[Jack nods.] Makes sense. They've managed to restrict pretty much everything here, it seems. But you might be able to do something, in an emergency? Even something small might be useful!
As for the 51st century, well. It's the time of the Great Breakout. Earth's going through an Ice Age, the military are owned by the church, and there are wars all over the Earth. A lot of humans took the chance to get off-planet and spread out through the galaxy, colonising other planets. I'm from near the end of the century and I wasn't born anywhere near Earth myself.