Behind The Scenes

I want the initial exodus from Earth to start out slow and controlled. This would the colonization of our solar system. And I want them to be self sufficient. But I don’t want them to be self governing.

And I want some probes sent out to Alpha Centauri and Bernard’s Star. Some asteroid ships with crews in the thousands would also have been launched. These crews would all be second generation spacers - most would never have stepped on a planet. The ships would mostly not have gravity and would have acceleration cylinders where the crews could exercise.

And then I want the Plague Years to start - 10% of earth bound humanity wiped out in the first 3 months. The spacers impose martial law and establish a blockade around the Earth. This will be run from the moon. A patrol will be set up to destroy smugglers, etc.

The race for a cure will be at a space station orbiting the Earth. There will be a well defined flight corridor to and from it. Leave the corridor and die - have radioactive remains rain down on the Earth.

The reason why the space station will be the focus for the cure will be the development of vaccines in weightlessness and the safety of the vacuum. Infected people will be brought up from the planet and tested.

And the spacers will be afraid of ships breaking the blockade - this will be seen as an extinction event. Asteroid ships are going to be pumped out quickly. They will be carrying tens of thousands of colonists. The asteroids will launch with minimal facilities and the passengers will be engaged in construction during the long voyages.

Competition to ship out will be fierce. One of the ways to buy space will be to do duty patrolling the blockade. The closer you patrol to Earth and the corridor, the faster you can earn spots for your family - because only families go.

The danger is that if your ship is exposed to the plague, you are doomed to stay on Earth. Some crew arrange for clones of themselves if exposed.

Some factions on Earth attempt to hijack asteroid ships for themselves. Some go out with plague carriers and become ghost ships. Some go out and the new colonists do not have the needed skills to survive. Some story arcs could be survey crews finding these asteroid ships and dealing with them.

So the spacer colonist ships will have a strong bond with each other. And they are not necessarily looking for a planet to settle on - they distrust gravity wells, know that they can thrive in space, etc. In fact, their asteroid ships will be their first habitat in the new systems.

But the hijacked colony ships which survive will be a different matter. They will want to land on a planet, they will not be strongly bonded with others, etc. Some of them will have freeze dried members along. Even if they awake crew and their descendants adapt to life in space, the popsicles will not.

A story arc might be a hijacked ship going close to where a spacer ship goes. During the long journey, the two crews keep in contact to pass the time. The spacers help the hijackers deal with emergencies. The crew disgorges the popsicles on the planet and decide they have more in common with the other ship. They leave to be with their friends.

So I want the Plague Years to really push the exodus out of the Terran system. It will see leaps in biological research and development. Indeed, the era of the research asteroids starts here. These would be smaller versions (crews in the low hundreds) of the colony ships. In some cases the crew would be infected, near infected, etc. The ships would launch to go to other systems to look for biological specimens. Or they would launch to test new propulsion systems, etc. The reality will be that the stated research will not match the actual research. And these ships will be a joy to explore when found.