West Tycho University.
Antony Esson.
7/23/3004.
How The Moon Was Colonized:
Spaceflight in the last half of the twentieth century and in the first half of the twenty-first century, were largely political stunts. It is true that significant scientific advancement came from this period in time but no real foothold was ever established in space. Throughout the twenty-first century, the ever rising population levels caused war, along with disease, and civil unrest. It could be said that humanity was too busy dieing under its own weight to colonize space. It would be space colonization, in the end, that would save humanity.
The problem that faced early space colonists was usually a lack of financial incentive. The technology existed for such a venture, and it wasn't particularly expensive to go to the moon, but there was nothing to tip the balance. What space colonization needed was a revolution similar to what happened in Europe from the 1870s up until the 1930s. It got one in the year 2117.
Chae Catalino, the thirty-eight year old at the time, founder and owner of Catalino Energy, was one of the key players in early space colonization. She was born in Seoul in the year 2079 and attended school there until she was sixteen. She attended Seoul University for undergraduate studies, earning her bachelors degree in nuclear engineering in only two years.
After graduation she worked for several different energy companies, gaining a reputation among her peers as a brilliant engineer. In March Second of 2100, only five days after her twenty-first birthday, she quit her job in Korea and moved to England. There she lead a small team of physicists and engineers to develop the first antimatter reactor.
Having no way to market this new invention Chae turned to her older, twin brothers who were investors in the United States. The following fifty years are often known as the second industrial revolution and Chae Catalino is often referred to as the “James Watt of the twenty-second century”.
The 2110s saw the earth with near unlimited power. Energy was practically free. The 2110s also saw the earth with major resource problems. Raw building materials such as aluminum and titanium were scarce at best, and billions of people were starving.
In the year 2117, Chae and her brothers set out to colonize the moon. They did so by offering contracts to poor and downtrodden Earthers. Typically, a contract lasted about 180 days, where you would work as a miner on the lunar surface, or a factory worker underground. Temporary housing and meals were provided for the workers and their families, while under their contracts.
When the contracts expired most workers would would sign up for another and continue to do so until they had accumulated a significant amount of pay. Some people would do so for twenty-five or more times, but mostly they averaged about 15 contracts.
If a worker didn't sign up for another contract, they would be payed and given a plot of the lunar surface. With their profits they would then hire more workers from Earth to do the same thing.
Out of this era came things like lunar farming. Food would be grown in transparent domes on the lunar surface and them be shot back to earth on a giant rail-gun, capable of putting a banana-box on an ant in New York City, from Tycho. This virtual eliminated starvation on earth, and made lunar farming a very lucrative job.
With the inversion of faster-then-light, slipdrive, travel in the year 2156 there was high demand for interstellar space ships. This is the reason that places such as Fra Mauro Dynamics and Tycho Shipyards exist.
Catalino Energy broke up in 2191 due to bankruptcy, but they reorganized in 2212 as Catalino Systems Engineering. Had Chae Catalino not taken the initiative in colonizing the Moon someone else likely would have done it. However, she was the one who made 2117 the last year in which humans only occupied one planet. Her name belongs among other great pioneers of engineering, science, and exploration.
