They took into account evolving technological and industrial capabilities, prevailing energy and declining reserves of industrial metals, minerals, and other usable substances and related them to the Solar System's demographic trends and resources predictions. When the United Planetary System dissolved, the successor UIPS felt it had no choice but to continue the Slingshot program.
The conclusions of humankind's most distinguished scientists and philosophers suggested that two independent orders in space would bring with them a heightened likelihood of social and technological dislocations and disruptions. There would be interregional and, within INOR, international competition that would increase the rate of depletion in resources. There would be a multitude of disputes, often intentionally misinterpreted, to resolve territorial and jurisdictional differences that were already caught up in and molded by the dynamics of orbiting planets, and their satellites and connecting space-ways.
The effects on Slingshot could be catastrophic. Its security was paramount. Immediately following separation of the two Regions the President of the new UIPS directed the creation of a powerful Military Space Force.
The UIPS searched the ancient archives of Earth's military history and designed weapons of defense and offense. Ships of war and their supporting systems were brought back into being, and spunnel gateways expanded to accommodate them. A militant phoenix rose from its ancient ashes.
The Military Space Force was charged with patrolling the space-ways beyond the Asteroids to protect UIPS vital interests. Their responsibilities included protecting the lives of UIPS citizens and private and government property throughout INOR wherever they happened to be, in space or on the surfaces of planets and satellites.
The role and intent of the UIPS military was explained to all INOR governments. "The Military Space Force," proclaimed the President of the UIPS, "would remain until INOR's member Nations were sufficiently stabilized to participate in ensuring peaceful coexistence and passage along space-ways and at moorings throughout the Outer Region, and separately and collectively agree to participate in and support the Slingshot Program."
INOR, as a Federation, interpreted the formation of the UIPS Military Space Force and the President's proclamation on its role as contemptuous of their social and political maturity. The outcome was predictable.
Local INOR Defense Forces were hastily organized and equipped. Dozens of ships of war were built and many space transports were converted into armed vessels. Each INOR government, using self-defense as justification, established controlled corridors extending hundreds of thousands of kilometers into its contiguous space, often far beyond their legitimate jurisdictions. Passengers and crews of foreign space transports, passenger liners, and utility and pleasure craft, whatever their points of foreign origin or destination, required visas, local pilots, and armed escorts upon arrivals and departures. Suspicions festered on all sides.
It was an era of international and interregional political tensions and harassment, and military, technological and industrial sabotage and espionage. The history of Earth's ancients had returned to haunt the solar community.
The rate of depletion in the Solar Community's reserves of vital but nonrenewable substances rose rapidly.