500 years into the future, technological progress has stagnated. Wracked by a series of problems like climate change, lack of resources and the innate human lust for war, the geopolitical landscape of planet Earth is radically different, and quality of life is far from what it was in the past. While technical development and research into realistically feasible space travel has made leaps and bounds, this has come at the cost of a world that is reeling from centuries of technical stagnation in other aspects of life.