Ever since Trump's second inauguration on January 20th, he's been making a lot of moves that rapidly affected the geopolitical atmosphere both internationally and domestically. As a result, I've been giving more thought to how the current administration thinks, and by extension, how the far right thinks. For example, just yesterday, Trump signed an executive order to stop federal funding for NPR and PBS, public broadcasting networks many consider being quite neutral. I couldn't help but recall fascism's core tenant of preventing critical thinking by censoring information deemed undesirable. It's given me some ideas how to talk about it in my story.
For maps, I've been debating whether to keep things within the solar system or branch out into the Alpha Centauri star system, more specifically the Proxima Centauri planetary system. Map making has not been developed as there is a lot to work on in the solar system first prior to developing other systems. For celestial bodies to focus on, I'd say Earth, Luna, Mars, Ceres, Titan, Io, Europa, Enceladus, and many more warrant their own deep diving. I can say the cultures between Earth and Mars would be remarkably different compared to Earth and Luna. Borders would likely be reserved for celestial bodies alone and their low-atmosphere orbit as enforcement there would be much easier than farther out due to the exponentially larger space to travel. Rulers and history I haven't focused much at all, and will have to be worked on later.
Cultures would have much more to work with, as their environments would vary largely and so will their cuisines, social norms, languages, occupations, beliefs, etc. I'd say the most common type of transportation would still be restricted to their respective planets, as interplanetary/interstellar travel would be expensive both money-wise and time-wise. There would be little opportunity to change lifestyles once someone is born into their social class. It would likely be historically revealing how easily it would be to exploit lower-class individuals born into a family of miners and subject them to poor working conditions without anyone batting an eye. This would probably boost their sense of community and nationality, only trusting their own while doing whatever necessary to benefit their own situation.
The borders are rather blurry out in space due to enforcement issues, but its a risk that is made worse by laws set in place by local nations to subject any non-identifiable vessel with no departure/arrival notices to be immobilized and boarded by police, often resulting in the ship made derelict and crew arrested. Don't have ideas on rival nations and history of the borders at this moment.
5/6. As I said earlier, rulers and history hasn't been worked out yet.
