Re: FEV as the ultimate excuse, and Buck Rogers space cities
Question 1, I don't have much to say. The overarching questions about space, well... I do.
DGT said:
Besides, I never heard or read anything about space exploration, in the games or Bible.
I wouldn't trust the "Bible", MCA was pulling things out of his ass in more than a few places. 'Course, you might say the same about me. But I believe my information to be accurate, and my extrapolations well-founded.
In any case, we can't really know whether there was an active space program. You'd think there would be, as Sputnik was launched in the 1950s (Space Race begin!)... seeing as Fallout's pre-war culture is based on the 1950s vision of the future, it seems highly plausible that there'd be far more development along those lines.
You could use the "Space Shuttle" in Fallout 2 as proof, but really... just LOOK at San Francisco. It's nearly up there with New Reno on the ridiculousity (technical term there) scale.
And anyway, the person who designed the Shuttle model seemed to be thinking in terms of what our current technology is developing toward instead of retro-future style.
One could count the BOMB-001 and 002 battle stations in Van Buren, but they can't really be considered canon at this point. (however unfortunate that may be)
Even if you do take them as canon, considering only one station was completed before the global purge went down it's easy to view the program as an incomplete venture. Though it wasn't put up there for the purpose of exploration or colonization in the first place, but so the USA could gain a theoretically insurmountable nuclear high ground.
In Van Buren there's also mention of the pre-war Enclave attempting to convert two nuclear-powered rockets into transports to take personnel off-planet, but they apparently didn't manage to before the bombs dropped.
The bubble cities, it's hard to see happening. Sci-fi (especially older) tends to assume an incredible, inexhaustable, and ubiquitous energy source in our future which allows easy space exploration/colonization and various other incredible feats. It's pretty clear the Fallout Universe didn't have that, even if they thought Nuclear energy was it. If they did, they at least wouldn't have had to fight over OIL, would they?
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About the whole "society as advanced as the pre-Fallout one" bit:
Just because all those things were "available" doesn't mean that the universe must therefore have been capable of advanced space travel. Most of those technologies had been very recent developments, and they're all EXTREMELY tiny when compared to the logistics of a full-fledged space colonization program.
DirtDigger2000 said:
Fusion powered cars seemed to be a curiosity, and it's therefore implied they weren't yet being produced in large number. It's more likely that they simply COULDN'T be mass-produced because of the Military monopolizing the higher-end machine tools needed.
It's very likely that most vehicles of the time still used gasoline or might have been gas-electric hybrids (that's veering toward our technology, though).
The PIV/FEV project seems to have been the pinnacle of genetic engineering at the time, and FEV itself could be considered a failure. It could be argued that it would've worked perfectly pre-war, since there was nowhere near as much radiation... at least Richard Grey's experiments seem to point to that. In any case, it's implied that genetic engineering wasn't widespread (or used at all) outside of military projects.
In Fallout, ZAX claims that the T-51b armor was only put into production in 2076, which means only about a year in field operation. The war is also said to only last from 2076-2077.
MCA, however, claims in the Fallout Bible that the war with China lasted from 2065-2077 and that various types of primitive Power Armor were fielded by America throughout the war. China had supposedly started mass-producing their own Power Armor that was on par with America's earlier suits when the T-51bs burst onto the scene and wrecked everything in their path. China panicked, the button was hit.
In either explanation, Power Armor had been a very recent development in the universe. Nearly all of the T-51's tech would have been useful for the space program... had it been developed in a more peaceful time. Of course had it been a more peaceful time, the suit's technology likely wouldn't have been developed at all.
and energy weapons were available
They were available, yes, but it's not clear how widespread they were, or if they were commonly accepted. The Plasma Rifle was probably a very recent development, as even the T-51b didn't seem to have adequate protection against it.
The Plasma Rifle might've been developed at the same time by an R&D group that the people at West-Tek didn't have contact with, which would explain why the T-51b developers didn't seem to take the threat into account. They then concocted the hardening process mainly to increase the suit's protection against Plasma, but only a few suits were upgraded before the bombs dropped.
This would explain why the Brotherhood doesn't have Hardened Power Armor, but there are Enclave soldiers on the Oil Rig wearing it.
The Laser Rifle and Laser Gatling were probably very common, probably to the point of standardization because the T-51b was clearly developed to be extremely resistant against Lasers.
The Pulse Grenades, Rifle and Pistol seem pretty exotic, and might have been rare. Most of the technology in Fallout is Vacuum-Tube based, so they wouldn't have had that much utility outside of the fact that their very existence would limit the usefulness of Robots on the battlefield.
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The whole point is that had these technologies been already widespread at the time of the war, then it would be plausible that space colonization would be close at hand or already a reality. But they weren't, and the space technology we know of in Van Buren seems to have been mostly for military application. Fallout 2 contradicts that with the infamous "Space Shuttle", but Fallout 2 is a big bag of contradictions and absurdities. Van Buren's view is more likely and more believable (not to mention more true to Fallout's theme), even if it can't be viewed as canon.
Whew. A bit of a long, meandering post there. Having to fill your head with knowledge of Fallout, it all spills out. It's not like anyone is using it.
