Commentary
This background follows the timeline used in the TTA books, building upon the text and images in the book Spacecraft 2000 - 2100AD. It develops some of the ideas and images to illustrate what some of the spacecraft mentioned might have looked like in the years 2000 - 2030AD. Here I have attemped to visualise and illustrate with more detail some of the ships mentioned in the original book, along with some of my own ideas of what spaceflight was like in the thirty-or-so years before contact with the peoples of Alpha Centauri in 2036AD.