THE FIRST EMPIRE

When does an empire begin ?

This is the question men have asked themselves when the term "empire" no longer became absurd with regard to the civilization stemming from Solsys at that time. The sixteen colonized stars were Proxima and Alpha centauri, to which were added Sirius, Procyon, Epsilon Eridani, Tau Ceti, followed by the procession of local "brown dwarfs" and other modest stars from the fourth millennium onwards, Wolf, Luyten, Ross, Lacaille, or Lalande, who, for want of ZCH *, received Doms settlers, feasting on these icy and abandoned lands on the road to stellar expansion.

*Zone Continually Habitable: Stable orbit and ideally close to the star, favorable to life.

The Doms built there, in the shadow of the media worlds terraformed stars brilliant, their singular, multifaceted, multicultural and well organized empire. (See Dom. Civilization) the Doms, considering themselves to be marginalized, adopted as baptismal names by the side of official rebellious denominations those of Indian peoples evoking their Shamanic talents to pierce the "other world" (Outawa). Very traditionalists, they for a long time ignored the hyperspatial doors, and took it up when Martians and Terro-Venusians began to build new superlite arches.

Among the first stars re-invested by the Doms are 61 Cygni, renamed Sitansani, a couple of very distant dwarfs, and Epsilon Indi, whose enormous gaseous orbiting was an old exoplanet well known to astronomers of the 21st century. Having no ZCH because of the light radiation too weak, but a harmful radiation on the other hand, they received colonies only on their most distant satellites. For the latter, the reality of their opulence only began to appear at the beginning of the 6th millennium.

For their part, the Terro-Martian consortia, in search of new habitable colonies even though Venus was not yet, targeted the promising stars Omicron Eridani (Keid) and Altair. The latter proved particularly fruitful. Invested in the 39th century, it will give birth to 4 inhabited worlds, Teilat, Nujamaca, Milenog and Brinsika. At that time, the only known mode of transport was the Amat Turbines, using the energy of antimatter, the Holy Grail in terms of power.

As beautiful to the mind as delicate to tame. This put a lightly loaded vessel on the light-year at about twenty flying years, which was a clear improvement from the past. The probes, which had mainly their own propellant to move, were even faster, by factor 0.07 or even 0.08 AL, by factor 1 (one year of travel for an AL) between fifteen and sixteen years. Progress will be extremely slow in this regard, especially in comparison with those made by the "Stagetts" or Hypergates trails. It was not yet possible to overcome the difficulties encountered in the conception and testing of the "Arches" of the 33rd century. The repercussions of an uncontrollable thruster could lead to a violent gravitational tear and the birth of a difficult black hole that could have catastrophic consequences in nearby stellar systems. If these "Arches" tried to launch between the different colonized stars, with good interdistance, their high-profile failures brought research to a premature end.

Thus, we retreated to the safety of the Amat turbines, with the principle of the "scout" ship, a rapid probe, recognizing the best place for a pre-colonization, then a colony-ship between fifty and two hundred years to arrive. Colonists who were responsible for their own subsistence and then to build a hyperspace door, which usually took only one hundred to one hundred and sixty years after their arrival because of the technological complexity of what was required. The other solution was to send an automated vessel consisting of the door itself and a propeller.

But this type of vessel was gigantic in movement, and therefore very slow, by a factor of 0.03 in general. All his solutions were worth and sometimes complemented. But the groups responsible for these colonies obviously preferred mass investments, in order to profit from the fruits of this colonial exploitation as quickly as possible. The various theoretical tests had long demonstrated the absolute impossibility of climbing above the fateful limit of factor 0.09. At this absolute physical boundary, the energy of antimatter simply could not be domesticated. Escaping all control, which only nanoprocessors allowed to establish, the vessel was mutated in a fraction of a second into a formidable nebula, whose intense radiance was such that it could, seen from the earth equal the sun.

To speak of Empire in the 45th century refers to ancient and buried memories of the collective unconscious, victims and executioners, of pre-spatial humanity. Yet it was a pictorial and convenient reality to describe the vast network that existed at that time within the area covering about 20 light years around Solsys. Hyperspatial roads had then been established, sometimes around insignificant brown dwarfs which played the role of springboard and were summarily colonized, solely for the purpose of laying down milestones and relays on the road leading to the most interesting stars.

For centuries, these lines had only one meaning, justified by the voluntarist side of colonial expansion. Let a ship return to earth, why? Elderly settlers who wanted to set foot for the first and only time in their lives for generations had to settle for a one-time, usually single trip to Solsys in hibernation, or virtually through copies of one Formidable efficiency shaped by a thousand years of research on the suggestion of the real to the human senses. These hyperspatial roads were thus gradually backed up by two-way and return roads, which also imposed themselves on spatial trade between the new colonized systems, when they had reached a "mature" level of development, generally around Of the 45th and 46th centuries. This era is a "golden age" of spatial colonization. All the systems present around a radius of 10 AL (23 in all) receive at least the visit of a probe. Some will be colonized as early as Banastar (Barnard\'s star) in the 36th century, and others very late as Cohoes (Luyten 789), a triple red dwarf invested by the Doms in 4780, To 11 AL of Solsys.



Here is a diagram of these "Hyperlines", hyperspatial roads. In red are those that will be opened before the 40th century, orange, before the 47th century, yellow before the 52nd and finally white before the 60th century. A limit spread over several centuries, because the latter had fallen into disuse due to the safety and diffusion of the new types of Hyperdrive thrusters.

Thirty stars colonized in the 45th century. This is the record of these two millennia of spatial expansion. To manage this colossal ensemble, the old federation of stellar nations (SNF), which was the only democratic body common to all these systems, had taken note of the disappearance of consortiums, these sprawling heavyweights whose sole usefulness had been to found The economic engine of early spatial expansion. But since then, the Stellar Nations have assured their own destiny. The principle is luminous of simplicity and deserves to be described: It will lay the legal bases of the conquest of space until the epoch of the "great expansion", superluminum from the 59th century. Beyond that, these legal bases have lost all meaning.

Here is a diagram of these "Hyperlines", hyperspatial roads. In red are those that will be opened before the 40th century, orange, before the 47th century, yellow before the 52nd and finally white before the 60th century. A limit spread over several centuries, because the latter had fallen into disuse due to the safety and diffusion of the new types of Hyperdrive thrusters.

Thirty stars colonized in the 45th century. This is the record of these two millennia of spatial expansion. To manage this colossal ensemble, the old federation of stellar nations (SNF), which was the only democratic body common to all these systems, had taken note of the disappearance of consortiums, these sprawling heavyweights whose sole usefulness had been to found The economic engine of early spatial expansion. But since then, the Stellar Nations have assured their own destiny. The principle is luminous of simplicity and deserves to be described: It will lay the legal bases of the conquest of space until the epoch of the "great expansion", superluminum from the 59th century. Beyond that, these legal bases have lost all meaning.

Colonization at the beginning of the first empire became a matter, not of private groups, but of independent communities, the "Stellar Nations", capable of managing a distant expedition on their own. The Procyonites were the first to do so, followed by the Alphites. But the most virulent were the Martians. Planet Cold and modest, Mars was also the "refuge" of populations that had a very high esteem for themselves and their destiny. A voluntarist destiny, in opposition to the Earth, later the Terro-Venerean alliance, despised because of their supposed retardation or technological badness. This was later denied. But in fact, the Martians had very early developed a part of their economic effort to rapidly expand to neighboring systems. And the colonization of Procyon, Alpha and proxima Centauri, Sirius, Epsilon Eridani, were of their doing. Most of the major consortiums were also emanations of mainly Martian groups.

But later, with the mixture of Martian populations, Terriennes and Doms, things get more turbid. It is clear that in the 40th century it was now difficult to give a precise origin to the settlers. A fundamental difference, however, is the taking of independence from the various worlds placed under temporary "guardianship". All the first stellar systems, including the procyon, and in order to prevent the Terro-Martian confrontation from occurring at the end of its terraforming, were not accountable to the Martians and were considered independent from the outset, Also to create future privileged links with founders who were now careful not to speak of "colonies."

When a system reached the final stage of its prosperity, it was generally the end of the terraforming of the only inhabitable planet (s) locally. But the lure of new territories, close habitable planets, was too strong for the colonists not to launch untimely missions of colonization, sometimes with a very hasty zeal, prejudicial to the success of such an undertaking. It was thus established legally and universally that a probe orbiting a planet was not sufficient to make it recognized as belonging to the charterer of this probe, but the first operational base, a human presence on its surface and not in Orbital position. When this presence excluded any other in the whole system, it was the latter which belonged in its entirety to the charterer of the mission. When it came to live-stock rich in telluric very good candidates, one can easily imagine the irresistible attraction of this possibility. Thus, this "property" was still the dominant engine of these colonial enterprises, as of all eternity.

One group made it a specialty, the Censtel. Originally a mere emanation of a Martian consortium set up to colonize Alpha and proxima Centauri, Censtel was allocated considerable funds to study the "chain possession" of the surrounding systems. It is to her that one owes the system of the giant colony-vessels, the mother-vessels, which were preceded by a horde of extremely rapid probes, and could send small cargo ships carrying everything necessary for a base Permanent settlement of 50 settlers. The ship itself sometimes arrived much later off a system and there delegated a large freighter to meet the needs of settlers on the spot, and provide them with a more solid infrastructure. A base disappearing, for example, on Epsilon Indi, by the collective suicide of the colonists who had been abandoned to their fate for 68 years in succession, made the star legally become a virgin territory, free of all rights, and of which the Doms seized thirty years later.

The first and only colony ship built by Censtel (and the Martian industries), the "Pelrin" was a monster that surpassed all that had been produced until its launch in 4760. (See below). He could thus ensure the colonization of six stars on behalf of the Censtel which had since been integrated into the Alphite Empire and the Mars-Procyon-Alpha Centauri alliance.

The true fundation of the Empire

The very term empire has long been controversial. Yet, the original semantics had been deviated from the twentieth century to represent a disparate set of nations over a vast expanse, maintained under the rule of a single power. The nature of this power had yet to be defined. Since Martian independence, any idea of ??a central power intended to manage all the isolated systems had relevance only in view of the contributions to the colonization of this centralized organization and its acceptance by all. A consensus began to emerge from the first "systems quintet". The five targets (alpha and proxima centauri, procyon,) had hitherto been capped by the Terrien organism, and by extension the Solsysian, of the "united nations", an old system whose meaning was no longer adapted to reality: each System comprised at least one colonized planet comprising several "nations" in the old sense of the term. The "confederation of worlds", an assembly dedicated to each planet was quickly judged ill-advised: Indeed, in the original system (solsys), to attribute a seat to each planet made no sense because of the extreme disparity of situations: Earth, Mars, then Venus, with their considerable populations and their habitability, A rank predominant by nature: In one way or another, all the other worlds of the system were dependent on them. The gas giants, like Jupiter, had only ex-miners and ungravids for any population, working within any orbital station for a consortium that was the only real "nation" they knew. The "doms" worlds, like the satellites of the gaseous ones, were self-governing, but had very small populations, due to the difficulty of designing new domes with the means of the time (well before the first cybids). Before the planets concerned were completely "domi- cated" (covered with closed structures without interruption), these small communities did not regroup but communicated constantly. For some, again, the consortia that had presided over their construction had nation strength. It will be necessary to wait until the end of the 5th millennium to see the recognition of the status of nation to these worlds, even when others were refused this honor. For simplicity, all system-wide global communities are assembled in a more or less coherent fashion under the name of "federation". All these systems initially formed a "confederation". The term empire was affected only when the "great works" and challenges of mankind demanded a much closer pooling of means. The first of these challenges was the creation and maintenance of a valid long-term hyperlink network. Some consortia could participate but under no circumstances manage such companies, at least initially. This pooling required a stronger political structure to raise considerable funds from the federations, and this together became the classical couple (together with the federal delegations of the systems, including representatives of their most populous worlds), power The latter being entrusted not to a man, of course, but to a college of technicians to answer for the proper use of the funds allocated for the realization of major tasks. These technicians, called "commissionaires", were appointed within each colonized system. Everyone took care of a part of the file entrusted to him, in close relation with his colleagues.

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Notes on the "Christian Era":

There is much to be said about the very term of "Christian Era". The debates of historians have been inexhaustible since the monumental work of Bo Hudong in 6230, concerning the fact that, at the beginning of the space expansion, this religion was present, although on the demographic level, a minority. Islam and Buddhism as well as Hinduism passed largely before the beginning of the 21st century. However, the Christian calendar was imposed on the nations whatever theirs, on the basis of the economic and political domination of the Western world. By 2100, the gap had become even more striking, and Islam\'s success in day-to-day philosophy and respect for nature was still so virulently opposed to those of an ideal type of ideal comfort level The potential of the planet in terms of resources and the capacity for regeneration of the ecosystem. It is these latter who will constitute what will be called "the expansionist current", colonizers and transformers of worlds who will see their supremacy challenged by the primitivists, naturalists and Grinnians until their disappearance. Virtualists have never been a serious threat to them, too dependent on some form of technology guaranteed by the former to survive. All these movements, whose roots plunge into the 21st and 22nd centuries, will begin their activity only in the middle of the third millennium for some, and will only take on their importance after maturation in the fifth century.

As is proved by these datings, the relative success of the Christian calendar and its exceptional duration is mainly explained by its irremediable implantation in all pseudo-intelligent technology, all technical systems as a complement to the measure of universal time and above all as An unchanging academic and cultural reference. In the same way, the Anglo-Saxon language, which had already presented itself as the most widespread language in the 21st century, would become the international reference language, adopted as the first compulsory language of learning behind mother tongues, Then by joint practice, a sabir of local color, identifying the speakers.

In spite of frequent cultural and historical opposition, this constituted a de facto solution allowing greater homogeneity in international relations and above all greater mobility than ever, the very one that was at the origin of the great multiculturalist movement leading to the "World culture" evoked in some of its aspects at the beginning of the XXI century and validated by the presence of a massive and destructurant urban culture.

Before the Christian era officially ended, at the beginning of the fifth millennium, the calendar remained in place, modified under the name of "universal calendar", notably to allow a more evident understanding of archives, and to maintain the coherence of ancient systems, too many. However, in order to quickly develop a deeper local culture, many colonial civilizations opted for a timetable based on the date of the first man treading the planetary soil, or, more rarely, the end of the Terraforming company. Everywhere else, the universal calendar was maintained as a measure of time.

But the temptations had been great to draw the date from the time when the first man emerges in space, the so-called year of the era of great expansion, corresponding to April 12, 1961, Gagarin. Others were advocating July 21, 1969 (Armstrong, the moon). But with the retreat of several millennia, the case seems derisory. Others have argued that the Christian religion was once perfectly in tune with the desire for expansion, the territorial appetites of the old powers of old Europe, caring for itself a planetary empire with legitimacy the "rescue of new souls" , "Savages" becoming for their misfortune double subjects of a king and a god. This conquering pioneering spirit and the relative poverty of soils leading to technical prodigies, the Christian supremacy, that of the technological powers of European origin could only be imposed in the long term.

Man in the stars before the end of the 4th millennium:

It should be pointed out that the period of great expansion officially began in 3784, and man had already trampled the ground of extrasolar planets from 3510, almost three centuries earlier. But official historiography has chosen to retain the date of the terraforming of the first extrasolar planet, before hyperspatial roads set in, for the reasons that such an undertaking, so disproportionate and so remote, Quasi-divine light human genius. Carrying life around other stars, was a demiurgic mission that was so noble and yet lent itself to debate for centuries. Unofficially, it was also a question of bringing this date closer to that of the end of the Venusian terraform, the world most hostile to man in the solar system, proof if it was necessary that the latter was in a position to make Even in any system. After such a test, it was generally considered that the Martian affair with the massive implementation of modern means would have been less than three hundred years. On the basis of this observation, and on the probabilities of optimism regularly supported by stellar exploratory missions, the results were quite reassuring for potential stellar settlement cradles.

What were the planets and stars affected by this expansion? We must first of all recall a fact that astronomers of the twentieth century mastered perfectly, that is to say that the prospects of finding stars favorable to the emergence of life because they had a succession of telluric planets in their ZCH was Inversely proportional to the profusion of stars within 20 light years of the earth. Indeed, on the whole (about 80), only a handle is similar or close to the ideal conditions.

There is, overall, Alpha Centauri, Sirius, Epsilon Eridani, Procyon, Tau Ceti, Omicron Eridani, Altair, Sigma Draconis (Draco), Eta Cassiopeiae (Cassiopeia), 36 Ophiuchi, 82 Eridani and Delta Pavonis, which were favored by so. Several dozen other near-stars, not very favorable to life, mostly brown dwarfs, were later renamed and colonized by the Doms. Before proceeding further, we must consider the classification of stars, according to an order little modified in the sequel, a reminder necessary in order to pursue the subject:

Stars classification since the XXth century

Although it dates back to the first observations of antiquity, it is a scientific discipline of the 20th century, an important matter of astrophysics, established in its bases in the XIXth century, during which the first catalogs were established, based In particular on better ways of diffracting the light of stars. It is the study of the chemical spectrum which is the trigonometric calculation of the knowledge of the solar environment. This classification has been the object of controversy, but the catalogs have gradually integrated the different classifications by integrating them as complementary aspects of the identity of a star. Since the middle of the 21st century, the date of the commissioning of a new observatory at very wide angle on the moon, these catalogs have enriched hundreds of planets. At the end of the 21st century, it was even possible to find tellurics, worlds however small, but always thanks to the techniques of deviations of gravitation and brightness of the observed star.

These classifications have since been established (with additional categories appearing during the third and fourth millennia), according to a fourfold criterion, mass, luminosity, temperature and gravity. Some are observed almost directly, others are deduced by calculation. But the best known and most reliable are the ancient methods of classification of Harvard and Yerkes, dating from the first half of the 20th century. The first, which culminated in the catalog Drapper, named after its inventor, Henry Drapper in 1905-1906, pursued by Williamina Fleming and completed by Annie J. Cannon and Antonia Maury in 1924, was a piece of bravery containing 225,000 stellar bodies.

It was based on a magnitude (observable brightness) ranging from 0 to 9, in the opposite direction, with 0 representing the ultimate luminosity stage and 9, in each spectral category, a minimum. Everything was done around absorption lines, sensitive to temperature rather than to surface gravity. So we did not know for sure if we were in front of a dwarf or a giant.

Designed in alphabetical form, this classification was then followed by revisions so important that the final list consisted of seven main letters and seven secondary ones (very minor cases), WOBAFGKMLTRNCS, letters covering natures which were sometimes different. The main class, OBAFGKM will be the most used, doubled by the subdivision of magnitude 0-9, knowing that a K9 is very close in chemical composition and temperature of an M0.

-O: These are some of the hottest stars known in terms of their mass (40,000 ° Kelvin-5700 for the sun), even more massive and corresponding to the generic name of "blue giant". There are also blue "supergiants", but their lifespan, in all cases, is most limited. The most brilliant stars of the galaxy, the queens of the celestial vault, well known from the earliest antiquity, and referenced for posterity by Arab astronomers from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. (Examples, Naos, alias Zeta Puppis, in the constellation of the stern, Mintaka, alias Delta of Orion, besides an immense young star pond, or Han, aka Zeta d Opiuchi, on the contrary a blue dwarf possessing Very bright.)

-B: Called "white giants", they are young and quite massive, still very warm (20 000 ° K). They are very minor in the galaxy, but already more present than those of type O. (Examples, Rigel, constellation of Orion, this huge molecular cloud which gave its name to the arm of the galaxy in which the sun is located, Will be, much later, the Orion Empire, the first interstellar settlement of importance to mankind.)

-A: "Big white": these are massive young stars, warm compared to the sun: 8500 ° K. Their proportion remains low in the galaxy (0.3%), but the prospects of finding liveable worlds there are In principle largely superior. (Sirius is the nearest known example, but also Deneb, in the constellation Swan, a very luminous supergiant, at 3000 light-years of the sun.)

-F: Say "major young", or major, these are stars very similar in appearance to the sun although generally warmer and more massive. They are also very popular in terms of colonization and already more widespread: 1.5%. (Examples, Fomalhaut, southern fish constellation.)

-G: This type could have been improperly named "standard" since it corresponds to middle stars in mid-life, of which the sun is the eminent representative. This stellar type is also popular and already more accessible due to a presence of almost 4% in the galaxy. (Example, the Sun, type G2, Alpha Centauri)

-K: "Oranges" are stars less massive than the sun and less warm (4500 ° K), less favorable to the outbreak of life due to a mediocre luminosity (2/10) and yet already two Times (9%). Some planets have been terraformed around similar stars, but exceptionally. (Eg Antarès - red giant, Alpha Centauri, double star composed of a K0 and a G2, comparable to the sun, in less bright.)

-M: The plebeian of the galaxy is a generally small and hardly detectable star, the "brown dwarf". It is a very frequent star (80%), and still hot (3200°K), however producing too little light to feed any life. They are in fact corpses of dying stars, and the planets that surround them frozen deserts. Apart from a few space stations, the colonization of these worlds is generally anecdotal, which will only interested the Doms a posteriori. (These are of course small stars, dwarves but also the most famous brown supergiant, like Betelgeuse or as Arcturus, the monstrous, or even IRS-5: 15 billion Km in diameter, twice the size of the Solar system, from sun to pluton!.

-D: Also unfit for life but much hotter (40,000°K), we find the famous "white dwarfs", the result of the explosion of stars, historic centers of supernovas. They remain relatively widespread (5%), but no liveable world can survive there, since very often any vertigo of planet disappeared in the initial explosion and density of local gas clouds of the supernova makes its surroundings impracticable . They are the result of the collapse of massive stars, and their longevity is exceptional. However, this same cloud of gas contracts due to the well-known rules of gravity and gives birth to a new star of reduced size (usually K or M, more rarely G or even very close to the white dwarf) O, because for a star to end its life as a white dwarf, its initial mass must already have been relatively modest.). These clouds are still contracting so much that planets often appear. There were habitable systems detected by old white dwarfs when they were part of a couple. Famous example: Sirius.

In other cases, even more massive stars can give, after collapse, those stellar "lighthouses" that are the pulsars. They are extremely massive neutron stars.

In other cases, for the most dense in gravity, black holes, representing the stars "out of categories", being no more than bodies with inverted radiation.

Escaping this classification at first glance but nevertheless well referenced because overlapping these categories include the "red giant" and "supergiant red", corresponding to the end of exponential life of medium stars, or in the last case massive, type O, B, and A, but sometimes, more often, to other minor types, K and M. All life is impossible, for the simple reason that the stellar system is largely embedded in the stellar mass, Often, the nearer earthly planets.

Only stations could be placed in the orbital position of these "cold" monsters in comparison with others. However, some red or even brown supergiants proved to be unapproachable because they had the same extreme temperature of the most massive blue giants, smaller but more radiant for their density (40 000 K). The most extraordinary of all, within the Galaxy, is IRS-5, an equivalent monster in terms of size, to the comparison of a pinhead and a hot air balloon.

-There are also the Quasars, stellar objects of radiation well beyond the most brilliant categories, since they are comparable to that of an entire galaxy, the stars of type W or of Wolf-Rayet, Of the L and T type, micro brown dwarfs, some with a size just over 50 Km in diameter, and the C, giant little luminous because considered carbon stars, or the S, possessing as much oxygen as carbon And rejecting almost nothing (almost zero radiation), gloomy and icy worlds, giant gas balls hardly considered as stars. The colonization of these different worlds has been very limited.

The second great classification of the 20th century, that of Yerkes, was elaborated in the forties by Morgen, Keenan and Kellman, and was based on the study of the spectral lines sensitive to surface gravity, determining posteriorly the luminosity. It is therefore quite natural that it has complemented that of Harvard. It consisted of eight types, referenced in Roman numerals and lowercase letters, the I and Ia corresponding to a more or less luminous supergiant, the II and III to a giant more or less luminous, IV to medium stars, V to Rather modest stars like the sun (G2V), or to dwarfs, the VIs to known dwarfs, and the VII to "sub-dwarfs", in reality corresponding to very rare T-type micro-stars, or to these dwarfs White type D.

Thus, most of the catalogs, Hipparcos and Gliese for the largest and oldest, refer to a name known as "de Bayer" -the Latin name for its position in its constellation, the name of its discoverer for the less brilliant and The Arabic name for the most brilliant. The latter is followed by its class, for example K2III, (Hamal-Alpha Arietis), a giant rather bright and yet of a relatively low temperature. Subclasses "P" for planet were added, with one to more than one hundred major planets, not including satellites, but only included in the world catalog developed in the 21st century. Multiple star cases, up to eight stars initially referred to as one, should also be reported, and mostly result from special management of molecular clouds or successive generations, Old and vice versa.

We have seen cases of a red giant on the decline, the material of which was aspirated by its neighbor, a dwarf white star, of greater gravity and originating from the collapse of an older body, the "mother cannibalizing the girl". Finally, that of captive stars and captive stellar systems, coming from the singularity of the giant stellar systems, with two, three, four or even five levels of stellar dependence, another category of multiple stars, over incommensurable distances. Some of these systems, dominated by blue or red supergiants, have mostly been revealed within the galaxy, close to its center, can include up to three hundred main planets and tens of thousands of satellite planets and spread over Five or six light-years.

In the fifth millennium, when the new autonomous supraluminic (superlite) vessels were commissioned, each had an extremely complete catalog of the smallest stars, since all the explorable systems of the Orion arm had been detailed, even though they · Were not colonized.

Space Travel

These questions of star typology would never have been posed with the same assiduity if adequate means of transport had been available from the start. For as long as human genius is carried, it always blocked the immensity of space. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, at the dawn of the colonization of the solar system, there were only means for interplanetary exploration: plasma turbines, chemical fuels, nuclear / ionic combinations.

It is only in the interstellar stage that we control the antimatter, a veritable long-distance sesame, in 3062. Consequently, the construction of long-haul vessels in series became possible. Instead of the 100,000 years of travel envisaged by means of standard movements, to the nearest star, this duration could be reduced to only a few centuries.

This was desperately long, especially in relation to the speed of technological progress, making this long-term undertaking almost absurd. It is for this reason that they are only automatic probes which started, at least at the beginning. The latter had the advantage, inter alia, of a simpler and lighter structure, and therefore of a lower mass to be propelled. In addition, being a human being remained an insurmountable mountain of complexity.

Finally, with the opening of the first hyperspace doors, a new and decisive course was made in 3202, but it was not until 3500 that the first truly reliable ones were put into operation. From that moment on, all transport was as much a matter of teleportation as of displacement: C is the characteristic of hyperspatiality: One travels "beyond" time, that is short-circuited, as well as distances , By folding the space. Travel time no longer has an estimable "duration", it becomes almost instantaneous over short distances (less than ten light years).

These "roads" require relays, at least when they are founded, and separate return roads. Thereafter, the first vessels with their own hyperspatial field generation system are begun to be built. The first who succeeds will be the Ramos (3815). He succeeded centuries of unsuccessful virtual and practical tests. The project, remember it had been buried in 3662 with the destruction of "Ark II". It is in the fifth millennium that these "world ships" will be born, thus named because of their gigantism, an obligation coming from the practical aspects imposed by their very high technicality, they will definitively open to men the route of the stars.

The human factor on thoese long trips

As for the place of man in these voyages, it will be initially limited: These are probes that make the first long journeys. Subsequently, it was envisaged to send colonists to the edges of large vessels, when the probes in question found a perfect candidate for terraforming. With the traditional means, sending men for a journey of several centuries seemed delicate. The only solution remained that which had been envisaged in the first works of fiction: the hibernation, the putting to sleep, by cryogenic means, of a crew and of colonists.

As for putting his life back into automated systems, the step was taken with the reliability of the last supercomputers: Efficiency as close to the absolute as time could be at the limit of photon velocity. The other solution envisaged was the sending of an itinerant town, the "generational ship", which postulated that settlers on shore should live normally in immense infrastructures, not disregarding their comfort, only the last generation seeing The actual arrival in the destination system. But this posed insurmountable dilemmas involving the psychology of the intermediate generations, who would never know a habitable world, including the land, the cradle of humanity, an unavoidable pilgrimage. The realism of virtuality fortunately solved these questions partially.

In the 46th century, the sending of the psychogeological entities of the colonists was also tested, their physical body being that of cyborgs with incomparably better resistance. Finally, it was experimented and tried the most sophisticated concept, even later, in the 53rd century, that of carbonaceous vessels, living entities made of pure carbon, embedding not human beings, but the spectral replication of gametes, future embryos of Human beings**. Cryogenics was imposed in the first place, despite the difficulty resulting from the formation of ice crystals in body fluids, irreparably destroying the cells.

The solution could come either from an antifreeze, injected gradually as a replacement for the body fluids, which involved a long and delicate process of pure and simple removal of the water from the body, the latter freeze-dried, another way of Mummified "solution, which, if it were" cold in the back ", obviously had the reverse side of the desiccation of the tissues deprived of their suppleness. Or, finally, the instantaneous cryogenization, at a temperature below 250°C, which had the advantage, not to avoid the formation of the crystals, but to see them disappear so quickly during the sudden "awakening" (of 250°c to + 25°c in less than one second) that the potential lesions did not have time to reveal.

In the end, with the generalization of the hyperspatial leap, all these considerations fell into oblivion, for a time. For when scientific work showed that each hyperspatial jump generates strong perturbations of the spatio-temporal framework, we came back to solutions already envisaged, and to journeys of (very) long duration.

The colonized stars up to the 6th millennium

We are reminded of worlds discovered and explored even though the solar system was still in the colonization phase. Click on the planet to visit:

Proxima Centauri

- Type = M5, Magnitude = 11.0, Distance = 4.22 al This weak red dwarf is the star closest to the Sun, it is a member of the Centaur\'s Alpha system, despite its distance of 0.29 light year from the main pair, orbiting in about 2 million years around that -this. Proxima was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes and was at that time the least bright of known stars. It is also a flash variable - able to see its brightness increase by one or several magnitudes in a few minutes.

Alpha Centauri A, B

- Type = G2 + K0, Magnitudes = 0.0 + 1.4, Distance = 4.39 al Hardly any further from us than Proxima, we find the two dwarf stars, an orange and a yellow, which form Alpha of the Centaur. Orbiting around each other in 80 years, they together form one of the most brilliant objects of the heavens of the southern hemisphere. Viewed from Alpha Centauri, the third member of the system, Proxima, would be a weak star of magnitude 5.2.

Barnard\'s star (Banastar)

- Type = M5, Magnitude = 9.6, Distance = 5.94 al Famous for showing the greatest displacement of all stars, this pale red dwarf moves 0.29 degrees per century. Discovered by E Barnard in 1916, it was assumed in the 1960s that there was a pair of invisible planets around it, but subsequent observations denied this idea. In about 8000 years, the star of Barnard will become our nearest neighbor.

Wolf 359 (Aldenia)

- Type = M6, Magnitude = 13.5, Distance = 7.80 An extremely weak red dwarf discovered by Max Wolf in 1918. For 25 years it remained the least bright of known stars.

Lalande 21185 (Trecomsah)

- Type = M2, Magnitude = 7.5, Distance = 8.31 Noted in the catalog of JJ Lalande as early as 1790, this star is one of the most brilliant red dwarfs in the sky, but we still need binoculars to see it. G Gatewood in 1996 reported the possibility of a pair of planets the size of Jupiter around it, but this remains to be confirmed.

Sirius A, B

- Type = A1 + DA, Magnitudes = -1.4 + 8.4, Distance = 8.60 This white star is one of the brightest in the sky, and the brightest among those located at less than 25 light years. His companion is a white dwarf discovered in 1852, the first star of this type to have been seen. The orbital period is 50 years.

Luyten 726-8 A, B (Edinah)

- Type = M5 + M5, Magnitudes = 12.4 + 13.3, Distance = 8.73 A pale binary system composed of two red dwarfs. It is better known as UV Ceti, variable star name assigned to the second star of the system. It is a well-known flash star which can easily see its luminosity increase by several magnitudes when it is subjected to ejections of matter from its surface in the same way as the Sun but much more energetic. The two stars gravitate around each other in about 200 years.

Ross 154 (Paducah)

- Type = M4, Magnitude = 10.4, Distance = 9.69 A weak red dwarf. It is one of the many close stars cataloged by Frank Ross in the 1930s. It is also a flashing variable.

Ross 248 (Shenandoah)

- Type = M6, Magnitude = 12.3, Distance = 10.33 Another red dwarf of low magnitude.

Epsilon Eridani (Espidani)

- Type = K2, Magnitude = 3.7, Distance = 10.50 A dwarf star of orange color. This star was researched with the Green Bank radio telescope in 1960, looking for signs of intelligent life. As expected, the results were negative. The IRAS satellite detected a lot of dust around the star, a possible indication of a planetary system being formed and, more recently (August 2000), a planet the size of Jupiter was detected at a distance of 3.2 AU (480 million km) of the star.

Lacaille 9352 (Casco)

- Type = M2, Magnitude = 7.4, Distance = 10.73 al A relatively bright red dwarf that can be easily seen with binoculars. It was discovered by Nicolas de Lacaille who recorded it in its catalog of stars of the southern hemisphere around 1752.

Ross 128 (Chimo)

- Type = M4, Magnitude = 11.1, Distance = 10.89 A weak red dwarf, also referenced as FI Vir - its designation as a variable star.

Luyten 789-6 A, B, C (Cohoes)

- Type = M5 (combined), Magnitudes = 13.3 + 13.3 + 14.0, Distance = 11.1 Three red dwarfs in this system. The two main stars gravitate around each other in two years, and a third orbit the other two at a very close distance.

Procyon A, B

- Type = F5 + DA, Magnitudes = 0.4 + 10.7, Distance = 11.41 A brilliant white star of the main sequence, the eighth brightest in the sky. Procyon is accompanied by a white dwarf visually discovered in 1896. The orbital period is 41 years.

61 Cygni A, B (Sitansani)

- Type = K5 + K7, Magnitudes = 5.2 + 6.1, Distance = 11.43 This binary system composed of two orange dwarfs is known to have been the first star whose distance was measured by Bessel in 1838. The two stars are very similar but far apart (90 AU), leading to a 700-year orbital period .

Struve 2398 A, B (Etlah)

- Type = M4 + M5, Magnitudes = 8.9 + 9.7, Distance = 11.6 A binary system of two red dwarfs so named after a catalog of double stars published in 1827. This system is sometimes called the barbarian name of BD + 59 ° 1915. The two stars are quite separate (60 UA) and gravitate around each other in 450 years.

Groombridge 34 A, B (Klamath)

- Type = M2 + M6, Magnitudes = 8.1 + 11.1, Distance = 11.64 Another pair of red dwarfs. This system is often called Groombridge 34 from a catalog of stars of 1838 or sometimes BD + 43 ° 44. The two stars are variable in brightness and are referenced GX and GQ as such. The two stars are very distant from each other (150 AU) and consequently have an orbital period of 2,500 years.

Giclas 51-15 (Koka)

- Type = M6, Magnitude = 14.8, Distance = 11.8 This extremely low red dwarf is the least bright of known stars at less than 14 light years. Its luminosity is only 0.001% that of the Sun.

Epsilon Indi

- Type = K5, Magnitude = 4.7, Distance = 11.83 An orange dwarf, similar to Epsilon Eridani, though a little smaller and less luminous. In 2003, a brown dwarf - an aborted star too small to shine - was discovered orbiting the main star at a distance of 1500 AU (220 billion kilometers).

Tau Ceti

- Type = G8, Magnitude = 3.5, Distance = 11.90 The closest to stars similar to the Sun. Traces of intelligent life were sought (without success) in 1960, at the same time as around Epsilon Eridani.

Luyten 372-58 (Modoc)

- Type = M5, Magnitude = 13.0, Distance = 12.1 A very pale red dwarf. Although cataloged for a long time, its distance could only be determined accurately recently.

Luyten 725-32 (Napa)

- Type = M5, Magnitude = 12.1, Distance = 12.1 al. Another red dwarf.

Luyten\'s Star (Lutansar)

- Type = M3, Magnitude = 9.8, Distance = 12.39 A red dwarf named after Willem Luyten who cataloged hundreds of nearby stars in the 1940s. This star is less than 1.2 year light from Procyon but is not associated with.

Not shown on this map but part of the first sphere of influence of Solsys up to 20 LA:

Altair (Alpha Aquilae): A 16.77 AL of Solsys and very bright white.
Alsafi (Sigma Draconis): A 18.81 AL of Solsys and yellow-orange.
Keid (Omicron Eridani): A 16.45 AL of Solsys and triple.
Achird (Cassiopeia): A 19.42 AL of Solsys and double.
36 Ophiuchi: A 19.52 AL of Solsys and triple.
82 Eridani: A 19.76 AL of Solsys and yellow-orange.
Delta Pavonis: A 19.92 AL of Solsys and yellow-orange.


Continued: See First Empire: colonization of stars at less than 50 light years from Solsys.