Summary of Tech Levels

January 22, 2021

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 suborbitals.
  • 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.