Technology

Let's keep it simple: what technology exists in the Universe that doesn't exist here on Earth today?

In short:

Starships

This is a very deep subject that will be covered in greater depth elsewhere. Here's the very high-level overview:

Advanced Medicine

This one's a bit of a catch-22. For advanced civilizations with a high degree of personal wealth, amazing medical treatments exist, forfending virtually all diseases and injuries. A particularly noteworthy example: the famously nigh-immortal elves of Tyrol were not gifted immortality by nature--they achieved it through genetic engineering and advanced medical technology.

That said, medicine is expensive, and highly specific to species. Not all members of every species are fortunate enough to belong to a wealthy civilization like the Tyrolians, and to make matters much, much worse, alien planets--however terraformed they may be--present unique biospheres which create a vast array of new diseases and conditions that require extensive study to treat. Planets with low population and wealth simply cannot afford the legions of researchers necessary to find cures for every local ailment--especially if the population is diverse and includes multiple sentient species. This has the effect of reducing the effect of medical technology to levels at or below modern Earth--well below, in some cases. Of course, advanced medicines do exist, many of which can treat this or that ailment, but they are usually quite expensive to procure for off-label use on some colony world.

That's all on a cellular and genetic level. In terms of first aid, there are some broadly applicable technologies that can make quite a bit of difference, especially to those living dangerous, violent lifestyles who are likely to suffer trauma and unlikely to able to find prompt treatment for it in a wealthy, inner-system hospital. Just a few examples:

Liquid Skin

A simple, relatively cheap chemical concoction that can be sprayed on open wounds. It quickly stops bleeding, even in major arteries, and protects exposed tissue as effectively as natural skin, binding readily to most tissues to limit further damage. The material is sterile by itself, posing little threat of infection, although it does not necessarily disinfect on contact, as it is meant to be applicable to many species in many situations. It is an excellent first aid treatment in a trauma situation, turning an open wound into a stable (if uncomfortable) patch, allowing the delay of treatment by hours or even days.

Artificial Blood

Blood serves many important purposes, but none so important as transferring oxygen to the brain. Without oxygenated blood, the brain immediately starts to die, suffering irreversible damage in seconds, and death in minutes (at least in humans). This is generally the proximate cause of death in most cases of acute trauma.

If only there were a replacement for that oxygenated blood?

Artifical Blood is exactly what it sounds like: a synthetic mixture that serves the purpose of blood. It has to be formulated for a specific species, although usually it is less finicky than actual blood transfusions (for instance, articial blood for humans works for all blood types). Every species has its own microbiology, and the product must be able to integrate with the body's natural systems with no genetic tampering, surgery, etc.

Unlike natural blood, the chemicals in Artificial Blood are able to carry oxygen with much greater density. How much greater? A single liter of Artificial Blood can oxygenate a human brain for up to four hours with zero oxygen input from the lungs.

Not only is Artificial Blood designed to break down into chemicals that can be readily filtered out of the bloodstream by functioning kidneys or dialysis, but there are chemical packs bundled with it that will neutralize the byproducts even further if neither of those are available, allowing the blood to be drained and re-filled from a fresh pack, prolonging the patient's brain indefinitely.

Again, this is best as a measure to buy time before more serious medical intervention--living forever on Artificial Blood is not possible without some very invasive and permanent bodily alterations (i.e. becoming a cyborg). But it's nice to know that, if your heart or lungs stop working, instead of dying in minutes, you have hours to make it to a proper medical facility.

Cellular Agriculture

While wealthy planets typically boast vast, diverse offerings of native and imported produce, meat, etc, suited for the diet of locals, space travelers are all too familiar with the cheaper alternative: cellular agriculture.

In short, Cellular Agriculture is the growth of nutritive products (one hesitates to call it "food") from simple cell cultures. It's cheap, it can grow anywhere that water and power are available, and, most importantly, it suits a wide array of palates and biologies.

While even in an individual species it can be challenging to find a basic foodstuff that satisfies all nutritional needs while containing no allergens, it is obviously a futile task to grow natural foods that will be safe and nutritious (let alone palatable) to a wide array of species. One creature's ambrosia is another's poison.

It is therefore impressive that CA foodstuffs are generally available that are safe, nutritious, shelf-stable for years, and, most importantly, cheap, and yet edible to a wide variety of species. This is because they are quite simple: basic carbohydrates, lipids, and amino acids, with virtually zero contaminants. As different as one species is from another, most DNA-based life subsists on more or less the same basic chemicals.

Flavor is not much of a concern when crafting these foodstuffs. Leaving aside the difficulty of making a brick of protein with the consistency of plastic explosive palatable to anyone at all, what tastes acceptable to one species might be violently disgusting to another. Thus, they tend to have as little flavor as possible. Despite this, the different nutrient packs, distinguished by their color and patterns, at least seem to have different flavors, perhaps owing entirely to their appearance. Many people will defend their preferred flavor, despite being unable to describe it as anything other than "blue".

Real, properly prepared, safe, and delicious food is of course readily available in many locations, but it all depends on the market. A spaceport that sees one human a year isn't going to have many human delicacies for sale--it just wouldn't make sense. And the fancy palate of a Tyrolian is probably quite expensive to please in a far-off outpost, so if demand does warrant a vendor offering said cuisine, expect to pay dearly for it.

Orbital Infrastructure

Every planet worth visiting has some orbital infrastructure. (Editor's note: many, many planets have none, including quite a large portion of those that privateers are likely to visit. But planets with populations less than a million are pretty unlikely to have any at all).

On the most basic level, that includes orbital stations. When present, these are usually any spacer's first port of call when visiting a world. Likely, local authorites will require docking, inspection, and customs at a space station before making planetfall.

Larger planets--certainly any whose populations number in the multiple millions or higher--will have more advanced infrastructure, generally oriented around lowering the cost of transit from the planetary surface to orbit. Roughly speaking, the levels of advancement are:

Assisted Launch

Most of the expense of transiting between the surface and orbit is in that direction--landing is easy (it's just falling, with style). To that end, the most basic orbital infrastructure after a basic space station is a launch assist device.

A common, cost-effective approach is an electromagnetic accelerator. These look something like a mag-lev train, with a moving component that carries a payload (i.e. your ship) being propelled along a static rail line. While cargo can be accelerated at very high rates over short runs, passengers tend to prefer not being turned to mush. Thus, launch systems rated for passengers typically accelerate at only a few Gs, necessitating the launch rail be many, many kilometers long.

For a planet like Earth--a fairly hard case with its high gravity and thick atmosphere, such a system might require over 1,000 km to safely accelerate the launcher. While a system could work in theory by accelerating on the ground the whole way and turning upwards at the last minute, such a system requires excessive velocity, as much will be lost transiting the atmosphere. More advanced designs ramp the rail up many kilometers into the sky, releasing the payload as high as possible, thus reducing losses to atmospheric drag. Of course, that kind of structure is harder to build and requires a lot of power to keep elevated. Either way, these systems use enormous amounts of electrical power--often frankly more than an equivalent chemical rocket would need to launch the same payload--but when that energy can be generated cheaply (e.g. using solar panels) it is generally preferred.

Of course, assisted launch systems usually aren't mandatory (apart from some unusual feudal systems)...if your ship doesn't need it, why pay the fare and wait your turn?

Space Elevator

A concept that, in theory, scales up to extremely large systems, but in practice, is usually replaced by Orbital Rings past a certain scale, the Space Elevator is a lightweight, relatively low-cost way to move heavy things from the surface to space and back down again, typically directly to an orbital station.

While a functional space elevator could exist using a single thin strand capable of supporting only one slow-moving platform, most such systems have bundles of redundant cabling that allow constant motion in both directions. Typical designs include a counterweight far outside of low orbit, whose natural centripetal acceleration keeps the line taut and supports the weight of the orbital station and the cargo in both directions. At the station, platforms coming up are unloaded, then loaded anew for a return trip the surface, in a constant stream (not unlike a ski lift on Earth). In general, the force of platforms moving up counteracts that of those moving down, and in any case, the counterweight more than makes up for the difference.

To launch a platform down, the station need only let it go--gravity will do the rest. At low orbital altitude, planetary gravity is usually within 90% of surface level. The station isn't actually in "orbit", as it is stationary with respect to the ground, and therefore is moving much too slowly for a stable orbit at its altitude. Thus, dropped platforms will tend to fall, not continue in orbit. They also will not experience significant heating upon re-entry.

Both rising and falling platforms can use airfoils to their advantage. The natural headwind caused by the support cable's motion through the atmosphere is typically far greater than ambient winds, so all platforms can be pointed into the wind and use their airfoil to achieve lift, limiting the necessitity of pulling directly on the support cable (although it can certainly handle the weight; it's more about limiting energy expenditure). Compared to terrestrial elevators, transit speeds are actually quite fast, especially the return to surface, which tends toward freefall speeds or higher for most of the way down.

Most starships can handle docking and undocking at a low-orbit interchange station on a space elevator, but it's worth noting that, to get to orbit or beyond, a ship will have to add a lot of velocity. Simply undocking with the station and waiting will cause the ship to plummet. For those hoping to save on fuel, space elevators can also elevate further than low orbit, "flinging" ships into space using centripetal acceleration. In the age of warp-capable ships, this is not all that common, as such ships typically only need to escape the atmosphere in order to travel at relativistic speeds.

Orbital Ring

The different between an orbital ring and a space elevator is kind of like the difference between a single toy train and the entire Tokyo metro area rail system. The basic design isn't that different--it's more about a scale.

An orbital ring, despite the name, does not need to be a single, solid ring-shaped space station. Such structures exist, but they are immensely vast and expensive, and generally only warranted when the planet below has already been developed to a ridiculous extent. But most are based on a complete "ring" of sorts, which is usually a narrow, lightweight structure designed to carry an electromagnetic charge.

A solid ring, connected by tethers to the planetary surface, can support itself through centripetal acceleration, despite not being able to bear its own weight otherwise. This assumes the planet has a decent rotational speed, of course. Often, such rings are further supported by "active support", which involves pushing the ring upward through expenditure of energy. Imagine you're wearing a hula-hoop connected to a belt with a few strings...in zero gravity (I know, just go with it). Any force on the hoop will push it toward you. This represents the ring crashing into the ground--not a good outcome.

But if, inside the hula hoop, hundreds of marbles are racing along in the same direction at high speed somehow, the force they exert outward will push the hoop away in all directions, resisting the force of anything pushing in. In that case, the hoop could bear a certain amount of weight on any given point without collapsing. Thus, instead of gigantic pillars holding the immense weight of a structure all the way up to orbital height--a fantastic engineering concept even in an advanced universe, the ring is instead more held down by the tethers than held up. Instead of massive, mountainous pillars that require exotic materials, thin, space-elevator-style ribbons can be used.

But like a space elevator's orbital station, the orbital ring can extend out of the atmosphere, at a convenient altitude to interfece with spacecraft. Unlike space elevators, the outer ring can spin independently of the tethers. In many setups, there is an "upper ring" that spins at orbital velocity (for easy docking), and an "inner ring" that keeps in sync with the planet below (for easy ascent/descent). The two are coupled magnetically, with no actual direct bond or friction between the two, and interfacing between them is done via some sort of ferrying vessel, often a magnetically-propelled train.

While expensive to construct, these structures can earn their costs back and then some on busy planets, where every transit to and from the surface is made exceptionally inexpensive by the the built-in infrastructure. As a bonus, a well-developed ring offers a lot of building space, which can be at a premium on the kind of worlds that warrant an orbital ring in the first place.

There are two very nifty things about orbital rings that give them a surprising capability. First, they have no specific required velocity (only a required centripetal force), and therefore no specific altitude. Therefore, they can be constructed at virtually any altitude above the atmosphere. Secondly, with active support, they are not reliant on the rotation of the planet to stay aloft. Thus, they are not limited to installation at the equator. Given both of the above, it is quite possible to install multiple orbital rings on one world, both taking advantage of different altitude levels, and of different orbital inclinations. The latter is especially important as most busy worlds are not exclusively populated at the equator, and who wants to suffer through an hours-long aerial flight to get to your final destination when you can just dock at the closest orbital ring and reduce intermodal travel time?

For the disaster enthusiasts among you--yes, despite the vast amount of redundancy, warning systems, maintenance, etc, it is hypothetically possible for an orbital ring to collapse, which could otherwise pose an existential threat to the planet below. However, thanks to their design, it is possible to create a fail-safe ring that simply cannot collapse. The recipe is as such:

Megastructures

Advanced Robotics

Cybernetics

Artificial Intelligence

Genetic Enhancements

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