Being a brief discussion of humanity's first foray into the stars.
In today's society, where interstellar travel, diplomacy and war is routine, it might be a good idea to remember that the Node Drive that maEvende all this possible for humanity, is a remarkably recent achievement. Indeed, some of the people alive at it's inception are only now reaching the limits of gene-therapy and succumbing to old age.
The first interstellars ships set out from humanity's homeworld: Earth in the Sol system, or as it is rather prosaically known on galactic star maps according to the Interstellar Mapmaking Agreement: C44. While humanity's best and brightest were had laid aside the star drivers to focus ing on unlocking the human genome Researching Gene Modification, a tech that gives an advantage to terraforming speed the planet's engineers were busy constructing ships to carry the teeming masses of humanity to the stars.
These ships, crude by modern standards, lacked were cramped, uncomfortable, and only armed with basic gauss drivers. They were capable of bringing people and fuel along but not good for much else.
The ships had not even been given names, but were simply known by their designations: What was later known as the "Colonizer-class", the "Tanker-class", the "Extended Range-class" and the "Armor-class".
The first ships to set out from earth was a simple colonization fleet: A tanker and a colonization vessel, setting out along the node lines in order to find new worlds.
While the Node Driver is incomparably the fastest and most efficient form of interstellar travel, it also has it's disadvantages: It is limited to travel on naturally-occuring "node lines" and "off-road" travel is very slow, even compared to Hiver STL ships.
That Node Travel is fast does by no means imply it does not take time: It took the first colonists two years from exiting earth to setting foot on Star System DM+ 22 2302 (or as it's denizens call it, "New Earth", yes, the first colonists were rather unimaginative)
New Earth proved to be much less hospitable than the old version, early estimates pointed at it being able to sustain around 60% of the population of Old Earth, even when terraformed to earthlike standards. The Newian ecology was mainly barren but also contained some remarkable resilient (and hostile) wildlife (today only preserved in special wildlife reservations) Worse than the predators however, where the simple fact that certain parts of the flora was incompatible with earth-organisms at all, being extremely poisonous. It would take years and many sacrifices before New Earth would be considered habitable.
Nonetheless there was no shortage of willing emigrees: Old Earth was overcrowded, the Consortia that ruled it made life at beast dreary, at worst oppressive. Life, or even death, among the stars was an appealing prospect to some.
Earth (that is, Old Earth) was connected with four traversible Node Lines: Two of whose destinations estimates indicated were unreachable by the standard issue one-two colonization fleet (that is one colonization vessel accompanied by a tanker-vessel) for the other two, one led to New Earth. Before the New Earth colonization fleet had even reached the alien star system however, another fleet had been dispatched along Node Line #2 (Sol Force uses a numerical designation for Node Lines based on when they were first discovered and charted, unfortunately at some point it got confused, lost, or possibly they just stopped caring, naming node lines either idiosyncratically or occasionally randomly, however it holds true for the earliest charted node lines)
The second world explored by Sol Force, Ross 627, was a barren rock, at the time not inhabitable by humans.
It did however contain a node-line within reach of the exploration fleet, and Captain Sheng-ji decided (against warnings) to chart it, knowing that it would be a gamble: There would simply not be sufficient fuel to return to earth in case of the node line leading to an inhospitable world.
While Human explorers charted the node lines, scientists were busy charting the human genome: The first steps in gene modification Early breakthrough after a couple of turns were followed by attempts to modify the human genome to allow humans to be cryogenically frozen, this very basic genetic modification, today carried by the vast majority of human beings, enabled large quantities of colonists to be carried in suspended animation on colony ships.
Along with tankers to allow ships to reach farther along the node lines, engineers were also busy constructing a ring of defensive satellites around the earth: This "old Ring" was incredibly poorly armed by modern standards, but it was believed it might be useful to fend off incoming meteors, or perhaps a single alien scout-craft. With limitations on earth's colonization being mostly from lack of range of her ships, it was felt this was a better investment than more colonization ships that could not reach anywhere.
Captain Sheng-Ji's gamble paid off: The Denebola system (named after the captain's favourite dog) proved to be inhabitable, indeed, while it's potential turned out to be less, Denebola was actually much less inhospitable than New Earth, lacking many of the nasty predators and poisonous flora that mankind's first planet had included Hazard Rating is about 2/3 of New Earth's) the only major issue was a kind of fungus, that tended to grow rapidly and gum machinery, as well as kill certain species of useful earth plants. Terraforming would, again, be a long and tiresome (and considering the methods availible, crude) process.
The second wave of human colonization was using a different model: The Gaia's Daughter class of colonizer and the Long Haul class tanker utilized new Pulsed Fission engines reach farther away from earth, Node Lines 5 and 6 (both emanating from Earth) were now open to travel, and colonists set out along them to find new worlds to settle.
The worlds settled, Ross 92 and Ross 119, put increasing strain on the Sol Force budget however: New colonies were expensive and it was conclusively shown that it could take years for them to become self-sufficient. In the meantime large portions of the research and construction budgets were eaten by by colonial maintainance.
It was thus decided to scrap further colonization plans for the moment, and focus on exploring the universe. To facilitate this the Long Hauls were redirected to work along with the Voyager class of extended range ships. incentives were also provided to focus research on better manufacturing techniques Waldo Units after the some basic genetic modifications were made to allow humans a more wide range of breathable atmospheres. Atmospheric Adaptation researched.
It was one of the Voyager expeditions that first brought humanity it's first incontroversible proof of alien life: In the system designated Gammairiginis the expedition encounter an ancient alien relic that utterly destroyed the ships. This remnant of a some long-forgotten civilization would prove to be humanity's first contact with not only alien life, but the remnants of a vastly technologically superior alien culture...
-Sol Force: A long history of service. by Edmund S. Boyd,
