NationStates Jolt Archive

The year is 2070, ten years ago a faster than light drive was built based on the Burkhard Heim principles. During these ten years, the oort cloud and large portions of the asteroid fields have colonies being built there. With transit time to the asteroid fields a brief few hours it was possible to start building extensively. People were ferried up by space elevator, then transited to the asteroid fields and outer oort clouds in a matter of hours.

Five years into the building, a massive exodus from earth has occurred. With increasing threats from land based powers starting to build more sea based cities on the Pacific, many Commonalitarianism citizens have chosen to move to the asteroid belts and the oort clouds. The undersea cities are being recognized as not being part of the ocean, but as viable productive land. There are long waiting lists for transport outward bound.

The biospheric test colony built in 2060 has managed to close many more of the loopholes for long term stay in space unassisted. It does not require resupply for periods of 10 years at a shot estimated with the ability to mine oort cloud material and asteroid material, this time period could be as much as 15 years.

After 10 years the kinks have finally been worked out in the drive system.

A select crew of five hundred men and women are chosen to head outsystem. Our heim drive probes have discovered a suitable system in free space with dense asteroid fields and oort clouds surrounding a star which would be ideal for a small colony. There are no livable planets, and no access by jump gate.

The colony ship is built. It will take them one year to reach their destination going at 8c. We are ready to start our first colony.

The long trip out is rather uneventful. Communications between the ship through the Bell Quantum Tunneling Ansible have shown relative quiet in the world for the time period.

Upon reaching the system, a number of things happen. The colonists start to build several spinning tensegrity spherical structures. They build internal biospheres, manufacturing, habitats, libraries, schools and other structures. A working colony takes about six months to build with extensive robotic help.

Two small mining ships head outward bringing back ore from the asteroids, and water, gases, and organic material from comets.

A self reproducing robotic solar farm is set up on a small moon attached to a beamed energy converter. The moon slowly turns into a solar power farm.

There is something strange about the system. There are no large planets, only large rings of asteroids, small moons, and lots of debris.

While exploring the asteroid fields a strange occurrence happens. There are what looks to be several heat fused stone structures with statutes in them on one of the asteroids. There are no remains. Just three quadropedal lizardoid creatures with four arms and a strange jutting warthog like jaw structure in odd poses. The structure is otherwise unchanged. The statues appear to be well preserved. It is impossible to get readings on them. The material is incomprehensibly dense to our instrumentation.

The Republic of Aralonia would like to congratulate the nation of Commonalitarianism for establishing an extrasolar colony.

Might we establish diplomatic relations to place scientists on the colony ships as well?

We are willing to establish relations to place scientists on our colony ships. This is our first colony. If you are future tech we would suggest Outpost Alpha in the Oort Cloud.

A little bit more. There are a few other things found. A huge cube of dark matter 1/2 a kilometer across. It is registered by our instruments but does not make any sense. The proportions are perfect.

Several Aralonian scientists are being shipped aboard the merchant cruiser Leonov towards the Space Elevator for transfer aboard the FTL ships to the new colonies, two per colony.

It takes a long time to build these things. They cost about $30 billion apiece to be completely self reproducing and have advanced ecological life support systems. We will be sending out two more ships for a cost of $60 billion over a period of six years. $10 billion dollars which can be absorbed easily by our economy. Four of your scientists go out to new worlds.

The second world we are heading towards is a planetary system with three planets and a red dwarf star, two of the planets circle each other, one is in deeper space. There is a large asteroid field.

Surprisingly on the second world we find a world inhabited by insectoid creatures. They appear to be intelligent, but not space faring. They have huge hivelike mounds in a densely forested world covering canopy. Even the oceans are covered by what looks like a moss like the netting. The insectoids seem to be managing the growth of the netting. They look to have a combined silicate reverse dna composition. The world has 2x normal earth gravity. The air is completely poisonous to humans. We observe from afar and do not interfere directly. There is some airborn travel in what looks like grown balloon plants by the insectoids.

The third system contains five worlds none inhabited. One of the worlds is in the early stages of life. With minimal terraforming it will be able to support a breathable atmosphere for humans. This will be a thirty year project. We are going to land ships and start building a colony here. The name of this system is paradise.

We have more than enough systems to travel to. Most of the future colony ships will be sending more colonists not new colonies.

We are willing to offer to send out scout ships and take a few of your scientists as part of our scout program. It often takes several years to find systems that are colonizable. Some of the systems contain inimical life forms. Others have too much radiation, heavy gravity, or dangerous solar flares. It takes about three years to find a new system to colonize that will be both colonizable and profitable for the colonists. We are not looking for marginal worlds. We have six heim drive scout ships looking for worlds to colonize. It takes about 2 years to go there and back for a system up to 8 light years away. There are approximately 300 systems within this distance. We have observed some 50 systems so far. Another 50 systems are worth checking. About 2/3 of them are automatically ruled out as uninhabitable. We check them anyways. There is a crew of ten on the scout ships. We would send out two of your scientists on the scouts.

The insectoids apparently are a bit more advanced than we thought. They have sent out a radio signal, politely asking to not approach within 100,000 KM of their planet. They have been picking up our television signals for quite a while and find us to be extremely irrational. They call themselves the Ph'reintis.

There is another demand made. We ask you to not send too many creatures-- no more than 10,000 grubs with limbs in our system at any given time.

Something large and black is now orbiting their world. It looks like a space ship of some kind.