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The Resources Development Administration is the largest single non-governmental organization in human space. Its power is such that it outmatches most Earth governments in wealth, political influence, and military capability. The RDA has monopoly rights to all products shipped, derived, or developed from Pandora and any other off-Earth location. These rights were granted to the RDA in perpetuity by the Interplanetary Commerce Administration (ICA), with the stipulation that they abide by a treaty that prohibits weapons of mass destruction and limits military power in space.
First established in 2018 by then CEO Colin Kamen. The RDA's field of business is profiled to be in that of interstellar technologies, recently including mineral mining of extra-solar worlds. However, they have expanded to also include research in technological fields such as the first global railway system.
The RDA are more notoriously known to operate outside of Earth's governments, where they are not bound by any particular laws. This includes Mars, Earth, and several colonies orbiting around other planets in the Sol System. In recent decades, the RDA is the first known human group to have made contact with an intelligent sentient lifeform outside of Earth -- The Na'vi.
Having established a mining operation on the world of Pandora. The RDA has increased in strength and power, leading many governments to seek them out with the mineral only found on Pandora — Unobtanium.
History[]
With millions of shareholders, the RDA is the oldest and largest of the quasi-governmental administrative entities (QGAEs). First formed in 2018 by a 34 year old man by the name of Colin Kamen who was a silicon valley entrepreneur. The roots of the RDA were quite modest, engineering many aeronautical and rocket technologies that was openly sold to many governments across the globe. Their first contract was that of NASA. After government spending on the space program ceased in 2010, NASA looked elsewhere to send astronauts into space.
This lead them to join in the privatization of the exploration of space. They were not the first and certainly not the last in this endeavor.
After only a few decades, the company had the capital and stature to propose the construction of a world-spanning rapid transit system that would allow entire population of Earth to conveniently commute hundreds or even thousands of miles to perform work where it was needed, without impinging on the cultural values of host populations.
This led to the current global network of maglev trains that require the superconductor unobtanium for their continued operation.
Colin Kamen however would not see the complete construction of the world-spanning maglev network. Having died of lung cancer in 2050 at the age of 65, the RDA became inspired by the late CEO to find cures for incurable disease. A feat that would only match the wit of Kamen. Venturing into the field of medicine prompted concerns and fierce competition with other pharmaceutical companies, who themselves opposed the idea of the RDA 'bleeding' into their field of work. By 2061, the RDA were the first corporation to successfully mass produce a vaccine that would inhibit the spread of brain tumors, eventually eradicating all known possible ailments of the brain itself.