H. Preston

Project Deep Space H. Preston

The year was 2115. For more than 150 years governments and private firms had been flying into space, but they still had not reached a point at which they had established a viable space travel industry. The growing public opinion was that they were spending too much money, wasting too much of Earth's scarce resources and were no nearer to the routine hauling of passengers and freight than they were 150 years ago. The idea of space travel beyond our planetary system had faded to a level of 'wild fantasy.' While an innovative spacecraft manufacturing company and an aggressive airline firm brought space travel to the level of a viable industry with the introduction of a propulsion system without the need to carry a fuel load. The new ships were powered by electrical energy. But they had a serious limitation: there had to be a power station at the destination. With bases on planets and satellites further and further away, they gradually established a system to exploit the resources of other planets and asteroids, mining and discovering new minerals. This story is about the results of a discovery on one of those planets that enabled the development of a propulsion system that revolutionized space travel, allowing journeys beyond the solar system.