Whatever happened to the space program in Shadowrun?

Nasa is now owned by Ares, though most of the megacorps have launch capabilities, as demonstrated by the space race to get to Haley's comet in Year of the Comet

Beyond that, I understand Evo has a mars base or is in the process of building one. Not sure beyond that though.

Significant outposts on the moon and at the major Lagrange points, IIRC.

Isn't the Corporate Court's main facility on a space station?

Wasn't there also a biolab in space as part of emergence? One with 7 scientist and a crazy AI?

I think the Wiki has a few more details, but it mostly sounds like expensive space labs... maybe a little (still pricey) space tourism.

You're thinking of the Zurich Orbital. Yes, that hosts major members of the corporate court, their favorite mistresses, and a number of very critical servers.

the Target Wastelands SB had a whole chapter on space.

I wish there had been a couple of example of the space stations to work with. Though I will say, unless you got a really big can of raid and or a sack of gold dust, say the frag away from La Grange point L3 and the Nerva Beacon there.

What's at the Beacon? I am assuming bug spirits from your post, but in space?

If I recall correctly, one of the corps built a space station and put enough plants/people on it to get a mana/astral presence, then opened astral rifts to the insect mana planes to take a shot at some hive queens. Dunno how that turned out for them.

Imperial Japan has a whole slew of solar power sats in Geo that provide gigwatts of beamed power each. SPS are typically estimated to mass several ten of thousands of tons each, so there is some sort of monstrous lift capability available to Japan (and the SPS are what created the new empire, so the launch sites are in historic Japanese territory).

As far as I know this capability (which is one or more orders of magnitude more than anyone other then maybe Ares has) is totally ignored by all the other SR material.

The fact that Japan has many orbital platforms that have gigwatts of power available to them is also ignored by the SR material, but there are many things you could do with gigawatts of power from Geo. Really honking huge lasers are one of the obvious ideas....

Ares. Knight appears to be satisfied with his investment, but I don't think that this program is publicly known. Particularly how it really works. Frank had some interesting posts on it a few years ago.

Also, Street Magic says that a lot of corps have space stations to research magic, as dangerous as it is up there, there's no chance of cross-contamination or the magic getting out of control in space.

Seems to me there's a lot of toe-dipping into space. Nothing like full-on major colonies, but a research outpost here, Zurich Orbital there, etc.

As of 2070, all but one has been decommissioned, in favor of cold fusion plants. Corprate Enclaves covers the remaining one.

Keep in mind that Ares ate Nasa, Sader-Krupp ate the EU space program, and Evo got what was left of the Russian program. They all have massive lifting capablilty, including SK's Skyforge.

IIRC, that biolab/bioweapons research platform station was owned by Aztechnology.

And once again i am reaffirmed that we need a "Shadowrun: IIN SPAACEE! ò,Ó" Book ^^

Just so long as one of the new JackPoint users is a pig changeling.

Bugs aren't bothered by gold dust.
The designers put an obscure pop culture reference from the 1970's in the section by using the name of the station - Nerva-

I don't think so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA

Tell me about it. Target: Wastelands gave me total wood for playing SR in space, and I never really got to do it in a game. There's gear and stuff scattered here and there in the 4e stuff, and it's pretty extensive if you spend a bunch of time putting it all together, but it just doesn't feel the same as a few chapters or a book would.

Heck, even Uncle Ani liked the idea, that tells me i am on to something here ^^

I know so, especially since the writer who did that section confessed when I called him on it when the Target Wastelands came out.

Wikipedia is not the be all and can be wrong or in this case incomplete.

Hey look i often miss some of the pop culture references, I was damn proud I caught this one.

OK... what's the pop culture reference? I have no clue and would like to know.

Were they specifically referring to the nuclear rocket engine? I don't know that I would call that "pop culture" but it's a remarkably good catch in any case.

And apparently one on the opposite side of the sun.


Ares. It's mentioned in one of the SR4 books, I think SM. Named "Eden" and modular, designed to be destroyed at a moments notice in case of a bug following them back.

Magic in space would be like magic before the Awakening - verrry powerful, verrry subtle. Powerful in the practitioner, not the spell. Anyone who could cast up there the way a regular mage does on earth would be picking their pay grade.

Target: Wastelands was a hit-and-miss book for me but I did love the section on space (especially the bit about how orbital prostitutes typically have a PhD in physics). Evo has had their Mars base for awhile. More recently hints were dropped in Runner Havens that one of the megacorps is in the process of building a space elevator. There are several labs and manufacturing facilities in orbit but there are some large stations that see major traffic, like Apollo and the Shibanokuji Freefall Resort.

Personally, I'm glad they're ignored. They're continuity headaches to explain. SPSs are monstrous undertakings (much more difficult than the visionaries of the 1970s hoped) and they were built improbably early in Shadowrun's future history, right at a time when the global economy is tanking and, historically, Japan had crap for its aerospace industry. The result should be enormously expensive electricity that could easily be replaced by a cheap, terrestrial coal plant.



...though I'll take a solar power satellite over cold fusion any day.



I was going to second the nitpicking about calling NERVA a "pop culture" reference but then I found Dr. Who's "Nerva Beacon," and it makes a bit more sense.

Actually, that's not an entirely accurate statement. It depends on how you define "aerospace". They have been active participants in the US space program for years, and their AVIATION insdustry is very advanced, don't make the mistake of thinking otherwise. They have been producing satellites for years, pretty good ones supposedly, but their native launch capacity has been lagging. Remember that the 6th World timeline diverged in the late 80's when it appeared that Japan would literally own half the world in a decade, and they've historically taken a very LONG view of everything from societal programs to science to industrial expansion. There is NO reason to believe they wouldn't put a LARGE part of that surplus income/trade imbalance (I remember when it was Japan the jingoists complained about, not China) into a burgeoning launch capability. It's profitable, they're relatively well situated for launches, and energy is a major currency in a high tech future world. Remember how Japan was starved of oil in WWII? I promise you, that has NOT faded from the cultural forebrain. They are one of the single largest consumers of MidEast oil, seeing as how they have no meaningful domestic sources (we get ours from the Canada, Mexico, the crazy little guy in Venezuela, the North Sea and the Middle East). Being able to take themselves off that black drug would have been HIGH on their list of priorities, and with so much urban living, they could have (and are today) making a switch to electric cars MUCH easier than most of the rest of the world.

Admittedly an SPS is a huge undertaking, but the US sank a LOT of money into the Star Wars program in the same era for not too much (visible) return, and older editions DO mention things like THOR satellites, orbital lasers, construction platforms... heck, constructing a permanent Lagrange Point habitat is an even larger commitment of resources and a fiercer launch problem than even a constellation of SPSes. And they have a bunch of THOSE up too. Try to remember: in the late 80's it was expected the Shuttle would have been replace by a functional SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) spaceplane fleet by the turn of the century, which would have made things immeasurably easier, and been WELL within the reach of the Japanese aviation industry with government backing.

The main appeal for me has always been that you have to build a monstrous launch infrastructure. In SR it is that this provides a set of hugely powerful weapon platforms that are controlled by Japan. Which is also why they would never be decommissioned....

The blatant idiocy in shutdown on these suggests the terribly poor state of affairs of elementary school science instruction in the modern US.

Well, it MAY be due to the fact that maintaining them was more costly than investing in ground-based fusion technologies. Or due to concerns over aiming access being garnered by outside forces. Or part of a deal with a corporation which was beneficial in other ways.

I don't think we have enough basic information about it to say it was because the devs were poorly educated. Political and social concerns often trump purely scientific ones. Witness how much of the power generated in the united states comes from coal, rather than soft-water nuclear reactors.

Um, the upkeep on a platform of that magnitude as anything more than a crude gravitic anchor point is pretty stupendous if all you're using it for is a weapons platform (particularly if you want a human crew on-site, which I can see a good paranoid military insisting on). Plus, most of them tend to be in a geosynchronous orbit... over your own country. Not much good as a launch platform from there. I don't understand your complaint on this one.

Oh, the Japanese are advanced, but their production is a trickle compared to the US, Europe, or Russia. The handful of rockets they build are derivatives of US rockets, the few fighters they build are primarily derivatives of US fighters, and their airlines filled with US-built aircraft. They do build some advanced aerospace vehicles domestically, but not in much quantity. Asking them to suddenly leap to SPS production is a stretch, and implies some interesting alternate history changes.

Define "suddenly" for me. But before you do, let me just toss out some other "projects" that happened "suddenly".

(Say over less than 20 years)

In no particular order:
Project Apollo
The Hoover Dam
The Golden Gate Bridge
The Tenessee Valley Authority
Project Manhattan
The Three River Gorge Dam
The United States military production response post 07 December 1941
The final attempt at the Panama Canal

Every single one of those projects represented a massive undertaking of manpower, engineering, money and material. They all stretched the state-of-the-art for their day. They all required massive support by their government in combination with industry. We only went to the moon seven times, but those rockets represented a surge in production capability virtually unparalleled in the history of mankind; When President Kennedy announced our intention to "before this decade is out, land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth", America's total experience with manned spaceflight consisted of a single sub-orbital 15 minute flight by Alan Shepard. There was only one rocket "certified" for manned flight, the Redstone, which even in its day wasn't even an IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile). It was a direct evolution of the V2 rocket and not that dissimilar to the Scud missile still in use today. Missile production was a trickle at the time, too. And less than nine years later, we were rolling out Saturn V rocket stacks (and Saturn IBs) like it was going out of style; The Americans had to invent the technology as they went along. The Japanese, as you pointed out, already have the ability to produce things in small numbers. As the Americans proved in the massive military industrialization of 1942, if you can already produce it, it's amazing how much you can produce once you put your mind (and money) to it. With the kind of trade surplusses of the late 80's I can't see them NOT making the stretch nationally as a security interest, if nothing else.

About 25 years ago, I would've agreed with you Kerenshara. Since then, I've watched most of my hopes and dreams for aerospace technology, nanotech, and nuclear technology crushed under a liberal dose of reality. What is technologically possible with mild extrapolation has little to do with what is actually possible, given economic, political, and social realities.

Well, that's just it, isn't it? Not to start a political rant here, but objectively, most nations, and the US in particular, have tossed out pure science and basic engineering research all but completely, satisfied to sit on our laurels. Even military development largely fell of after the fall of the Berlin Wall until computer aided design and modelling finally matured enough for people to start prototyping digitally. I see no reason why even now we couldn't pick back up and carry on. *head held high* A flashy manned mission to Mars isn't the answer, either. We need reliable, safe®, inexpensive access to orbit, we need significant money in materials research and applied sciences. Fusion is always "20 years away" because we refuse to spend enough on it to pass the scientific and engineering critical mass to achieve a breakthrough. The US has gone so far as to take a back seat as secondary partnet to Europe for both High Energy Physics research (Heard of the LHC?) as well as fusion research. Room temperature superconductors could change the face of the world, but how much is actually being spent on them? I see almost more hope in the fields of quantum computing and teleportation than I do in anything likely to upset the economic or idealogical status quo. And it's not just a question of throwing money at a problem: you actually have to get the right people working on the project with the right tools. Again: Project Apollo. How much harder could Fusion be with that kind of drive and funding? We developed the atomic bomb from paper plausibility to use in anger in less than half a decade. We can do it - we just have do decide it's worth it and that we want to.

Now, ask me if I think we're going to be able to DO that any time soon? *rude noise* The beautiful thing about the 6^th orld is that despite the cruelty, the poverty and the ruin of the planet, they told us SOMEBODY did it, and we get to take it from there.

They had 50,000 ton platforms in Geosynchronous orbit suddenly reentering the atmosphere and burning up in a matter of minutes, using just their stationkeeping thrusters. Yes, it IS that stupid.

"Station Keeping" on something that slotting huge is going to be subjective. What are you citing? Define minutes. Now you have me interested in your example.

currently, 2009, Japan does not have the tech level but by 2050 they have 4 of the biggest corps in the world and Fuchi had substancial holdings in Norrth America and Europe. Until they had a little accident a few years ago Brazil was ready to break into the main teirs of satalite launches

Brazil? Do you mean the ArianeSpace launches from French Guiana? That would be a European consortium lead by the French. They ARE a main tier orbital launch organization. Brazil has only had one partial success in four launch vehicles and three launches, achieving a mere 50km altitude.

Primary Tier Nations (Manned launch capability):

Russia: (Proton and Energia families); Manned launch capability [First orbit 1957]
United States: (Atlas & Delta families; Space Shuttle); Manned launch capability [First orbit 1958]
China: (Long March family); Manned Launch & GTO Capability [first orbit 1975]

Second Tier Nations (Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit capability):

Japan: (H family) [First orbit 1970]
ArianeSpace: (Ariane family); No Manned Launch Capability [First orbit 1979]
India: Geosynchronous launch capability [First orbit 1983]

Other nations with orbital capability:

France: Retired, now part of ArianeSpace/European Space Agency [First orbit 1965]
United Kingdom: Retired, now part of ArianeSpace/European Space Agency [First orbit 1971]
Israel: Polar launch capability [First orbit 1988]
Iran: LEO Only [First orbit 2009]
Brazil: [No successful launches yet]
North Korea: [No successful launches yet]
South Korea: [No successful launches yet]

I said Brazil was ready, not that they had done it. The little accident a few years back was a few days before they were going to have a full power test burn, the missle went to full burn early- incinerating something like 30-40% of their best minds in seconds.

I remembered it at the time because it seemed like a SR hit- someone in the business arranges to have a potential competator suffer a huge disaster before they are ready. The Brazil program went from proud national project to crispy-critter-city in momments.

Oh for your score above- North Korea '0'? But last month the glorious government of the Peoples Rebulic reported that they had successfully launched a satalite into orbit from where it was broadcasting glorious patriotic songs of their beloved leader Kim Il Sun. Are you trying to say that the government of dear leader Kim Jung Mentally Il lied to us??????

Seriously, the programs of Iran and N. Korea probably shouldn't be on the lists as they are more designed to deliver payloads over another country than to put stuff up to stay. (Israel might also fit into this too)

Sorry, I didn't wind up getting that reading your post.


Glorious Leader proclaims success of our peaceful rocket! That was very funny in reference to the DPRK.

North Korea and Iran both CLAIM to be trying to loft satellites, so I included them. The reason Sputnik scared the United States drekless was that the ability to lob a payload into LEO is roughly comparable in terms of design and technical know-how to being able to lob a early generation thermonuclear weapon over the poles at your enemy, so if it goes that "civilian ability to lob a satellite = ability to launch a nuke" then conversely "the ability to lauch a nuke = the ability to lob a satellite".

As to Israel, they actually REGULARLY loft intelligence and communications satellites... probably has NOTHING to do with being surrounded by nations that have vowed to wipe you off the planet OR the fact that they don't entirely trust their closest ally (the USA) to actually give them fully reliable and real-time intelligence and communications assistance or full access to launch capabilities.