Member States Of The United Sol System

Member States of the United Sol System

(c. 30th century CE)

The United Sol System (top flag) is an entity that fills the same essential function as the United Nations of Earth: it is a pan-governmental organization conceived to deal with issues that affect internal interplanetary relations and/or the system at large. The USS is a member of, and serves as the primary seat of, the interstellar United Nations of Humanity, which is in turn a member of the United Spacefaring Sophonts Coalition (multilayered decentralized government is the most practical form of organized government in space).

Left column, top to bottom:

Inner System Territories, with the flags of Mercury (left) and Venus (right) Territories below

Free Democracy of Ma'at, a multi-body nation composed of several large inner-system asteroids (Apophis, Eros, Icarus, and Phaethon)

Earth-Moon Union, in turn composed of the United Nations of Earth and the Lunar Territory

People's Republic of Mars, which includes Phobos and Deimos Territories

United States of the Solar Belt, which is composed of hundreds of main-belt asteroids including Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea

Right column, top to bottom:

Jovian System Federation, including the lunar-planetary states of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io

Saturn Alliance, including the Ringshadow Federation of aerocities on Saturn and the lunar-planetary states of Iapetus, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, and the Joint Authority of Titan

Uranus Coalition, including the Tilted Sky Confederacy of aerocities on Uranus and the lunar-planetary states of Titania, Oberon, Ariel, Umbriel, and Miranda

Moons of Neptune Alliance, including the lunar-planetary states of Proteus, Nereid, Larissa, Galatea, Despina, and the Republic of Triton

Outer System Territories, with the flags of Pluto-Charon (left) and Terminus (right) Territories below (also including Eris, Haumea, and Makemake Territories, not shown)

Bonus: flag of the United Nations of Humanity itself, composed of hundreds of member star systems across a sphere of influence nearly twenty parsecs in diameter.

astute of you to pick up of the hurdle that firestarting presents! but I promise you, fire is not a universal keystone for tool-using sapience. let’s look at it this way: what did early hominids use fire for?

cooking food - octopi don’t necessarily need to do that. if they really felt like it, they could strategically sun-dry and store fish onshore (octopi can survive out of water for significant periods of time!)

providing light and warmth - octopi have much better low-light vision than we do, so again, they don’t need fire for that.

fending off predators - octopi have the most advanced biological camouflage in the world and lack bones. they can hide extremely effectively, and if worst comes to worst they have ink to provide cover during an escape.

metallurgy - this one is more of an issue, as fire is necessary to produce the vast temperatures that smelting and forging common metals (iron, nickel, copper, etc) require. however, there’s more than one way around this! of course they could just come onto land to do their metallurgy, but there are a few metals/metalloids that are malleable at relatively low temperatures (i.e. underwater); notably, aluminum, zinc, and lead. but who says metals are the only way to make advanced tools...?

two words for you: artificial selection. due to the fact that metallurgy (and, later on, electricity) is a technology that isn’t feasible underwater, it would make much more sense to selectively breed other organisms to be living tools. they might start by carefully cultivating a few generations of clams to produce hatchet-shaped shells, but given time, resources, and the right base stock, the possibilities are virtually endless, especially once they unlock the secrets of direct genetic engineering. as far as we can tell, the psychology of octopi is extremely alien to that of humans, and from what I’ve read they show a remarkable amount of patience, which is needed to achieve significant progress in this toolmaking method. can you imagine it? vast biopunk metropoli sprawling across the ocean floor...!

Octopus filmed changing colours while sleeping.

don’t you know that a black cat under a ladder cancels out? it’s PEMDAS or something

SOMEONE laughs in the face of superstition

one of my favorite youtubers has a fantastic video about the history of the human species that ends with a prospective message about ourselves to alien intelligences, and the closing paragraphs always get me right in the feels.

“We’ve pulled a bunch of fuck-ups, and we’re really quite confused, and alone, and frankly: scared. But we hope to enjoy the privilege of being a semicolon in history, rather than a full stop. So on behalf of the hundred and fifty billion who came before us, and our human cousins who didn’t make it, we just hope this message finds you well. And we hope when you find us, thousands of years from now, that we are well, too.

“In any case, please just write back. It’s dark out here, and we’re the last humans left.”

i cant think of the fact that humans send messages saying ’where are you? who are you?’ from earth to the giant and empty space all around us for too long because it makes me cry so hard and feel so human and lonely

yeah so if y’all couldn’t tell I’ve decided to post more, lol. probs gonna do more worldbuilding stuff too while I’m at it. welcome to the Realms, enjoy your stay and please be respectable beings.

Hey. I saw your reblog of that post saying something about your favorite Youtuber uploading a history of the human race with the last minutes dedicated to a possible message being sent into space? “We’re the last humans left”. Do you still remember which video that was? I’d like to watch it.

it’s linked in the post! the red underlined text, which is also the title of the video: We’re The Last Humans Left. the YouTuber in question is exurb1a, who makes fantastic and thought-provoking video essays about the intersections of philosophy and science. my favorite vid of his is and then we’ll be okay, a neofable about acceptance.