It is the 22nd century and man has survived a devastating war with an alien race in the neighbouring star system of Proxima Centauri. Along with the allied system of Alpha Centauri, the newly-formed Terran Federation now occupies the Proxima system and is in the process of helping the inhabitants rebuild their shattered worlds. Though both the Terran and Alphan worlds have a huge reconstruction task of their own, efforts are underway to assist the Proximan's and forge a new alliance from the embers of the twenty-year war.
Spaceflight technologies have accellerated following the Proxima Wars, war always brings new developments but always at a hideous cost. New materials, drive technologies, crew support systems, navigational and weapon systems have have arrived in man's grasp faster than had spaceflight had developed without the war. The trade-off with the terrible price in lives is both military and civilian spaceflight have benefitted. With new confidence, the peoples of Terra and Alpha Centauri have started to explore and colonise worlds first but a few tens of light years from their home systems, and then distant worlds numbering in the hundreds of light-years away. Huge coloniser ships are following the rush of systems discovered by survey and exploration teams, rich in resources and materials that are demanded to feed the home systems.
Amongst this flurry of activity the Terran Trade Authority co-ordinates, develops and manages the majority aspects of human spaceflight from the initial design requirements, sourcing appropriate manufacturers, obtaining materials and the production of spacecraft to meet the demand. The single largest organisation of it's kind in known space, the TTA not only produces it's own craft for the various Federal services, but also uses private shipbuilders including the two largest, namely Consolidated Aerospace and Avery Astronautics. These two companies supply more than half the Terran spacecraft required by the TTA including craft built to their own design and the TTA's. Formed when spaceflight was in it's infancy and goverment-controlled spacecraft development wasn't developing as fast as it could, the North-American/European Consolidated Aerospace and Austrailian Avery Astronautics outgrew and outstripped the goverment agencies, especially due to the demands of feeding the massive battle fleets fighting the peoples of the Proxima systems.
Now, as commercial spaceflight is growing expotentially with the discovery of new planetary systems and resources, the private manufacturing companies along with the TTA are producing spacecraft to meet a variety of roles. Exploration ships, mining and ore processing, frieghters, starliners, medical and private transports of a hundred different types are being built to meet a demand that hardly existed nearly two hundred years ago. Here then, amongst these pages are some of the civil and military craft a traveller is likely to see during their exploration of the Terran Federation in the 22nd century.
A hundred years gap...
These pages follow on directly from where the original TTA books were set. They fill the gap in between the 'Spacecraft 2000-2100AD' background and the Laguna Wars set in 2219, as described in 'Great Space Battles'. Some of the craft featured in the Laguna Wars section on this website will be featured here, providing more background and details about a particular ship, from either the Terran, Alphan or Proximan systems.
Disclaimer and confusion (!)
Where this section follows on from the 'original' TTA books timeline, they are not related in any way to the Morrigan Press book just released. Though the page title is the same, these pages were established back in 2002 and should not be confused with the 'new' TTA book of the same name.