In 2600 A.D. humanity is still failing to overcome its violent and warlike tendencies. While little progress has been made in becoming more peaceful as a species, the same can not be said for weapon technology which is provides awesome levels of destructive power to soldier and starship alike.

Side arms still represent the most common method of making and countering serious acts of personal agression. There are several broad categories of sidearm that are prevailent across the Confederation.

T.I.P. [ Pistols ], [ Carbines ] and Rifles. [ Restraint ] and Stun Weapons,  [ Gauss Guns ]

The standard media for information, whether it be written or audio-visual. These tiny crystals store huge amounts of information within their atomic structure. The technology of the flek crystal (actually not a hard crystal but flexible ''peeling' is usually contained in a small storage cassette or built into a credit card like plastic wafer. 27th Century currency is in the most part based on transaction via a personal credit flek which stores an individuals banking information. Other uses of Fleks are in entertainment where they are capable of storing movies, music or the current mood-fantasy VR experiences that users of neural nanonics can enjoy. The cutting edge in this Virtual Reality technology are Present Time Reality
Programmes allow the user to experience total immersion virtual reality, they are illegal on many worlds as they can cause severe psychological damage and can be dangerously addictive.

The Helium-3 isotope doesn't exist in any meaningful quantity on Earth, it is too energy expensive to process in bulk so as soon as demand for the substance began to increase at the beginning of the fusion era (2170 A.D.) Other sources had to be found and utilised. While there were quantities on the Moon it still required expensive extraction. The most abundant and pure source was found to exist in the upper atmosphere of gas giants. Plans to put mining operations into Jupiter orbit soon followed, along with development in Aerostations which could safely extract the helium and return it for purification. Aerostats were effective in collecting gas but the work proved harder and more dangerous than previously thought. The solution was to exploit orbital-tower technology to effectively dangle a pipe into the upper atmosphere from a geostationary asteroid in low orbit. Although hugely expensive to set up it provided a much higher rate of supply without the dangers of Jovian weather which lead to the destruction of some of the earlier 'aerostat or scoop-stations. The new orbital tower systems, called cloud scoops allowed for a big increase in supply and a consequent reduction in price         

 [ Cloudscoop ]

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