United States

The United States of America was a human nation located on Earth in the Sol System. The territory of the United States was primarily located in North America, bordering Canada and Mexico. The United States also controlled the Commonwealth of the Philippines and several smaller island territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific, most of which had been granted U.S. statehood by the 22nd century, as well as the American Venusian States located on Venus. During its existence, the United States was one of humanity's most important political and military powers.

The North American continent had been inhabited by Native American groups for at least 12,000 years before the beginning of European colonisation in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the east coast of North America. Disputes over taxation and political representation with Great Britain led to the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). In 1788, four years after achieving independence, the states ratified the U.S. Constitution, establishing a new federal government which remained in force until the second half of the 22nd century. In the early 19th century, the country began expanding across North America, gradually obtaining new territories - sometimes through war - frequently displacing Native Americans, and admitting new states.

The United States fought in the War of 1812 against Great Britain between 1812 and 1815. While American forces were able to prevent a British counter-invasion from Canada, the American capital of Washington, D.C. was destroyed by the British military using airship bombers and long-range artillery pieces before they withdrew.

In 1820 the United States passed the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the country. The U.S. had been somewhat reluctant to follow Britain and Europe in abolishing slavery due to its importance for agricultural production in the American South, however advancements in industrial technology made forced labour unable to compete economically with mechanised agriculture. Although the move enjoyed support across most of the country, there was some minor resistance by landowners in the South who were disadvantaged by the change.

By 1848, the territory of the United States spanned across the North American continent.

In 1867, the United States purchased the Russian Empire's former territory of Alaska. In 1869, the United States completed the construction of a high-speed electric railway between the nation's east and west coasts.

In 1877 the United States became the sixth nation, and the first non-European power, to launch a manned orbital spaceflight. The first American spaceport was located at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Unlike most of the other pioneering participants in the early decades of the space race, which used large, inefficient gunpowder rockets to send payloads into space, American rockets used a liquid fuel consisting of a mixture of liquid oxygen and kerosene. This more sophisticated technology had been pioneered by Prussia several years earlier.

The United States made its first landing on Mars in 1892. Early American interplanetary ships used a mixture of nitric acid and hydrazine propellant, a technology which had first been used by the German Empire. The first American Mars mission sent 50 explorers to establish a temporary research outpost in the Chryse Planitia region, where they remained for two years. The United States sent its first expedition to Venus in 1897.

In 1898 hostilities erupted between the United States and Spain. In the aftermath of the mysterious explosion of the warship USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, the U.S. intervened in the Cuban War of Independence. The United States, with its larger and technologically superior navy and air force, achieved a decisive victory over Spain, acquiring the former Spanish colonial possessions of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands and securing the independence of Cuba from Spain. The Philippines became an unincorporated territory of the United States after the end of the Philippine–American War in 1902, and was granted U.S. statehood in 1984. The Philippines immediately became the most populous state of the United States, with by far the largest number of seats in the United States House of Representatives.

In 1899 the United States established a permanently-manned scientific research base in the Chryse Planitia region of Mars. A second interplanetary outpost was established at the base of the Ushas Mons mountain on Venus in 1902.

The United States had the world's largest national economy from the late 19th century until 1988, when the United Commonwealth became federalised. The United States then became the world's third-largest economy in the 2020s, when it was overtaken by China.

In 1907, in a development reflective of improving diplomatic relations between the United States and Great Britain, a number of representatives from the U.S. government and scientific institutions (including the famous Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla) were invited by the British government to meet with survivors of the Venusian Empire while they were visiting London.

In 1907 the United States also deployed its first orbital weapons platform. By 1914 the United States had the world's third-largest fleet of orbital weapons platforms, being surpassed only by Great Britain and the German Empire.

Despite political debate about joining the conflict on the side of Great Britain and France, the United States remained neutral during the Great War which began in 1914. The U.S. traded with combatant nations on both sides of the war, but limited exports of weapons and military equipment to countries on the Allied side. After initial skirmishes ended in a stalemate in Europe, a destructive exchange by both sides using their orbital weapons platforms in 1916 led to the destruction of most of Western Europe and the deaths of tens of millions of its inhabitants. The European imperial powers then collapsed in a wave of revolutions and colonial uprisings, temporarily leaving the United States as the world's sole global superpower. While the United States escaped enemy orbital strikes on its territory due to its neutrality in the war, the devastation of the economies and populations of Europe resulted in a global economic depression which would suppress American economic growth for decades to come. Millions of Europeans also emigrated from war-devastated Europe to other countries including the United States.

Like several other countries, the Russian Empire collapsed at the end of the Great War. The remnants of the Russian imperial government were swept from power in a Bolshevik revolution in October 1916, eventually leading to the establishment of the communist Soviet Union in 1920. The 1916 Russian Revolution caused great alarm in the United States, in a period which was known as the "Red Scare". Some American politicians expressed fear that communist movements could take advantage of the weakened state of governments in Western Europe to establish a "communist super state" stretching across all of Eurasia, which in a few decades would be powerful enough to threaten the United States. The United States seriously considered intervening in the Russian Civil War on the side of the anti-communist White movement in an effort to remove the Bolsheviks from power in the country, but the lack of will and ability of war-weary and devastated Western European countries to support an intervention in Russia made this idea infeasible. The near-collapse of the new democratic government of the German Republic to another attempted communist revolution in 1918 spurred the U.S. government to begin providing aid and loans on generous terms to war-devastated European nations, despite its domestic economic problems. American aid programs aimed to help European countries from the devastation of the war and strengthen their institutions against communist influence. Fear of the spread of communism would define American foreign policy for much of the 20th century. However, the United States was also opposed to the expansionism of the Empire of Japan into China, and aimed to curb Japanese influence over the newly-independent post-colonial states of Asia after the end of the Great War.

American officials were instrumental in mediating negotiations between the Great War's belligerent nations after the ceasefire in 1916. This led to the signing of the Treaty of Geneva in 1918, formally ending the conflict. The United States was also the driving force behind the formation of the League of Nations, which was founded in 1919.

In the early 1920s, the United States became alarmed at reports that Soviet officials were considering intervening in China to help the revolutionary Southern Government of Sun Yat-sen to militarily reunify the country. Fearing that the Soviet Union was planning to use the intervention as an opportunity to spread communism into East Asia, American representatives approached Sun's government from about 1922 proposing to lead a League of Nations-sanctioned intervention force into China to reunify the country under a democratic government led by Sun. The Americans also promised to provide loans to China on generous terms once Sun's national government had been established, similar to the loans they were providing to Great War-devastated European nations at the time.

The American-backed League of Nations resolution to deploy an international military force to China to support Sun's revolutionary government narrowly passed in 1923, despite opposition from countries including the Soviet Union and Japan. The text of the resolution specifically excluded Japan from contributing troops to the intervention force or conducting its own intervention into Chinese territory, due to concerns that Japan may have exploited the international military operation to expand its own territorial holdings in the region. In response, Japan accused the United States of using the League of Nations intervention as cover to force Japan out of its territories in China, and deployed reinforcements to its Chinese and Korean military bases. The crisis led to fears of a war between the U.S. and Japan, but ultimately the League of Nations operation to unify southern and northern China was completed by 1925 without any major incidents with Japan. Despite this, there was widespread anger in Japan at the perceived disrespect shown to the country by the League of Nations and the United States, leading to Japan withdrawing from the League in 1926.

During the 1940s, the United States began to develop its two semi-permanent research outposts on Mars and Venus into colonies populated by civilian settlers. Other countries had already established permanent settlements on these planets for several decades.

In 1947, the Roswell incident occurred in New Mexico. The United States military claimed that the event was merely the crash of a military aircraft at a ranch near the city of Roswell, however locals became suspicious when large numbers of troops were deployed to cordon off the surrounding area and a strict no-fly zone was established over the ranch. It was subsequently revealed by the U.S. government during the 1970s that an unmanned space probe of the Cramori Empire had actually crashed at Roswell while searching the galaxy for Creator artifacts. The U.S. military transported the advanced alien probe to a secret location and began attempting to reverse engineer technology from it.

In 1948, the United States successfully tested an atmospheric craft powered by the revolutionary gravity drive, which had been developed by Nikola Tesla. In 1949 the gravity drive was tested in space for the first time, reaching the then-astonishing speed of 20 kilometers per second and invigorating interest in manned missions to the outer reaches of the Sol System.

In 1949, the United States also became the first human nation to successfully test a nuclear weapon. The test, which yielded around 20 kilotons of TNT, was the culmination of an extensive American effort to develop a nuclear weapon which had been ongoing since the 1930s. The test of this weapon drew alarm and condemnation from much of the international community at the time. The United States government maintained that it would only use atomic weapons for self-defence, and that the weapons were intended for use against both human nations and extraterrestrial forces that were hostile to the U.S. The U.S. nuclear test ignited a nuclear arms race among major world powers, with many other nations developing their own nuclear weapons in subsequent years.

In the 1950s, the United States began constructing power stations with turbines driven by minaturised gravity drives. This revolutionary technology allowed humanity to generate essentially limitless emission-free energy.

In 1954 the United States launched the first manned space mission toward the Jovian moon Europa using a gravity drive-powered spacecraft. The expedition team on Europa found that the water underneath the moon's ice-covered surface was warmer than had been expected, but they did not have the equipment to drill a larger hole into it to undertake further investigation. A subsequent U.S. mission to Europa in 1962 was successful in drilling a large enough hole in the ice to lower a manned submersible into the ocean below it. This expedition soon made contact with the intelligent underwater Europan civilisation.

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

In 1959, the United States became the first human nation to test a thermonuclear weapon.

In 1962 the United States successfully tested a more powerful version of Nikola Tesla's gravity drive, becoming the first human nation to build a spacecraft capable of travelling at relativistic speeds.

In 1963, American astronauts landed on Titan for the first time. The United States became the third country to land on the Saturnian moon after Germany and the Soviet Union.

In 1967 the United States secretly began conducting mining operations to extract helium-3 on Luna. By this time, U.S. scientists had developed an understanding of how to construct a fusion weapon after studying the fusion-based power and propulsion systems of the Cramori space probe that had crashed in the Roswell incident. U.S. helium-3 lunar mining operations were intended to produce fissile material to enable the nation to build a stockpile of fusion weapons.

In 1972 the United States launched the starship USS Endeavour toward the Epsilon Eridani system, becoming the second nation after the Soviet Union to launch a manned interstellar mission. The Endeavour successfully reached Epsilon Eridani in 1993. However, unlike the Soviet starship Red October, the Endeavour did not return from Epsilon Eridani under sublight power as the U.S. had developed faster-than-light space travel during its voyage. The crew of the Endeavour were recovered from Epsilon Eridani and brought back to Earth by a faster-than-light ship in 1996, abandoning the obsolete sublight ship in the Epsilon Eridani system.

The United States had one of the most powerful human space forces in 1976, when a fleet of worldships of the Cramori Empire entered the Sol System for the first time. The Cramori, a genocidal race who believed that they were the rightful leaders of all life forms designed by the Creators, demanded that the humans and the Europans surrender and submit to their rule. An allied force of human military spaceships, including those of the United States Army Air Corps, attacked the Cramori fleet in response, beginning the Sol-Cramori War. U.S. military spaceships, which had not yet been equipped with fusion weapons, found that their nuclear weapons were not effective against the force fields of the Cramori ships. Much of the Cramori space fleet was disabled by fusion weapon-armed spaceships of the Soviet Union. The force fields of the Cramori worldships were eventually brought down after they were rammed in suicide attacks by high-speed American and Japanese civilian research ships equipped with second-generation gravity drives, allowing them to be finished off by the Soviet fleet. More than 10 million American settlers were among nearly 130 million humans killed on Mars by Cramori biological weapon attacks. In addition, more than one million Americans were killed when a Cramori fusion warhead made it past orbital defences set up around Earth and destroyed the Hawaiian Islands. Megatsunamis caused by the detonation of the fusion weapon over Hawaii impacted the west coast of the continental United States, the east coast of the American-controlled Philippine Islands, and other American territories in the Pacific Ocean, killing thousands of additional American nationals and causing widespread destruction in those areas.

American military ships and American-flagged civilian space vessels were used to transport ground forces of the United States Army, the United States Marine Corps, and other human ground forces to Mars to engage Cramori invasion forces and evacuate human survivors from the planet. The United States sent one of the largest ground forces to fight on Mars. In 1977, while the initial stages of the human counter-attack against Cramori forces on Mars were underway, the United States successfully tested a fusion weapon, becoming the second nation after the Soviet Union to do so. After the remaining human survivors were evacuated from Mars, the United States and the Soviet Union controversially decided to destroy the planet's surface with fusion weapons and nuclear weapons to eliminate the remaining Cramori ground forces on the planet rather than continuing to fight them in a costly ground campaign, given that the Cramori biological weapon attacks had rendered Mars uninhabitable to humans for at least several thousand years.

The United States, with its large economy and advanced technology, proved to be one of the most effective human nations when it came to fighting the Cramori Empire. The United States contributed large numbers of personnel as well as some of the most advanced ships and equipment to the League of Nations Space Command. Beginning in 1984, American contractors played a significant role in the development and construction of elements of the Solar System Defense Initiative.

In 1987, the United States undertook humanity's first faster-than-light spaceflight using a ship powered by the revolutionary kugelblitz drive. The U.S. faced significant pressure to share the drive with other members of the League of Nations to enhance humanity's space defence capabilities. The U.S. finally relented in 1990, providing the kugelblitz drive to all other members of the League of Nations Space Command.

In 1994, the United States established a colony on the Saturnian moon Titan.

In the early 1990s, the United States proposed a number of manned faster-than-light "Operation Starshot" interstellar missions targeted at nearby star systems, in order to locate and destroy the homeworld of the Cramori. American Starshot missions began in 1998. The second American Starshot mission, launched in 1999 to the Vega star system, discovered the massive Vega structure, which was controlled by Cramori forces. The Starshot mission to Vega escaped and returned to the Sol System by 2001, warning the LNSC of the presence of Cramori forces in that system. In 2004, the United States unilaterally deployed its frontline space battle fleet to Vega in an effort to destroy the Cramori forces occupying the system, despite the majority of League of Nations members warning that more time was needed to build up Earth's space battle fleet and to gather intelligence on the Cramori forces in Vega. The American space fleet arrived in the Vega system in 2005 and found that they were outmatched by newer-generation Cramori warships guarding the system, which appeared to have been refitted with more advanced faster-than-light drives. Almost the entire American frontline space fleet was destroyed. In response to the attack, Cramori forces launched massed attacks on the Sol System using unmanned faster-than-light probes in 2006 and 2011. These attacks damaged manned battle stations and sensors of the recently-deployed Solar System Defense Initiative. Vega would be captured from the Cramori for the first time by the LNSC in 2024, however the system would change hands several times throughout the war.

In 2006, four million American settlers were among 16 million humans killed on Titan when the Cramori Empire launched an attack on the Saturnian moon.

In 2020, American astronauts undertaking an Operation Starshot mission to the Gilese 176 system discovered Gidoria, a planet whose civilisation had largely been destroyed in a nuclear conflict. The American astronauts were interned by military authorities ruling Gidoria before they were rescued by LNSC forces several years later.

The government of the United States was officially dissolved in 2155, as were the governments of all other nations on Earth. National governments were replaced by a single democratic leadership structure called the Human Federation. The unification of all of humanity under a single federal government made humanity eligible for admission into the Galactic Union.