Technology of the Initiative

Though the technologies featured in the Initiative were both young and new, nearly all were quite new, and thus alien to anyone living only a couple decades ago. These instruments humans had forged using their profound understanding of science and engineering, while wielding the colossal amounts of raw materials and energy they now had access to, could fill volumes in their own right. However, only the most important of them to the Initiative follow.

Design and Manufacture

Modern design and manufacture make the difference between a hypothetical miracle and a real one. What other technologies have envisioned, none have come into existence without their planning and fabrication. With such methods so advanced as they now are, an abundant bounty of ideas have come into large-scale fruition.

A buzzword for years, 3D printing features prominently in the Initiative. It is faster and more detailed than ever before and can use many different materials, often on the same machine. This includes plastics, as usual, but also metals, regardless of alloy and heat-treatment, as well as ceramics, including glass, via a process called sintering. This means forming a solid mass from small particles without melting them; an oddly possible feat. However, 3D printing is no magic, and other manufacturing methods have maintained their place. Filling molds with material still far beats it in pumping out a large volume of parts, and sometimes machining a part from stock is more feasible than printing it out. As such, the Initiative features a hybrid approach to manufacturing, the best of all worlds, wrapped up into one majestic machine: The integrated fabricator, or intfab. A cross between a 3D printer of many materials, a CNC machine, and a robotic sander, it can take a molded or machined set of parts and turn it into a complex final product with very few restrictions. Each job is optimized for time and quality, producing these finished items surprisingly quickly.

Occasionally, more traditional methods of manipulating material still find their places, usually in assembly or for a quick fix. Standalone sanding and buffing are still done, as well as cutting, often with simple circular saws or shears. Cutting lasers are notably absent in all machines. However, lasers find use in metals welding, used in laser-arc hybrid welding for high speed yet deep material penetration. Plastics welding also features, consisting of softening two pieces of plastic and connecting them with fibers.

On the design side of things, powered by fast computation and the near lack of manufacturing restrictions, a revolution has taken place: Machine parts are now often bendy and deformable, not rigid. Machines made of rigid parts dominated through most of human history; who needs a car axle that droops, or a wrench that twists? These are called rigid mechanisms, composed of parts that stay the same shape, while motion is transferred through specialized parts between them such as hinges or springs. Rigid mechanisms are easy to make and even easier to understand, because each part works independently of each other part. Unfortunately, these mechanisms are completely nonfunctional after manufacture; they have to be assembled first. They are also prone to failure with so many moving parts rubbing against each other, and require constant maintenance. Because of these downsides, the alternative kind of mechanisms, compliant mechanisms, have taken the chance to blossom. Compliant mechanisms are designed to deform, removing the need for independently moving, specialized parts, instead moving as one great whole. Thus, they completely lack the need for assembly, can reliably stay functional without maintenance for a very long time, and often require less material.

Compliant mechanisms have their downsides as well. Chief among them, they are very difficult to design and understand, for one has to analyze the forces within the whole body of the mechanism to model it accurately. The rise of fast computers helped bypass this issue. They also tend to be larger and weaker than their rigid cousins, for material can only bend so much. Finally, compliant mechanisms cannot have independently rotating parts like a wheel and axle; this reigning achievement belongs solely and proudly to the rigid mechanisms. So although compliant mechanisms have replaced rigid mechanisms to a great extent, each finds its uses where conditions are best for it. Compliant mechanisms are chosen where springy motion or motion damping is required, when a large amount of the same shape is needed, or when long-term reliability and accuracy is critical. Rigid mechanisms are used when strength or rotational movement are required, as well as where there is rapid movement for long periods which might wear out a bendy compliant part.

Compliant mechanisms are often made of biodegradable polymers, metals, or various composites. Rigid ones are as well, but with their stiffer variants.

Material Science

There are novel materials used in the mission largely not because of breakthrough magical substances, but re-using previously known materials in new ways. Notably, almost no part is uniform in composition anymore; it is uncommon to find a part made solely of, say, stainless steel. Instead, composite materials are the rule, omnipresent almost to the exclusion of materials consisting of just one substance. Think fiberglass composite, or thin glass fibers in plastic, like in ship and plane hulls; adobe, or mud mixed with straw to form bricks, creating pre-modern homes; or even wood, that natural combination of cellulose and lignin that let plants colonize the world. Though an ancient technology, the ease with which these materials can be designed and made is quite recent. They abound in advantages: Instead of one material taking all kinds jobs in a part, resisting everything from stretching to twisting to corrosion to heat loss, different materials can be placed within it and oriented to do what they are best at, bonded together as a whole.

The properties of individual materials still matter, of course, for they make up the composite. Plastics see extensive use, ranging from tough to springy to gelatinous, and humanity has learned its lesson with these. The Initiative chiefly uses plastics that are both bioplastics, meaning they are made from living organic material, as well as biodegradable, meaning they can break down into natural components given an acceptable amount of time. Metals, too, are more useful and less toxic thanks to novel alloys and treatment methods. Ceramics occur where hardness is key, from lenses to drill bits. Of these, silicon carbide, a compound nearly as tough as diamond yet much more temperature resistant, provides another use for silicon besides computer parts. Not all materials are particularly refined or "high tech", however. For example, the insulation of choice is mineral wool, a puffy mass of mineral fibers spun like cotton candy, to be made from slag and other mineral waste. Cheap, easily degraded, and good enough at its job, there is no need for anything better.

There are other, more minor players in the material world. Lubricant and hydraulic fluids are still soups of hydrocarbons, though biologically derived and biodegradable. In high temperatures or wet environments, liquid lubricant is exchanged for dry powdered graphite. Similarly derived, sprayed epoxy paint is the covering of choice for colored surfaces, and can be stiff or flexible. It is prized for its ability to resist UV radiation, but not forever; it is nigh unaffected for a long time, but then suddenly gives in and degrades with haste. This sudden loss of UV protection allows the epoxy, and thus the parts it covers, to perform well during use, then break down rapidly in the environment. For non-critical temporary structures such as tarps and tents, non-woven plastic cloth dominates, for it is made quickly thanks for the lack of need for weaving.

Notably absent are adhesives of almost any kind; there is simply no need. The sole exception is a biological, root-stimulating glue used only for seeding plants and holding them against the wind.

If there is a miracle material in heavy use in the Initiative, though there is some competition, the best bet might well be artificial spider silk. Often simply called "silk", it is stronger than steel per weight and tougher (takes more energy to break) then Kevlar. It can stretch 3-4 times its original length before breaking. Even it has a problem, however, for it is prone to a phenomenon called creep. Creep is when a material slowly continues to deform under a constant load, eventually causing it to break, and natural spider silk exhibits this prominently. Though its artificial version has been stabilized in this respect, this restricts its use somewhat to applications where high force is not applied for a long time.

Speaking of carbon and fantastic materials, one major player is notably absent from the Initiative, save for Primordial variants: carbon nanotubes. These miraculously strong and adaptable materials, thanks to specialized manufacturing methods which can make them relatively cheaply and in great quantities, have exploded into almost every corner humanity or its creations inhabit. The decision to leave them out, therefore, was difficult, but for good reason. Carbon nanotubes are still fairly dedicated to create, and cannot easily be recycled into anything similar to the material itself, only carbon. Further, their nano-scale fibers are a serious breathing and environmental hazard, especially in the amount needed to cover a planet in machines. They tend to absorb various environmental chemicals and prevent their degradation; most notably, PAHs or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These highly carcinogenic toxins come about from combustion, and though they are decomposed by various microorganisms, carbon nanotubes absorbing the PAHs would slow decomposition rates greatly. The last disadvantage of carbon nanotubes is that they do not decompose well in nature, meaning they will remain for years, unusable yet still dangerous.

Using these materials, a wide variety of composites can be made. So wide, in fact, that classifying them is somewhat futile, for unless the piece has come from a molding process, the composite's composition often transitions smoothly from one part to another. However, there are several well-used types to choose from.

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer is an old but time-tested material, upgraded many times in its long life since its commercialization in the 1960's. Consisting of long, thin graphite-like fibers bonded together in a polymer, it finds some use in non-flying structures and heavy use in flying ones. Though a similar material, fiberglass composites will not see use in the Initiative, for the glass fibers have roughly similar issues as carbon nanotubes.

Based around artificial spider silk, two composites are extensively used. The first is arachnyle. Once a trademarked name, arachnyle is mostly silk co-occurring with other, often UV-resistant polymers. It is used in resilient, stretchy parts that will be minimally affected by the silk's tendency to creep. The perfect use for it is machine skin, where it defends most effectively against damage, yet can stretch unbelievably far as the machine moves. This gives the machines covered in it an unnaturally smooth appearance, lacking wrinkles or stretch lines regardless of deformation like some sort of unfinished CGI. The second common silk composite is spidersteel, made of silk fibers modified to reduce the effect of creep —  at the cost of some stretchiness —  bonded together with a semi-stiff epoxy binder. It is splendidly strong and springy, able to store a great deal of energy. It also has a built-in failsafe, for the material absorbs an even more colossal amount of energy as it deforms past its limit, then breaks. These properties make it splendid for the structural core of many parts; for example, when used around a steel shaft, it forms a "spine" or "rib" for many robots. If the robot takes enough damage to permanently deform or snap the material, all that energy absorbed would likely save the rest of the robot from harm.

Metals and ceramics, for their part, have composites of their own. Metal matrix composite (MMC) has largely replaced any need for bulk metallic products, save for thermal and electrical applications. These are made mostly of one kind of metal, but have dispersed within them small particles or fibers of another metal or a ceramic. MMCs can be stronger, stiffer, or more ductile than any metal, and can be engineered for some truly fascinating behaviors as well, such as self-healing small cracks, requiring nothing but a large temperature change to do so. Ceramics, meanwhile, often occur in a deceptively simple composite known as ceramic matrix composites (CMC), or a matrix of ceramic with long fibers of ceramic — often the exact same kind! Counterintuitively, this small change makes them much less susceptible to brittle failure, the very bane of their existence, as told through countless shattered bowls, cracked windows, and snapped drill bits. An interesting side use is replacing the ceramic fibers with a solid lubricant like calcium fluoride, allowing low-friction use without need for adding lubricants.

Energy Generation and Storage

In this age, the storage of energy in dense, ecologically sound packages has reached maturity, and is fundamental to the swarms of robots planned. Each stores power in a fairly standard solid state battery. Solid state batteries are characterized by their lack of any liquid components, allowing a much higher upper limit of energy stored per unit mass. They also can charge and discharge quickly, though in the Initiative, they are instead optimized for efficiency and energy storage at the cost of this speed. Ingeniously, to get the best of both worlds, the batteries will work in parallel with another component, a supercapacitor. Supercapacitors, quite opposite to the batteries, are advantageous because they use liquid electrolyte instead of solid electrodes: They can hold much more energy than a typical capacitor per unit volume or mass, and can charge and discharge more quickly and over many more cycles than a battery. With traits that make up for each others' weaknesses, the solid-state batteries function as the main energy store, while the supercapacitors charge and discharge to smooth out the spikes in demand, meeting it without harming the battery. These both are made of common elements and a spattering of somewhat rare ones.

There are two more minor methods used to store energy here. One is the flywheel, a high-mass spinning wheel in a vacuum which is used in Founders, Quartic Orbiters, and in a few modules. They are especially useful in the former case, where their high angular momentum can be pushed against to rotate the craft in space for cheap. The other is biofuel, a liquid fuel formed from algae or other plant matter, or even directly from the air and some power. Of course, its combustion creates pollutants which can warm the planet, but unlike its less-than-helpful historical use on Earth, a terraformed planet may benefit from warming. In consuming carbon dioxide to make biofuel, the net carbon output can be tweaked from nearly zero to as high as needed.

To produce this power, only four methods fit the bill. Biofuel creation and combustion is an option, but an unacceptable one in most circumstances. Instead, solar and wind power dominate thanks to their near complete lack of disadvantages on an otherwise uninhabited planet. The solar cells of the modern day share similarities with perovskite-structured solar cells, so called because they share a similar chemical structure to the mineral perovskite. These are flexible, thin, fantastically efficient, and, though not the cheapest of solar cells, can be produced on a planetary scale. To boot, they completely lack heavy metals, unlike previous versions of these cells. Alongside these are airborne wind turbines, balloon-like structures borne on buoyant gases and aerodynamic lift alike, tethered to the ground to deliver power to it from the high-speed winds above. These are especially ingenious; they require very little lifting gas thanks to heat from direct light, not unlike a hot air balloon, and they can siphon a portion of generated electricity to stay afloat during times of low light and wind. Additionally, they have multiple rotors on the same rotating axis, extracting more power than any single-rotor turbine could. Finally, nuclear power plays a limited role in the Initiative not because of any supposed dangers, but because there is no guarantee a planet would have suitable isotopes near the surface. It exists only in Founders, giving them a steady trickle of electricity to use during the long voyage from home.

Transportation

All machines with rockets use chemical propellant, not nuclear-powered rockets, for although such rockets flourish in the Earth System, they are impractically massive compared to the otherwise lightweight Founders. A similar story holds for fusion power, which has only just begun to see widespread commercial adoption.

As previously mentioned, Founders will not use rockets for the bulk of accelerating or slowing down, for the simple reason that modern rockets are still incompatible with light weight at such high speeds. As described by the rocket equation, a rocket must not only accelerate its own mass, but the mass of the fuel it carries, requiring even more fuel to do so. Instead, a mass driver — essentially a giant electrically powered gun — launches them at speed. To reach cruise velocity, an ultra-lightweight light sail unfurls, struck by an array of high-power lasers, whose light reflects off the sail, back off mirrors from the array, and back to the sail, maximizing velocity gained. Again, as mentioned before, the Founders utilize a pair of ballutes to slow down, not rockets, in a process called aerocapture.

Once on the ground, the machines employ myriad methods to get around — caterpillar tracks, undulating snake-like bodies, legs, flexible wings, rotors, fins —  but never wheels. Yes, this piece of technology so ancient has been upended, at least for the Initiative. Though efficient they are, they perform poorly on anything but relatively flat and road-like surfaces, and their simplicity is no advantage in this age of flexible manufacture. 

Computation Technology

Computers for ages were synonymous with words like "electronics" and "digital", with the concept of logical precision. All these are no longer true, as reflected in the Initiative.

Computers are no longer electronic as a rule. Optical computers have taken center stage, using light in optical fibers instead of electricity in wires: They compute literally at the speed of light, produce less heat, and can be made smaller. However, for powering components such as sensors and motors, electricity remains more practical, so often, computers are a hybrid of optical and electronic.

Similarly, computers are also not always digital. A digital computer thinks in terms of abstract, discrete values, the famous 1's and 0's, comparing these values to each other. In contrast, the older method of computing has made a comeback: Analog computing. Instead of 1's and 0's, analog computers think in real physical values: When an analog clock shows 2 o'clock instead of 1 o'clock, there is a gear within the clock that is rotates twice as far. When an analog radio's volume is increased, some electronic component within it has a voltage that has increased that same amount. In a digital computer, there is no real, physical value that is used as an "analog"; in a digital clock, when the time goes from 1 to 2 o'clock, there is nothing within the clock that is "twice as much"; just abstract information that encodes the same thing. Analog computing may sound old-timey, for it is; these computers had their heyday in the mid 1900's, petering out in the 1970's, while digital computers — more adaptable and more precise than any physical approximation could ever be — nearly drove them to extinction. However, as the 2010's swung around, scientists reinvested into this moribund technology. Analog computers may be specialized and relatively imprecise, but they are far faster than digital computers, for the "computation" is done by using real-world physical values, not a complex simulation of those values. In a similar vein, they use far less power and make far less waste heat. As the 2020's melted into the 2030's, analog computers exploded across the world, resulting in the era of computing they co-dominate with digital computers by the Initiative's time.

The Initiative opts for a typical approach: partially electronic optical computers which are hybrid analog and digital, using the best of both worlds. Most of the computer, including most digital components, are optical, where the energy-hungry, relatively slower digital aspect is countered nicely by lightspeed efficiency and small size. The electronic components are largely analog, allowing rapid, complex computation that can be output to whatever electronic device needs them.

But what about quantum computing? Quantum computing, while growing in use in the Earth System, has no feasibility here; Founders are very light and have to be robust to the radiation of space interfering with them, and the small, precise components quantum computing requires would be extremely challenging to manufacture even with the advanced capabilities the probes will have.

Biology and Chemistry

To terraform a planet, at least some organisms need to come for the ride, but carrying a zygote across the depths of space for over a century is a formidable task. Instead, thanks to advances in synthetic biology, not a gram of living material is required. Instead, nothing more than instructions on how to build the organisms are carried aboard the Founders' storage.

This information is stored in a form of nanotechnology too sophisticated for any probe to manufacture itself: molecular machines. These biologically inspired micro-contraptions, some only a few atoms wide, are easily frozen for the voyage through space. Upon thawing in an incubation chamber on the target planet's surface, they get to work, consuming themselves in the process. Some molecular machine packages produce universal assembler cells (UACs). These extremely minimalist cells have a vanishingly small genome, only able to reproduce and keep themselves alive. However, they are just barely complex enough to execute whatever DNA instructions are put into the nucleus. Once these have been bred in great number in culture, a small number are put aside for each organism species to be created.

To create a certain species, another set of molecular machines is thawed and allowed to function. These produce species-specific virions (SSVs), artificial viruses containing the full genome of the target species in their capsules. These are mixed with the universal assembler cells, infecting them with the new genome. According to these new instructions, the universal assembler cells have two possibilities. If the genome is prokaryotic, the UAC genome remains alongside the new one, turning into a factory of prokaryotes that pinch off the UAC, off to another incubator to breed. If the genome is eukaryotic, the UACs transform themselves into a cell of the target species, which is bred in culture to make colonists for the new world. In the case of plants or animals, these become stem cells, which are formed into a zygote and allowed to develop in an artificial egg, womb, or ovary, producing seeds and young animals to colonize the planet.

As for the many and various modern chemical technologies, considerable credit goes to metal-organic frameworks (MOF) and covalent organic frameworks (COF). These are polymers of similar nature; MOFs consist of metals bonded to organic molecules in a one, two, or three-dimensional structure, while COFs are the same but with lighter atoms such as H, B, C, N, and O instead of metals. These can be crafted with a whole variety of chemical properties and can be made with an enormous amount of surface area in a small package, granting them use as catalysts, scrubbers, filters, molecular storage devices, and in miscellaneous uses such as the supercapacitors mentioned before.

Once a troublesome environmental hazard, metal smelting is now green thanks to the modern state of chemistry. To smelt a metal is more complex than simply melting it out of a rock; it must be chemically separated from the other elements in the ore. Traditionally, this was done by reacting the oxides in the ore with combustion products from fossil fuels, but now there are better options. Electrolytic smelting can produce metal from ore without dangerous byproducts, provided one has plenty of power to spare, by applying high voltage across ore dissolved in a molten salt bath. If a source of hydrogen is available, direct reduced iron and other metals can be made, reacting with oxides to produce only water. Even methods which use carbon dioxide or monoxide to remove oxygen are options, for thankfully, carbon reforming can produce these gases right back from the atmosphere, removing the need to burn more fuel for them.

Finally, solar reforming, artificial photosynthesis, and electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR) all have in common the ability to turn carbon dioxide, with some energy input, into more useful products such as ethanol or methane. This world-saving set of technologies provides chemicals that can be used as fuels, fed to bacterial vats, or processed into other chemicals, providing a way to reduce carbon dioxide levels already in the atmosphere as well as to counter any carbon dioxide the machines produce.

Miscellaneous Technologies

A cornucopia of technologies besides these feature in the Initiative. Some are older, such as the hydraulic machinery to be used in large robotic arms and other big, moving features which require a lot of force. Others are newer, such as weatherproof, bright-white pigments that can keep whatever surface they are on cooled below ambient temperatures with no energy input, paradoxical though it may seem.