The people of Whistler’s Reach are generally in the Tech Level 10 category with a few exceptions that were critical to the establishment of the colony, such as agriculture, terraforming, cryogenics, and practical space exploitation. Space travel is commonplace, though only undertaken by a small percentage of the overall population. There is no concept of gravitics. Gravity in space travel is exclusively through acceleration and spin. “The Expanse” books and television is a good reference.
Quality of Life Technologies
- Energy – TL10: Practical, clean fusion. Beginnings of fusion miniaturization. Super-dense hydrogen reaction mass. Near-lossless batteries.
- Information – TL10: Commonplace expert systems, petabyte-scale miniaturization. Beginnings of artificial synaptic clusters. Early general AI. Sophisticated robotics. Most citizens have personal expert systems trained over the course of their lifetime.
- Communications – TL10: Universal connectivity and connected everything. Tight-beam communications. Standards monopolies have created true universal interchange standards. Quantum encryption. Ubiquitous holo-projection and gesture control. Varied personal device form-factors, though the majority use wrist-mounted projection systems or pocket-sized slates.
- Medicine / Life Sciences – TL11: Fully-functional prosthetics, artificial organs, gene therapy. Autonomous medical care. Counter-g-force medications and orthotics. Ubiquitous cryogenics. Beginnings of computer/neural interfaces.
- Environment – TL11: Orbital cities. Practical spin-gravity (including “spinning up” celestial bodies). Practical weather control. Early terraforming.
Transportation Technology
- Land/Water/Air – TL10: “Triphibian” vehicles. Highly-efficient hovercraft. Near-sonic rail. Artificial gills. Highly-efficient hydrogen suborbital.
- Space – TL11: Highly-efficient, relativistic thruster technology. Commercialized jump-1 drive. Beginnings of Jump-2 drives. Commoditized orbital shuttles. Sophisticated semi-autonomous probes and drones.
Military Technology
- Personal Weapons – TL10: Advanced combat rifles, early laser weapons, recoil-compensating (zero-g) weapons. Highly-effective stun tech.
- Personal Armor – TL10: Broad spectrum of effective armors, from concealed flexible materials to full-body combat armor. Early augmented battle suits.
- Heavy Weapons – TL10: Naval railguns. High-speed torpedoes. Highly-effective point-defense weapons. High-penetration naval autocannons.
- Heavy Armor – TL10: High-density composites. Ablative armor. Multi-hull designs in warships. Self-healing bulkheads.
Theoretical Sciences
- Physical Sciences – TL10: Solid understanding of Quantum Mechanics. Jump space has been described and made practical (though not completely understood at a deep theoretical level).
- Material Sciences – TL10: Industrial composites, commoditized micro-manufacturing, “perfect” crystalline ceramics. Beginnings of space elevators.
- Biological Sciences – TL10: Gene therapy, early cybertechnology, automated comprehensive diagnostics.
- Cultural Sciences – TL9: Global nation states, federated governance models, distributed/virtual communities as legal entities, corporate state.