Great Britain

The Kingdom of Great Britain, usually referred to as either Great Britain or simply Britain, was a human nation located on Earth in the Sol System comprised of the constituent countries of England, Scotland and Wales. Great Britain occupied the largest island in the British Isles, located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. Great Britain also administered overseas territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans as well as an interplanetary colony on the planet Venus in the Sol System. Between 1801 and 1918, when Great Britain was united with the island of Ireland, the nation was known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and was usually referred to as the United Kingdom or the UK. During its existence, Great Britain and its predecessor nations were responsible for several major accomplishments in the history of human space exploration, including the completion of the first manned orbital spaceflight, the first manned landing on another astronomical body (Luna), and the first manned landing on another planet (Mars).

Humans began to migrate to the island of Great Britain in waves beginning about 30,000 years ago. In 43 AD the southern part of the island of Great Britain was conquered by the Roman Empire, and became known as the Province of Britannia. Roman occupation of Britain lasted until the 5th century, when the area was invaded by Germanic Anglo-Saxon settlers. Most of the region settled by the Anglo-Saxons became unified as the Kingdom of England in the 10th century. Meanwhile, Gaelic speakers in north-west Britain (with connections to the north-east of Ireland and traditionally supposed to have migrated from there in the 5th century) united with the Picts to create the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century.

In 1066, a Norman army under William the Conqueror invaded England from northern France. After conquering England, they also seized large parts of Wales, conquered much of Ireland and were invited to settle in Scotland. The Anglo-Norman ruling class greatly influenced, but eventually assimilated with, each of the local cultures. Subsequent medieval English kings completed the conquest of Wales and made unsuccessful attempts to annex Scotland. English monarchs were also heavily involved in conflicts in France, most notably the Hundred Years' War.

Early modern Britain saw religious conflict resulting from the Reformation and the introduction of Protestant state churches in each country. Wales was fully incorporated into the Kingdom of England, and Ireland was constituted as a kingdom in personal union with the English crown.

In 1603, the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were united in a personal union when James VI, King of Scots, inherited the crowns of England and Ireland and moved his court from Edinburgh to London; each country nevertheless remained a separate political entity and retained its separate political, legal, and religious institutions.

The Royal Society was founded in England in 1660, becoming one of the first national scientific institutions in the world. The aristocracy greatly encouraged and supported scientific enquiry. During this period, particularly in England, advances in naval architecture and the interest in voyages of discovery led to the acquisition and settlement of overseas colonies, especially in North America and the Caribbean. These colonies formed the beginnings of what would eventually become the vast British Empire.

In 1707 the Acts of Union were passed by the parliaments of England and Scotland, formally uniting the two countries as the Kingdom of Great Britain.

In 1712, Briton Thomas Newcomen invented an atmospheric engine with a separate condenser, launching the Industrial Revolution. Great Britain soon became the world's first industrialised country. Many other important technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution originated in Britain, including the opening of the first steam railway line between London and Manchester and the first powered flight.

In 1772, the judgment of Lord Mansfield in Somerset's Case sparked a social movement to end slavery throughout Britain's colonial empire. This eventually led the British Parliament to pass the Slavery Abolition Act in 1788, with Britain becoming the first European colonial power to outlaw slavery. In addition to moral considerations, part of the justification for legally abolishing slavery was that the rapid mechanisation of society had made forced slave labour less economically valuable.

Between 1775 and 1783 the Thirteen Colonies fought for independence against Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. The revolutionary colonies were victorious, with the new nation becoming known as the United States of America.

In 1800, the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland passed parallel Acts of Union which united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland (previously in personal union) to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The acts came into force on 1 January 1801. The British had strongly pressured Ireland to unify with Great Britain, motivated by concerns that a fully independent Ireland could side with France in a war with Britain.

The United Kingdom was a major combatant in the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. In 1805, a combined French and Spanish fleet of airships and steam battleships was decisively defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar by a British Royal Navy battleship fleet, preventing Napoleon from attempting an invasion of Britain. During this engagement, the Royal Navy was able to counter French superiority in aviation technology with superior developments in anti-aircraft weaponry. Napoleon was defeated in 1814 after an ensuing uprising of European monarchies against his rule. However, Napoleon returned from exile and briefly took power in France again in 1815. Napoleon was finally defeated later in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, in which British mechanised armoured ground forces played a decisive role. The defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars led to nearly a century of nearly undisputed global dominance by the United Kingdom.

In 1804 Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet, had invented the Congreve rocket. Initially used as a short-range artillery rocket guided by calculations using a mechanical computer, the Royal Society soon recognised the potential of the rocket design to be used as a basis for a vehicle to travel to outer space. In 1806 the British Interplanetary Society was formed as an offshoot of the Royal Society to investigate the potential of human spaceflight, becoming the world's first space advocacy organisation and the United Kingdom's de facto space agency. The British government provided substantial funding and resources to Sir Congreve to improve his rocket design, but initially they were only interested in the development of longer-range offensive rockets which could be used to attack Napoleonic France from the safety of the British Isles. Development efforts culminated in the launch of an unmanned multi-stage solid-fueled space rocket designed by Sir Congreve from the Overberg region of Cape Colony in 1814. While the rocket failed to leave the Earth's atmosphere and crashed, the demonstration spurred the British government to continue funding the program. British victory over France in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 led the focus of Britain's nascent rocketry program to change from military applications to civilian research.

In 1821, the British Interplanetary Society successfully launched an unmanned multi-stage rocket from Cape Colony. This rocket was soon verified to have become the first man-made object to leave the Earth's atmosphere by Royal Society astronomers. In 1831, following a decade of testing using unmanned rockets and animals, the British Interplanetary Society attempted the first manned space launch of a capsule carrying Captain Robert FitzRoy. FitzRoy's ship was successfully launched from the Overberg test range, however a malfunction during the decoupling of one of the rocket stages caused damage to the rest of the launch vehicle, resulting in the rocket breaking apart and killing FitzRoy.

A second manned launch was attempted by the British Interplanetary Society in 1832. This rocket was successful in sending Captain Frederick William Beechey on a 15-minute suborbital space flight, making Captain Beechey the first man in space. The following year, the British Interplanetary Society successfully undertook the first manned orbital spaceflight.

In 1835, the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel invented the Brunel drive, a steam propulsion system for use in long-duration flights in outer space. The Brunel drive put Luna and the nearby planets of Venus and Mars within reach of human spaceflight for the first time. The British Interplanetary Society undertook the first test flight of a Brunel drive-powered spacecraft around Luna in 1852.

In 1848 the United Kingdom completed the construction of humankind's first space station in Earth orbit. The station was used to test how human astronauts would cope with long duration space voyages, but it was de-orbited after only a few years. Human nations did not see much of a use for orbital space stations until the early 20th century, following the development of orbital weapons systems.

In 1858, the British Interplanetary Society successfully landed an astronaut at the Sea of Tranquility on Luna, becoming the first nation to undertake a manned lunar landing. Human astronauts would not visit Luna again for nearly half a century as the environment was observed to be barren and seemingly devoid of life.

In 1869 a fleet of enormous Brunel drive-powered spaceships was launched by the United Kingdom toward Mars, carrying a total of 70 astronauts, explorers and scientists in addition to horses, food, water and medical supplies. These huge vessels contained sleeping, communal and observation areas, all inside rotating cylinders to create artificial gravity in order to make the lengthy journey to Mars more pleasant for the crew. The fleet reached Martian orbit in 1871, after a one and a half year spaceflight, and the crew members landed at Acidalia Planitia using landers. This gave the United Kingdom the distinction of the first human nation to land astronauts on another planet. The British crew members discovered that Mars was a desert planet with a similar environment to the deserts of the American frontier or Africa but cold, however the air was breathable without a space suit and, unexpectedly, the gravity was similar to Earth's. The explorers discovered the remains of a civilisation on the planet in the form of a large ruined tomb containing some humanoid skeletons and detailed wall carvings similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Over the coming months the settlers were able to find drinking water in underground aquifers and were successful in growing some crops. Most importantly to the British government, prospectors discovered plentiful supplies of minerals such as coal, iron ore and gold in the surrounding area. Meanwhile, explorers on horseback discovered further evidence of a large civilisation that once existed on Mars, including ruined tombs, temples and a small village. Mars also contained some plant life similar to desert plants on Earth. The group departed Mars after a two year stay, returning to Earth by 1874. The explorers' accounts from the Mars voyage greatly heightened interest in human interplanetary exploration.

Britain began using liquid-fueled rockets in its space program from 1873. This technology, pioneered by Prussia several years earlier, rapidly displaced more expensive and less efficient solid-fueled gunpowder rockets.

In 1879, the United Kingdom became the second nation (after the Russian Empire) to successfully conduct a manned landing on Venus.

In 1887, in a development reflective of warming diplomatic and economic ties between Britain and France over the previous several decades, the Channel Tunnel was opened between Dover in England and Calais in France.

Britain returned to Mars in 1889, establishing the first permanent human colony on another planet. The first British settlement on Mars was located in the Acidalia Planitia region, was named "New London", and had around 1,000 residents. The British government formed the Honourable Interplanetary Company, a publicly traded joint-stock company, to pursue the economic development of Britain's planned colonies on other planets. Britain also established a colony on Venus in 1891. Visits by British explorers to areas on Mars and Venus claimed by other nations caused minor diplomatic disputes.

In 1892, a British expedition on Mars discovered a vast Martian city built within the Schiaparelli Crater. Beneath a huge pyramid at the centre of the grand city, the British unveiled part of a network of deep underground tunnels and caverns. The tunnel network was so vast that scientists were convinced that it would take decades to fully explore. By 1897, an extensive British expedition through these tunnels uncovered the largest and most significant Martian site discovered up to that point — what appeared to be a huge underground city constructed in massive caverns beneath the planet's crust, several kilometers below the surface. The city was well-preserved and contained thousands of Martian skeletons, in addition to the remains of advanced Martian technology including small spaceships, vehicles, weapons and electronic devices. Martian technology was shipped back to Britain from Schiaparelli City where it was extensively studied over the following years, however scientists were still unable to reassemble it, reactivate it or understand its construction. Military personnel testing the technology in Britain found that despite the age and decaying condition of the ancient Martian metal, it was still almost completely resistant to explosives. After contact was made with survivors from the Venusian Empire, it was revealed that the buildings and tunnel systems on Mars had been constructed thousands of years ago by Venusian settlers on the planet. The Venusian survivors suspected that the large city in the Schiaparelli Crater had once been the capital of the breakaway Martian Republic.

By 1900, Britain's interplanetary colonies on Mars and Venus had a combined population of around 28,000. By the turn of the 20th century, Britain had built a global colonial empire spanning all six continents and which was the second-largest in human history by total area, being exceeded only by the Mongol Empire at its height.

Amid a new wave of archaeological discoveries on Mars and Venus, in 1900 the United Kingdom deployed large tracked lunar cruisers to explore the surface of Luna and determine if there was hidden evidence of a past alien civilisation located on the moon. In 1902, a British lunar cruiser discovered the Mons Piton site in the Mare Imbrium region of Luna. Britain prompted global condemnation when its scientists, initially unable to open the building's complicated locking mechanism, attempted to blast their way into the interior of the structure with explosives. Requests by other nations for access to the Mons Piton site, which was the most well-preserved alien archeological site that had been discovered by humanity at that point, spurred the United Kingdom to deploy military forces to protect it. British scientists eventually managed solve the complicated mathematical equation allowing them to unlock the entrance to the mysterious alien facility, discovering the bodies of surviving members of the Venusian civilisation in hibernation pods. Out of hundreds of Venusians who were hibernating in the pods, only 11 members of the species had been successfully revived by British scientists by 1905. This was humanity's first contact with an advanced extraterrestrial species. The leader of the surviving Venusians, Xveca, told the British scientists that the remnants of her species had gone into hibernation after their civilisation had nearly been destroyed during the Venusian Civil War, in anticipation of the return of the Creators who the Venusians believed seeded life throughout the universe.

In 1902 the United Kingdom launched Dreadnought, a revolutionary space station equipped with devastatingly powerful kinetic bombardment weapons. Other world powers soon launched their own competing orbital weapons stations, emulating the design of Dreadnought. In 1902, the United Kingdom also signed a formal alliance agreement with the Empire of Japan.

In 1904, reflecting improving Franco-British relations, France signed an alliance agreement with Great Britain known as the Entente Cordiale. The establishment of this alliance was motivated by the growing power of the German Empire in continental Europe.

In the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905 and 1906, France and Britain rebuffed a German attempt to diplomatically challenge French control over Morocco. This crisis came to be seen as one of the major events which eventually led to the outbreak of the Great War.

By 1907, British scientists at the Mons Piton site were able to communicate with the surviving Venusians. A Venusian deputation led by the leader of the surviving Venusians, Xveca, was later brought to Earth by the British government to visit leaders including King Edward VII and political, scientific and academic representatives from Britain as well as British allies such as France, Russia and the United States. In 1907, Britain also signed a formal alliance agreement with the Russian Empire.

By 1914, the United Kingdom's interplanetary colonies on Mars and Venus had a combined population of around 234,000 - by far the largest population living on planets other than Earth at the time. During that year, the Great War broke out after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Ground and air forces of the German Empire launched an attack toward France. Britain intervened in the war on the side of France and the Russian Empire after German forces violated the neutrality of Belgium. The German advance was stalled by defending British and French forces, leading to a two-year stalemate dominated by mostly static trench warfare in Belgium and in northeastern France. In 1916, in a plan engineered by British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire launched a surprise attack using a fleet of armed space capsules and rockets directed at the orbital weapons platforms of Germany and its allies. It was hoped that destroying most of the German-led alliance's fleet of orbital weapons platforms would leave Germany with no way to retaliate against an attack by the Allies' own orbital weapons, forcing Germany to surrender and ending the war. However, the surprise attack was detected by German forces soon after it began and the leaders of Germany and its allies ordered their weapons platforms to open fire on Allied cities and military targets before they could be destroyed. After the German and German-allied battle stations began firing, the Allies ordered their own orbital weapons stations to fire on Germany and its allies. Many long-range rockets were also used by both sides to strike each other. The short exchange of orbital kinetic weapons and rockets left most of Europe destroyed. Tens of millions of civilians would eventually die from the strikes themselves, as well as from the resulting breakdown of food, water and electricity supplies in addition to outbreaks of disease. The use of chemical shells in many of the orbital projectiles and rockets left some parts of Europe uninhabitable for several years. A ceasefire was soon agreed to between the belligerents of the Great War.

Britain was hit hard by the Great War and the resulting exchange of orbital weapons and rockets. In addition to losing more than 800,000 soldiers in the conventional fighting between 1914 and 1916, nearly six million British civilians were estimated to have died, largely as a result of the massive enemy bombardment of its cities. In total, the United Kingdom lost about 10 per cent of its prewar population and more than 50 per cent of its prewar economic output. The British cities of London, Portsmouth, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds were all destroyed. The destruction of London left many members of the United Kingdom's royal family and government and military leadership dead. The remnants of Britain's civilian government moved the nation's capital to Bristol, which had survived the war largely undamaged. King George V and the heir to the British throne, Edward, Prince of Wales, were killed in the orbital strike on London. King George V's fourth child, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, survived and was eventually crowned King Henry IX of England.

In Ireland, Irish republicans had launched the Easter Rising against British rule earlier in 1916. The weakening of Britain's government, military and economy as a result of the devastating orbital weapon exchange that ended the Great War was exploited by the Irish rebel forces. The remnants of Britain's military forces were unwilling and unable to maintain control of Ireland, eventually leading to the Irish republicans conquering the entire island of Ireland and Ireland becoming de facto independent from the United Kingdom in 1918. From 1918, the United Kingdom reverted to its earlier name, the Kingdom of Great Britain, and returned to using the pre-1801 Union Flag.

In 1918, after two years of negotiations, representatives of the Great War's belligerent nations agreed to a peace treaty at Geneva in Switzerland which permanently ended hostilities.

In 1919, Great Britain became a founding member of the League of Nations.

For many years after the Great War, a global economic depression left much of the British population rural and poor with inadequate access to housing, food and medical supplies. Many Britons who had the means to emigrated to British colonies which had survived the Great War unscathed, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the United States. The postwar British government also wasted precious resources fighting costly colonial wars overseas with the remnants of the British military. Inspired by the surprising success of the Irish republicans in 1918, many more nationalist movements in British colonies across Africa, Asia and the Americas had declared independence from Great Britain, taking advantage of the economic instability and military weakness of the country. In particular, British forces fought an especially long, bloody and controversial armed campaign against a growing independence movement in India. British forces withdrew from India in 1927, an event which signaled the effective end of the British Empire.

Great Britain was a major recipient of economic aid from the United States in the years following the Great War. The purpose of this aid was to strengthen British institutions and prevent a communist takeover of the country, as had occurred in the Russian Empire.

Following its defeat in the Indian War of Independence, and with much of its empire having collapsed since the end of the Great War, Great Britain reorganised what was left of its empire into the Commonwealth of Nations in 1939. Although many former British colonies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand still maintained constitutional monarchies, with King Henry IX as their head of state, the 1939 Statute of Westminster removed the ability of the Parliament of Great Britain to pass legislation in these countries. All member states of the Commonwealth were declared to be "free and equal" as a result of the London Declaration the same year. Member states of the Commonwealth also became part of a monetary union using a single currency (the Commonwealth pound) and an internal common market with a standardised system of laws applying in all of its member states. A separate Commonwealth Parliament was established in Bristol. Democratically elected by voters in all of the Commonwealth's member states, the Commonwealth Parliament was responsible for enacting policies relating to the movement of people, goods, services, and capital within the Commonwealth's internal market, enacting legislation in justice and home affairs, and maintaining policies on trade and defence. The Commonwealth of Nations became a model for future supranational organisations, such as the European Union and the Organisation of African Unity.

It took until the middle of the 1940s for Britain's economy to return to its pre-Great War size. While Great Britain would never be as globally important or military powerful as it had been before the Great War, Britain remained very influential in the political system of the Commonwealth of Nations, a supranational organisation which was rapidly growing in global influence. British diplomatic power was further bolstered when, in 1951, India resolved its past differences with Great Britain and joined the Commonwealth after many years of debate.

In 1958, a joint project between the British Interplanetary Society and the NACA space agency of the United States to reverse engineer Venusian hibernation pod technology was successful.

In 1959 Great Britain became the third nation, after the United States and Japan, to successfully test a nuclear weapon.

While Great Britain did not join the European Union, Britain decided to join the European Space Agency in 1961. This brought the 155 year history of the British Interplanetary Society as the world's first space advocacy organisation to a close. Membership of the European Space Agency gave Great Britain access to advanced German plasma rocket propulsion technology. In 1962 the ESA successfully tested a ship powered by a gravity drive, completing a British program to construct a gravity drive which had been ongoing since the 1950s.

In 1968, the supranational political and economic structures of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations were combined to form the United Commonwealth. The resources of the European Space Agency and the separate space agencies of Commonwealth of Nations member states were combined to form the United Commonwealth Space Agency. The European Union Defense Force of the former European Union and the separate Earth and space military forces of Commonwealth member states were also reorganised into the United Commonwealth Defence Force. The Commonwealth pound was replaced as the currency used in Great Britain by the newly-established currency of the United Commonwealth, the Commonwealth credit.

Britain suffered the highest number of human casualties when the Cramori Empire launched its opening round of attacks on the Sol System using biological weapons in 1976. More than 50 million British settlers were among nearly 130 million humans killed on Mars.

In the wake of the start of the Allied-Cramori War and the Cramori Empire's attempted invasion of the Sol System in 1976, in 1988 the citizens of the member states of the United Commonwealth voted to give the United Commonwealth Parliament and the United Commonwealth Secretariat the powers of a federal government, effectively transforming the United Commonwealth from a supranational political and economic union to a single federal republic. It was thought that granting the United Commonwealth greater economic, political and military control over the resources of its constituent states would be more effective for planetary defence against the Cramori. The British government was therefore effectively absorbed into the United Commonwealth Government in 1988, and Great Britain is largely regarded to have ceased to exist as a separate nation-state on that date.