely of all creatures, man. Cave dwellings, hunter-gatherer tribes and ages of stone gave way to farming and the first settlements over a dozen millenia. Chief among these was fair Atlantis, the greatest of the now lost civilisations of that antediluvian age, whose sages studied the nature of the stars, planets and constellations while their golden sailed ships wended their way across the world. Only mysterious remnants and myriad myths survived the fall of that lost land in the great flood, scattered across the world like the discarded pieces of a child’s puzzle dashed aside in frustration. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Indochina and Peru all bear the strange marks of the ancients. One aspect that many of these share is imagery of flight, the sky and the power of the sun, giving rise to the tantalizing notion that the men of Atlantis voyaged far beyond the surly bonds of earth back at the dawn of history.

It would be many, many centuries before humanity would once again reach the cusp of the stars. Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome all rose to glory and fell to ruin. Many are the tales from those times of flight, both arcane and natural, ranging from Gilgamesh to Icarus and Daedalus. Ages of darkness, war, pestilence and fear followed and amid the tide of human misery, it seemed that the golden morning of the classical world was forever gone. Yet there were other lands far, far beyond the seas and mountains of the Mediterranean world and Europe that kept the light of knowledge alive and thriving.

The vast, mystical Oriental empires of India and China had myriad stories of miraculous flight and travel through the dark wilderness of space from time immemorial and, above all else, they had dragons and flying monsters aplenty. Their long histories and thriving prosperity allowed the wisdom of the ancients to blossom and grow. Particularly notable was the Chinese invention of rocketry in the middle years of the Tang dynasty. At first, it was simply considered a delightful amusement and method of celebration, but soon their mastery of gunpowder and rocketry permitted the further advancement of science. The accompanying development of gliders was similarly seen as an idle pastime for many years. In India, knowledge of advanced astronomy, perhaps connected with the traditional tales of incredible flying machines called vimanas from the Mahabarata and the Vedas, flourished down the long centuries into the Middle Ages.

Knowledge from the East was transferred through the guardians of the knowledge of the ancient world, the Arabs and Byzantines, and as the West began to rise from the tumult of the Dark Ages and the end of the medieval period, these came together in the rebirth and flowering of new glories. The Renaissance had its beginning in the city-states of Italy and there many geniuses and polymaths arose in this brilliant epoch, but one stands clearly before all others – Leonardo da Vinci. He created designs for many new devices and contraptions in his magnificent workshop, including a number of flying machines that bear a remarkable resemblance to modern day helicopters, aeroplanes and spacecraft.

His work built on the ingenious dwarven ornithopters that had so astounded the medieval world, the gliders of China and India and the legendary flights of Elmer of Malmesbury and the Arab Abbas Ibn Firnas. These had emulated the wings of birds and dragons with great success, although were limited in size and range by the necessity of motive power supplied by the pilot himself and by the disapproval of elements of the medieval church. Dwarven engineers had developed an interim solution to this conundrum by the mid 1490s, but it would be many years before this could be implemented. William Silverblade’s clockwork ornithopter of 1562 provided the first means for sustained flight over distances out to twenty miles, but had the misfortune of being developed at the beginning of the Arcane Revolution and the accompanying renaissance of the use of flying beasts. His major contribution would come in joining Leonardo’s concept of powered wings with an aerodynamic shape.

Tales of flying machines and the first tentative steps into the skies were but the first stage of the journey to the stars. The great scientist and natural philosopher Sir Isaac Newton’s (1642-1767) discoveries in the realms of mathematics, astronomy and physics provided the necessary theories and understanding of the nature of gravity, the motion of the earth through space, light and aether that would allow mankind to progress on its path onward and upward. Joining the momentous changes in knowledge of the Scientific Revolution were the wholesale changes of production and manufacturing and the new power sources of the Industrial Revolution. At the dawn of the 19th century, without fully knowing it, man had most of the main pieces of the quest for space in place.

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January 20th 1964, Imperial Spaceport, Lamu, Kenya, British East Africa

The light was quite, quite bright for this time of year, although Tom Fowler conceded that he wasn’t exactly unaccustomed to these equatorial conditions or summer at this time of year; it was simply the speed of the change that had shocked him. It had only been yesterday that he’d boarded an Imperial Airways Comet in wintry London, wrapped up in two coats and his warmest hat, an outfit that had been decidedly less than suitable for the 91° weather of his destination. From Mombasa, it had only been a short hop in a Super Jetliner that had been crowded with the usual mix of assorted businessmen, exotic traders, military officers, wealthy tourists and couriers heading for Lamu and thence on to Upside. He’d had the opportunity to change first, which had been jolly decent, and his current combination of safari suit and Panama hat was far more suited to the Kenyan climate. To tell the truth, the conditions were only part of it; deep down, he wasn’t really partial to flying in an aeroplane at the best of times.

He’d often read about the Imperial Spaceport, but this was his first time here in person. It was profoundly unlike any other aerodrome he had seen and was seemingly built for giants. The huge terminal was constructed in the strange Space Gothic style used in such places, all intricate stone and steel and soaring Victorian windows rising to a cathedral-like roof combined with ultra-modern crystal screens showing newsreels, television and details of coming flights and an ingenious interior steam monorail running high up on the walls to bring passengers to the next section of the cavernous structure. Strange rainbow-hued plants grew alongside pleasantly bubbling streams inside steelglass pleasure gardens that dotted the walls in between restaurants, cafes, emporiums, taverns and private waiting lounges like the one where Tom was reclining at that very moment. There were advantages to sponsored travel, after all.

He had thought that the job was simple enough – travel to Mars courtesy of British Empire Interplanetary Spacelines, write a series of glowing articles lauding their new vessels and facilities on Mars and emphasis how superior they were to their British and American competition. A dream job for a young freelance journalist and one he had been extremely lucky to get at just 23; the pay packet would be very useful indeed given his current less than salubrious circumstances. He’d made his name with several hard-hitting independent pieces about government malfeasance in the Belgian Congo and the East India Company’s activities in the South Pacific for The Adventurer and had come highly recommended to The Daily Chronicle, although it hadn’t hurt that Uncle Gilbert was an old regimental chum of the owner. Unbiased and fearless writing didn’t keep the wolves from the door, though.

Looking out of the window onto the savannah and far distant hills beyond the boundary fence and river, he found himself smiling as old memories came back. Some would find it slightly incongruous to see waving palm trees and distant grazing dinosaurs in the same place, but that was the Dark Continent for you. Tom hadn’t spent long in Africa in his National Service days, serving out most of his two years in Egypt and Germany, but he hadn’t forgotten the way that the land felt different. There was a vivid vibrancy and sheer heart to the place that was unlike any other and every colour glowed with a sheer intensity that was difficult to match. He sipped on his blue, pink, orange and green Amazon Sunrise and savoured the complex sweet taste as the cool air conditioning fluttered the newspapers on the table before him.

The trill of chimes bought him back to reality and he swallowed the rest of his drink as the cheery announcer spoke the words Tom had been awaiting.

“Good afternoon. Passengers travelling on Imperial Spaceways Flight 256 to Queen Elizabeth Station are advised that their spacecraft is now ready for boarding. Please proceed to Gate 5 and have your boarding passes ready. Thank you.”

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The end of almost two and a half decades of struggle against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France in 1815 left Britain unchallenged as a global power and without a direct threat in Europe for the first time in centuries. Thus it was that attention could be turned both inward, to the exponentially expanding economy of the world’s first industrial state, and outward, to the unexplored verges of the world and the last vestiges of the wild. Asia, Australia, Africa, the Americas and even the vast white Antarctic continent began to slowly give up their secrets to bold explorers venturing out across the ocean seas. This was the beginning of the Pax Britannica, though none called it such in its early years, and of the new Age of Empires.

In 1824, the unveiling of the Grand Telescope at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich was met with delighted acclaim and curiosity as observations of far off bodies in the heavens could be made with hitherto unparalleled clarity and accuracy. Venus lay behind her swirling, beautiful clouds like a shy maiden, but Mars and the three moons revealed astounding sights and incredible marvels that set minds ablaze. On Luna, largest of Earth’s satellites, there seemed to be clear signs of artificial activity in the form huge shapes of birds and animals and an enormous humanoid face apparently carved into its surface, yet many thoughtful astronomers explained them away as natural formations, a mere mistake of the mind. Minerva and Bellona bore similar scars, yet theirs were even more random and perchance simply a trick of the light. It was on Mars that the starkest evidence of activity beyond the ken of man was discovered. There seemed to be a series of canals crisscrossing two of the main continents, including a vast gun-barrel straight channel on the isthmus between North and South Tharsis, and several great lakes and islands that seemed far too symmetrical to be natural. This planted a seed in the imaginative minds of writers and the popular press and within half a dozen years, there was a thriving trade in lurid and fantastical accounts of life on Mars and the other planets that was eagerly devoured by an increasingly affluent populace.

The introduction of steam airships in the early 1840s provided further impetus to global exploration and many forecast that the skies would be the new avenues for commerce and international intercourse in the manner that the seas had been in previous centuries. Although the initial use of such vessels had been for peaceful science and trade, it would be the winds of war that provided the greatest assistance to the development of new aerial technologies. The Crimean War of 1852-1856 was the largest single European war between 1815 and 1914 and involved fighting on land, sea and air across four continents. Greater advances in airship and flying machine technology were made in the five years of the conflict than would have occurred in two decades of peace and it was clear that victory in the battles of the future would go to the empire that controlled the air. The Great Armament, which had seen the introduction of mass production of gunboats and steam engines, provided the industrial basis for much that was to follow.

Into this heady atmosphere of rapid technical progress and increasing military urgency came Professor Bertram Shandelwyn Cavor, an eccentric and reclusive scientist and amateur hedge wizard from Arnescote, Oxfordshire who had spent the better part of thirty years researching alchemy and the properties of strange metals from all corners of the globe. In 1859, he declared that he had discovered a new element that he named cavorite. It possessed several remarkable properties, chief of which was that it apparently counteracted the force of gravity. His initial demonstrations to the Royal Society on January 4th 1860 astounded skeptical observers and lead to great acclaim, wild speculation as to its possible uses and the direct attentions of Her Majesty’s Government. Keen to avoid such an important discovery fall into the hands of the French, Russians or Prussians, the Lord Palmerston directed that a committee be formed by the Star Chamber, War Office and Admiralty to secure and study the potential uses of cavorite and protect Professor Cavor from the attentions of unscrupulous foreign agents.

This marked the beginning of what was later variously called the Great Scientific Endeavour or the Imperial Space Programme. In its nascent stages, it concentrated on the military uses of cavorite, particularly as the Trent Crisis threatened war between the British Empire and the United States; one curious investigation focused on its potential use in the construction of a flying ironclad three-deck ship of the line modeled on the formidable HMS Warrior that would be capable of crossing the Atlantic skies to strike at New York City, but the matter was resolved diplomatically through the efforts of Prince Albert before construction could begin. Research subsequently shifted to the optimal means of designing and manufacturing a vessel capable of flight beyond the earth and the exploration of space.

Great impetus was supplied by the activities and polices of Emperor Napoleon III, who was determined that France would not be left behind by their traditional rivals in the quest for greater glory and the advancement of science. There was considerable interest in the concept of space exploration within French society, in part due to the widespread popularity of author and later Minister of Science Jules Verne’s prophetic tale From the Earth to the Moon. There was similar interest in a number of other European capitals, but Berlin, Vienna, Rome and St. Petersburg at this time lacked the capital, industry and scientific might available to Britain and France. Recruitment of balloonists and airship pilots from the Royal Navy and Royal Flying Corps provided the first group of bold and daring aeronauts who would conduct the first dangerous experiments in small cavorite flying craft over England and Scotland in 1866 and 1867; five out of a cohort of twelve perished in fiery crashes or alchemical accidents.

Whilst cavorite provided for the necessary lift and acceleration required to leap from the earth, an effective method of propelling a vessel in the vast beyond remained elusive until the development of the aetheric engine by the Royal School of Wizardry in December 1867. This breakthrough allowed proper control for the first time and provided a realistic means of sending a vessel into space. The testing of alchemical rockets for thrust and maneuver proved relatively successful and they were deemed sufficient to boost a ship up into the void and back once more to the terrestrial realm. News that the French had begun construction of a enormous Columbiad super gun in February 1869 pushed forward the British schedule and a scale model aetheric engined spacecraft guided by a sorcerous receptor crystal was launched on a test flight in 1870, flying from Land’s End to John O’Groats in 23 minutes. This was followed by the beginning of construction of a full sized vessel in 1871, the Adventure.

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The queue at the boarding gate was thankfully short when Tom arrived and soon enough, his pass briefly examined by the smiling blonde stewardess, he was striding down the tartan-carpeted skyway towards another friendly face that awaited him at the terminal door. Beyond them lay the tarmac and the hulking white silhouette of the Hawker-Siddeley Starblazer that would take them up into space. He nodded amiably at the second stewardess and strode outside. After the cool conditions of the terminal, the hot air hit him like a warhammer to the unmentionables, bringing with it the scent of strange oils and him and the faint astringent tang of the exotic fuels used to power the behemoth spaceplane that loomed before him. At over 320ft long, the delta-winged Starblazers dwarfed the conventional aircraft arrayed around the spaceport. Powered by ten turbo-ramjets and four huge cavorite rocket engines, they were the workhorses of modern space travel between the planets, moons and space stations. The glossy brochures on the table of the waiting lounge had fairly gushed with enthusiastic praise for their capabilities – up to 125 passengers sped along in relaxed comfort from Earth to an orbital station within two and a half hours.

Tom climbed the metal staircase and was smiled aboard by the obliging hostess, who directed him to his expansive seat in the window aisle. The interior of the Starblazer was similar to that of an airliner whilst at the same time being discernibly different. It had the same luxuriantly appointed furniture that automatically adjusted to the comfort of the passenger, finely decorated walls and plush carpeting one would expect, but lacked individual window ports, instead having a large screen at the front of the cabin to show external footage. The seats were fitted with two sturdy cross belts and lacked a certain amount of leg room. He secured his Gladstone bag in the overhead locker and settled in, munching on a lovely chocolate truffle from the complimentary passenger welcome package and flicking through his copy of John Bull after deciding to leave The Spectator, Imperial Spaceways Journal and Punch for post-tea perusal. His brief moment of pleasant solitary delving into a fascinating little article on the Royal Navy in the 1960s was unfortunately disrupted by a tall, handsome man in a business suit who flopped down in the seat next to him.

“John Bull, hey? Looks nice. What’s it about? The Navy?” spoke the fellow in a strong Texan accent.

Oh goody. An American.

“Yes, I believe it is. All about the new atomic battlecruisers and other new ships we’re building and so forth.”

“I heard about those. Big devils. Like these birds. Not as big as our Boeings, though.”

“Hopefully just big enough to do the job. Space is rather large, I’m told.”

“Ha! Rather large! I like that, you’re a funny guy. I’m Heywood Sylvester; I’m in silicon.” He handed Tom his business card and followed by his hand. Both were very professional, naturally.

“Tom Fowler; I’m in debt.”

“Ha ha! You’re a natural – you should be on T.V.!”

“Quite. Tell you what, Mr. Sylvester, how about I let you have this one and I’ll get along to one of my others? That way you can catch up all about warships and -” he flicked back to the cover to see the other main articles “…Imperial trade policy and all the latest developments in home appliances. How’s that for a trade?”

“Fowler, you got yourself a deal. Imperial trade! Hah! You know what they say about that Empire of yours – the money is English, the ships are Scottish, the soldiers are Irish, the aircraft are Canadian, the raw materials are Australian and the workers are Indian!”

“Hilarious. I could have sworn that Coventry and Derby were on the other side of the Atlantic, but we live in a world of enormous change, apparently. I’d change the money to Canadian and aircraft to English for next time. Get you an even bigger laugh, eh?” With that, he settled down into his seat and buried himself in Punch, emerging only to fasten his safety belts as instructed before take off.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Imperial Spaceways Flight 256 to Queen Elizabeth Station. Your spacecraft today will be under the command of Captain Braddock, ably assisted by First Officer Hancox and Second Officer Bourne. Flight time will be approximately 142 minutes. Tea will be served after we complete our atmospheric climb. Thank you and enjoy your flight.” The amiable stewardess, a Miss Romana according to the gold name tag on her royal blue blouse, gifted the assorted passengers with a final smile as she finished her practiced announcement.

The Starblazer sped down the long, wide runway and thundered into the air. They climbed smoothly to 50,000ft, the numbers displayed in shining neon on the cabin screen, before dipping slightly and accelerating past the sound barrier in a shallow, curving dive. Tom, having been warned about what would happen next by the promotional literature kindly supplied in the seat pocket, took firm hold of the arms of his chair as the ramjet engines kicked in and sent them hurtling up, up, up to the heady height of 125,000ft. The projected image of the skies outside were now distinctly dark as they flew onwards and upwards far above the Indian Ocean. Finally, the ramjets cut out and the rocket engines took hold, causing another slight bump within the cabin. Six minutes later, the display dinged pleasantly to indicate they were now in low earth orbit and their engines shifted to the more sedate hum of cavorite power.

Miss Romana and Miss Wright now made their way around the cabin, offering tea, smoked salmon and egg and cress sandwiches, Chelsea buns and slices of Madeira cake, which Tom availed himself of gratefully, quite pleased that he had survived the orbital climb without making a dashed fool of himself. Mr. Sylvester had been naturally unflustered and thoroughly absorbed in either a colour illustration of HMS London or a list of how the automatic oven would revolutionize the lives of busy housewives; Tom was secretly hoping for the latter.

Preferring not to get up and wander to the bar, lounge or the music room as some of the other passengers were, he dug out his headset and switched on his personal telescreen, which was thankfully showing Tom Jones rather than Five Weeks in a Balloon or Around the World in Eighty Days; he didn’t really feel like tempting fate that much.

So it was that, just over two hours later, a rather relieved Tom Fowler and the other passengers greeted the news that they were about to commence their final approach to Queen Elizabeth Station with the customary round of applause. The image of the massive ringed sphere and its jutting solar arrays grew bigger by the second as they approached, giving them all a true sense of the size of one of the two largest artificial objects in orbit around the Earth. Docking was a delicate dance as the Starblazer manoeuvred carefully to match their target, but finally, three and hours and twenty six minutes after they had taken off from Lamu, Flight 256 came to an ever-so-soft landing in the lower dockport of the space station.

Thank you kindly. Cavorite is the key material that allows manipulation of gravity on the flights thus far.

The elves are generally taller, but Arion Telstar is well-mannered enough not to appear larger than a hero of the Empire, at least in a cameo appearance.

The Germans lost their space holdings in 1919 and both they and the Japanese are only starting to take gradual steps back up into the cosmos; as you suggest, it is done in a civilian capacity.

That is certainly a factor at play, but in any case, they are a long way behind the three superpowers, France and China.