(( Continued from 2025-02-11.page ))
Even though the comet nudging technology was highly speculative, the potential alone sent AAA and their vassals into a flurry of edge tech investments. Each new finding, or even potential finding, was released to the streams, hoping to push the markets back in AAAs favour. This form of financial warfare became went back and forth, with research papers as weapons, and prototype results as the ammunition.
This was a time of great strife (( cliché )). Some less profitable supply lines were dropped entirely, or started charging extra for colonial supplies. The death toll from this form of attrition is estimated in the hundreds of millions between 200 and 260.
But actually building the technology was not in the least profitable, because it would naturally require material investment, and had the potential for failure. Eventually, a secondary market for this form of research and pie in the sky prototypes emerged, and the research became completely unmoored from reality. Time travel technology may have been mentioned during this period.
Meanwhile, the material reality of most people on planets, moons, and stations continued to degrade. Unheard of plagues and maladies swept through populations with no way of treating, (( etc etc, you get it )) …