Anyone who has read or watched classic 20th century science fiction and its description of a future of space travel and interplanetary colonies knows that a time traveller from that period who visited the 22nd century would be deeply disappointed by the reality of our time. The 20th century actually represented a sort of high water mark in human space exploration and human optimism about exploring the cosmos. Our time, in contrast, is a let down. In this article, we will give a basic rundown on the current state of global space exploration for both a British and global audience, as many of the details are not widely known by either population, as well as introducing some basic Common vocabulary around space.

The term 'huin' is used to refer to outer space in Common and to derive some words relating to space. A spaceship can be 'y rakket' (from the English 'rocket') or 'y huinystaz' (a standard derivation from 'huin' plus the generic word for large vehicle or ship).

This article will assume that the reader is already familiar with basic concepts in space travel and utilisation and will not go into too great detail in explaining technical terms like 'satellite' and 'orbit'. We will just flag this article as having a dependence on some technical concepts which may need to be studied separately - fortunately there are a number of free, online sources which may be consulted.

Pre-Collapse State

Prior to the Global Collapse, there were several functioning satellite-based global navigation systems which were created by national or transnational governments (the American GPS, the Russian GLONASS and the European Galileo) which were free for civilian use and which could be used to pinpoint locations on the earth to a precision of less than a metre. Earth orbit was filled with various satellites which used to perform vital scientific, communication and military functions. The utilisation of Earth orbit for commercial, military and scientific purposes was a critical pillar of the global economy.

Ambitious space telescopes were peering back to the beginnings of the universe and making amazing discoveries and clarifying the origin and nature of the universe. Robotic explorers were sent across nearby space, resulting in an unprecedented boom of knowledge about the various bodies of our solar system. 

Earth orbit was also filling up with junk, which was posing an increasingly serious risk to the ability to effectively utilise space technologies, as an encounter with a piece of space debris the size of a screw could completely disable a spacecraft or satellite.

The Global Collapse

The Global Collapse profoundly changed this situation by completely halting space launches from earth for decades. The last American space launch was the launch of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope in 2028 under President Donald Trump Jr. The last known space launch of any kind during that era was a Russian satellite launch in 2031. The old International Space Station was abandoned ahead of schedule in 2023 during the brief administration of President Sean Hannity under the context of an accelerating breakdown of international cooperation. The abandoned station crashed to earth in 2045.

The cessation of space launches did delay a reckoning on the problem of space debris. However, satellites have a limited lifetime and have to be maintained or replaced. By the late 2030s, a significant number of satellites were out of service and a host of vital functions, from telecommunications to weather, were unavailable or significantly degraded. With wired communication also significantly degraded due to the impact of theft, war and terrorism, the steady loss of satellite communication was a significant driver in the deglobalisation of day-to-day life during the Collapse.

The degradation and loss of satellite navigation in particular caused massive harms. A point was reached by the early 2040s when satellite-based navigation using GLONASS, Gelileo, and other, lesser systems without global coverage that also existed at the time collapsed completely due to steady loss of ageing satellites, which was experienced as a catastrophe.

Of course, the American Global Positioning System (GPS), the grandfather of them all, had been offline for quite some time at this point, as it was effectively lost early in the Collapse. During President Trump Jr.'s second term, when the United States had disintegrated to the point that the central government was no longer in control of the majority of the country and the military itself was fractured, the core of the military that remained loyal to President Trump cut off civilian access to the GPS.

Trump did not survive his second term, of course, and was the last President of the United States. However, it seems that after civilian access to the GPS was shut off, no one was able to figure out how to reactivate it. Everyone in the world switched to alternative systems, including in the territory of the former United States, until those systems eventually failed due to neglect.

Space in the New World Order

Humanity's triumphant return to space and particularly the restoration of satellite services was a very key goal of the early New World Order, for the scientific, economic and security benefits, and for the prestige and legitimacy this achievement would afford. It is something the New World Order cares very much about and is very key to its self-image. However, this mindset comes with important caveats, because on an official level, the NWO absolutely does not imagine humanity escaping the bonds of earth under its rule and in fact is somewhat hostile to the idea.

Launching a new satellite-based navigation system was one of the early NWO's most pressing goals. However, attempts to get the old European Space Agency's Guiana Space Centre back into operation ran into significant delays, and the restoration of global positioning would not be realised for quite some time, The Middle East War of the late 2040s was fought without fully functioning satellite support, from navigation to communication to reconnaissance. It was not until the 2050s that the New World Order was able to get back into space at all.

Under NWO law, it is illegal for any entity on Earth, including in the Free States, to access Earth orbit without the explicit permission of the Global Space Agency (na Onpas Paratysyn na Huin, or na OPH). This is a security red line for the NWO that it takes very seriously.. Based on my knowledge of elite public opinion and the passion amongst that group on the issue, as well as direct statements by the Global Government, I believe strongly that any evident attempt to reach orbit by a Free State would result in a very strong warning involving use of force, and the NWO would respond to any success in this area with a military attack, despite the risk of nuclear escalation.

The modern centre of the NWO space program is Mogadishu (na Mokatixu) in Somalia (na Somálija). The location was chosen because it was accessible by ship, has a relatively dry climate, and is close to the equator, which is advantageous for certain kinds of space launch. Modern Somalia is an economic powerhouse and the global leader in aerospace, a far cry from its status as a war-torn failed state a century ago. The NWO is alert to the threat the Islamic insurgents who are still active in the country pose to critical space infrastructure, however.

The New World Order space program focusses on key orbital infrastructure seen to promote globalisation, such as weather, positioning, monitoring and communications. All access to space is through a public agency, which sells access to orbit to corporations. Private space launch is illegal. Britain does not have a space program, and neither does Quebec. Israel, Japan and South Korea are believed to also lack space programs.

The crowning achievement of the OPH is the Global Navigation System (na Onpas Hefolysyn Hilin, or na OHH), which replaced the defunct systems from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Like the old GPS system, it has a lower-resolution public mode and a high-precision military mode. However, unlike the old American system, the high precision mode of the OHH is monetised, and wealthy entities in good Globalist standing can buy more precise access. The public form provides resolution within six metres and can even be used in the Free States, being the only satellite-based navigation available in Britain. The high-precision paid form is reputed to have a resolution down to 50 cm.

The NWO elite values science, and since the 2070s, scientific missions have taken a higher and higher profile role in the activities of the OPH. The NWO has no problem lavishing public money on scientific research and space exploration. However, there still has not been a human in space since the early 21st century. All space missions in the modern era have been robotic.

There is a strong push in certain quarters within the Global Senate to secure funding for a manned space station to be launched in the 2120s. There is also a significant elite faction which is passionate about human colonisation of space and pushes hard to restore a manned space program. However, beyond a space station for conducting research in freefall, all efforts at serious space colonisation run into very strong roadblocks in the Senate and the House and show no signs of advancing.

The NWO consensus is that the technology for serious space travel and colonisation doesn't exist, and even if it could be created, at an exorbitant cost, such a project would at best only serve to 'save' a tiny minority of the elite from hypothetical global disaster, which even to the elites themselves does not sound terribly compelling as a justification. The goal of exploration can be achieved better and more cheaply using robots. The Earth has urgent problems at ground level that need resources more.

Furthermore, there is an inherent ideological hostility in the Globalist movement towards the very concept of colonising space. The NWO view is that it is not good for anyone to believe that there is any escape from Earth - as long as the Earth is the only home humanity has, everyone is properly incentivised to save it. Outside of a passionate minority, the NWO elite does not consider the deep-time survival of the human race through space colonisation to be a goal with any merit. The usual NWO line on space colonisation is that it's technically impossible, too expensive to contemplate even if it became technically possible, and undesirable in any case.

Astronomy

NWO astronomers and cosmologists have access to data from the latest space-based telescopes and space probes. British scientists have access to the full body of data from before the Collapse, and a certain amount of modern data that they have been able to steal.

Fundamentally, very few observations of any merit have been made since the early Global Collapse. That's what most astronomers themselves seem to believe. Without access to space-based telescopes to rival the technical achievements of the early 21st century, modern scientists simply cannot generate the same quality of data and are reduced to combing century-old databases to prove hypotheses and look for new discoveries.

With that said, astronomy and robotic space exploration get a significantly more friendly reception from the Global Government than the return of humans to space, or more fanciful, long-term projects like interstellar missions or at the fringes, proposals to contact aliens or for defences against aliens. It is expected that several major  new projects that could bring genuine, new scientific advances for the first time in a century are just around the corner in the next decade or two.

Nomenclature

The science of astronomy in Common is called 'na pexiru na huin', 'the science of space'. Continuously since 1919 it has been governed by the International Astronomical Union, today called na Akkatemi na Pexiru na Huin, or APH. The APH was drawn into the NWO science and education system early in the NWO's history, with breakaway groups claiming to be the true representatives of the IAU outside the Order in the increasingly dwindling and isolated Free States (there is such a parallel organisation in Britain).

The early IAU was put through the wringer of the Uxáfen movement with the rest of the global technical and scientific community and pulled into the effort to create new technical vocabulary for Common under Uxáfen by the Akkatemi na Xafen Zisse (AXZ, or Common Language Academy).

The IAU's agenda was twofold: a) maximise continuity and minimise disruption for professionals working in the field; and b) be cooperative enough to avoid getting sucked into the general turmoil and strife of Uxáfen. The APH generally succeeded in this effort, and managed to bring their nomenclature over with relatively little drama.

The APH strategy was as follows:

1. If a Common name already exists for something, like the Earth or Sun, use it, much as we use words like Earth, Moon and Sun in English.
2. Create an alternative, strictly astronomical name for the same bodies which could be used for disambiguation if needed. These names are little used in modern times, but are on the books.
3. Otherwise, keep all existing, approved names, with a preference for what English does as a base unless another route provides a significant phonological convenience (e.g., na Marte for Mars, which pulls in a bit of Spanish or Italian, because any normal strategy to break up the rs cluster could create a false impression of derivation into a modifier, and it appears the APH collaborators wanted to avoid that).
4. All spellings would be shifted to align with the phonology and phonotactics of Common, to make them transparently pronounceable Common words. Generally prefer first syllable stress,
5. Generally prefer to preserve spellings rather than pronunciations.
6. Unless a compelling reason exists, get rid of any letters that are non-standard in the Common alphabet and substitute with Common alternatives.
7. Broadly prefer to remove grammatical and derivational endings inherited from languages like Latin unless there's an argument that they're somehow necessary for clarity. This is a common theme across most AXZ work, but the APH was generally much less aggressive on this point than some other bodies.

A quick illustration of the APH approach can be seen by looking at a list of major bodies within the solar system.

Major Bodies of the Solar System in Common

All of the names of these bodies are grammatically terms. For this word list, the article is included in Common. It is normal style to capitalise the scientific names of planets in Common, but not the common ones.  These terms are virtually never seen in a verb context but would be pali verbs meaning 'to be this body', and derived as modifiers have the sense of having a quality associated with the body or pertaining to the body.

Notes:

1. From a Romance-inspired base, to be more phonologically compatible with Common.
2. Literally 'the rocky ring'.
3. Again using a Romance root to improve the phonology for Common.
4. Both Uranus and Neptune have corresponding elements of the periodic table with the same origin. The APH consciously avoided mirroring the element names, where in the case of Neptune, more of the original word is preserved than in trhe element, na Nepto.