The Great Diaspora
Exerpted from:
Win-Bahg, A., (2180). A Brief History of the Great Diaspora, 3rd ed. Spica:Schaum University Press.
Introduction
The Great Disapora is generally considered to have begun around 2090 when the first of the ten ark-ships, Serendipity, left Sol for the Tau Ceti system and lasted until approximately 2102 when the last of the ark-ships, Eureka, made transit to Delta Pavonis. In those 12 stanyers, the ark-ships established human presence in thirty-two systems and moved over a million people off the planet.
Prelude
The Twentieth Century gave the universe three great minds — Albert Einstein, Steven Hawking, and Eva Silverstein. It wasn’t until the middle of the Twenty-First Century that their various works in relativity, time, and string theory came together in a Quantum Physics Lab at UC/Berkeley when Doctoral Candidates Edvard Knapp and Marla Xi discovered the convergence of the three bodies of work in a set of equations that Knapp maintained was an attempt to get pizza delivered to his lab while the cheese was still hot. Knapp’s self-deprecating humor notwithstanding, the theoretical constructs which formed the foundation of what would become known as the Burleson drive were known by 2040. It took another twenty years for reclusive entrepreneur T. A. Burleson to construct a working prototype and transport it far enough out of the solar system’s gravity well to test it. The first successful test occurred on 2061-10-12 when the automated package jumped from Sol to Proxima Centauri and back in an afternoon. Ironically, it took longer for the radioed news of the breakthrough to reach Earth, less than 4 billion miles away, than it took for the probe to travel the eight light-years to Promixa Centauri and back.
The basis of the drive had been theorized for decades and was based on the idea that travel over interstellar distances could be possible without violating any of Einstein’s theories of relativity if one were able to bend the space-time continuum in such a way that two points very far away from each other could be made contiguous long enough for a vessel to travel between them. Quantum physics and string theory provided the foundational knowledge which Knapp and Xi finally integrated and Burleson implemented. The problem, as we know today, is that the Burleson drive only works when it is far enough outside of a system’s gravity well to overcome the residual gravity to successfully fold space-time in such a way that a ship can transition from one point in the universe to another without actually passing through all the intervening points. The transition is almost instantaneous and the ship never goes much faster than a fraction of the speed of light.
That marked the beginning of an unprecedented race for the stars. Once it became known that it was actually possible to reach them, resources poured into what became known as “first and last mile” technologies. The challenge became how to travel 4,000 million miles in a short enough period of time to make the trip worthwhile and without becoming bankrupt in the process. Eventually designs for what we know today as the Solar Clippers (See note 1) began coming out of commercial research and development efforts and all the pieces came together for what would become known as The Great Diaspora of 2090.
Ark-ships and the Rise of Commercialism
Perhaps not since the Gold Rush of 1849 on Earth has such a massive migration of the human race occurred with largely private money. T. A. Burleson’s wealth financed the creation of the drive that still carries her name without any governmental funding. Attempts by governments to gain regulatory control of the device were stymied by the publication of the plans on public networks, effectively releasing it into the public domain. The technology needed to create the fields was relatively common and Burleson, already the eighth richest person on the planet, made nothing in licenses from the drive.(See note 2)
A private consortium of business people put up the estimated four hundred billion credits to build the ark-ships in an orbital shipyard anchored over the Pacific Ocean of Earth. Shuttle technology of the early days was rudimentary compared to what it would become but inspite of that, the first ship began space trials in 2088 and the last came off the ways in 2093. After that, the yard was converted to general ship construction and even as the first colonies were being established, the conglomerates began positioning themselves.
By 2102 it was possible to buy regular, albeit expensive, passage to practically all of Earth’s colonies which marked the end of the Diaspora and the viability of the ark-ships to establish colonies. Smaller, more agile, and faster ships in the new commercial fleets edged out the ark-ships. They were eventually all sold to the shipping conglomerates and refitted to be luxury liners except for the Serendipity which was turned into an orbital museum in Sol System.
Meanwhile, the next generation of explorers and entrepreneurs was fanning out to find planets suited to human habitation. Many of these explorers were funded by the shipping conglomerates and by 2145 nearly 400 systems had been identified as having the potential to support human life with little or no terra-forming effort and over 500 more would support humans with a moderate terraforming effort. Fully two-thirds of these systems became de facto Company systems where all aspects of life were controled by the corporate entities that had funded exploration and subsequent development. Surprisingly there were few instances of “claim jumping” and very little conflict among the Big Five. There was just too much volume to cover and too many rich opportunities to waste time squabbling over single systems.
Population
With all this available space in which to spread out, the human race exploded. From a modest beginning of 12B in Sol’s planets and orbital stations, the human population in the galaxy mushroomed to over 48B by 2120 as advances in longevity took the average lifespan from 90 stanyers up to 130. Restrictions on family size were rather strict in Sol System, but non-existant on colonies and many of those who took thos early ark-ships saw emigration as a path to having families. By 2180 the growth curve leveled out at about 120B and has remained around 5% for the last century.
Conclusion
The convergence of Twentieth Century ideas and Twenty-First Century capitalism resulted in the establishment of a human galactic civilization. More and more systems are established every year, some of which grow and prosper while others become the galactic equivalent of ghost towns. Early concerns about first contact with alien races and infections diseases have proven, so far, to be unfounded.
Notes:
1. The Solar Clipper used established field-generation technologies in what became known as solar-sails and gravity-keels allowing the ships to move at significant speeds within the solar system. This technology had been available and in use since the 2050’s in asteroid mining operations but had not been used on the same scale as the clippers.
2. Despite not retaining rights to the drive technology, Burleson capitalized on the device, by setting up the first commercial transportation line, Ad Astra, in 2097 to link Earth with the twenty-two systems established by then and expanding to serve all thirty-two original colonies by 2105.
Comments
Comment from Erich
Time: August 13, 2007, 10:44 pm
I love the “Ad Astra” reference.
I love the books. Keep em coming!
Comment from Andrew
Time: November 15, 2007, 7:15 pm
Hey Nate,
I’m only a very new listener. I listened to my first episode four days ago and I’m downloading the last episode of Full Share now. On Dial Up. Anyway, one of the things that has been bugging me about the trade system is that the SC Lois McKendrick must jump to a new system for in-system information on trade goods. If jumps can be completely automated back and forth, then a small automated ship can jump back and forth between a pair of systems to update, say, Dunsany Roads with the trading information in St. Cloud.
With no life support, no crew, very little in kickers, grav keel or solar sails (doesn’t need much if jumping from a position already out of the grav well), these drones would be able to send economic data from system to system easily and probably really cheaply as the only wear is on systems, comms and the FTL drive. Assuming a device on the order with the McKendrick, an FTL drive should be good for at least 120 jumps, more if based on the Penny’s FTL drive (which would be closer in size).
As a light speed signal can be sent from one relay ship to the next, even at hundreds of AUs apart (unlikely), all the systems would have fairly well updated economic data for all the other systems. The economic data would be set by the jump frequency but it should allow much easier multi system trading for independent cargo haulers. Of course that ruins the expectation of arriving in a new system and ruins a perfectly good plot device. All this depends on the price required for the Burleston drive, the reliability and maintenance problems of said drive and the price people would be prepared to pay for accurate economic data.
Sorry, kinda got off track. Anyway, looking forward to Double Share and South Coast Shaman. Love the books so please keep them coming.
Comment from Nate
Time: November 15, 2007, 8:20 pm
That’s a really good point.
I need to look at that. Part of it is that by “up to date” we’re talking a question of hours, not days. Still, at 300k km/s … hm.
Comment from Andrew
Time: November 16, 2007, 7:14 pm
Hours is better than days and the relay ships would be the fastest way to send a message from one location to another. A conventional ship (picket boat?) would require several days at least.
Depending on the size of the Burleston Drive, the power system you use (probably really efficient solar panels or maybe a “Verdad reactor/generator with Pravda voltage regulator”) and the power the drive takes to jump, the relay ships could be the size of modern satellites and only weight a couple of tons or be the size of a container or even a significant percentage of the Lois.
If Ishmael and Pip can afford to hire a container, the Conederation can easily afford to hire multiple containers if not entire ships to move the relay ships. Therefore the most problems would arise in the creation of the relay ships.
With orbital shipyards in place, there’s no need to build the rockets required to lift the relay sats off the planet. In 2007 terms, a multi million dollar launch platform is required to launch a 1-5 million satellite. With orbital yards, there’s no need for rockets at all and even if there wasn’t, you use shuttles fairly casually in quarter share.
Sorry about the spiels, I’m an engineer and this interests me.
Comment from Nate
Time: November 16, 2007, 8:37 pm
Yes, of course.
A Burleson drive picket oscillating back and forth would make sense. They’d be low mass and could be stationed outside the Burleson limit. As it is, the beacons are getting planetary update data for the incoming ships via normal EMP radiation. The transmission times are measured in days, not weeks.
I suppose it would depend on the amount of traffic and the relative criticality of it. Dunsany Roads Sector isn’t exactly the crossroads of the known universe …
Hmm. This is definitely something to think on.
Comment from Andrew
Time: November 17, 2007, 11:34 pm
If the picket placed a small bouy with transciever, solar panel and basic computer in both systems that it goes to, any signals sent to another system can be logged in the bouy. The bouy can then receive any signals if the picket is in the other system allowing messages to be stored and then sent to the picket when it jumps back into the system.
I would assume that any use of this system would be in the more important and better developed areas than the Dunsany Roads Sector. However if the important systems have been developing since maybe 2145, I’d say fifty years later would be enough time to start introducing it into Dunsany Roads. In addition, you could introduce this system as away to keep the McKendrick in touch with Ish during the academy.
If you were using this system as a communication system between the various corporate planets and their parent corporations, you could get the corporations to help subsidise the cost of outfitting this system. In addition it would enable you to let the McKendrick contact home office within 5 days which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
Pluto is roughly 38 AU from the Sun. Assuming, the Burleston limit is about 50-60 AUs, 150,000,000*(50 or 60)/300,000 = 25,000-30,000 seconds = 7 - 8.3 hours. Therefore transmission time inter system is about 16 hours at maximum.
According to wikipedia though “The Sun’s gravitational field is estimated to dominate the gravitational forces of surrounding stars out to about two light years (125,000 AU).” That means the Burleston limit has to be well within that. If the Burleston limit allowed a grav field in place but sufficiently uncomplicated by planets, moons etc.?
Thanks for letting me ramble on about this.
Comment from Cory
Time: April 25, 2008, 8:06 pm
I just discovered the Quarter Share universe, and I have been cursing around the traders diary web site. I think the article about how humans colonized the galaxy is very informative and answered many questions I have had about the continuity of the world. So well done Nate. Now I think people have made some good points about how the Burleston drive could be used to develop faster communication network between the planets and I think that it is something to consider, but since this is future technology we are speculating about I can think of many reasons why it would be impractical to use a system like that.
Ok first reason that something like that may not be possible is how many jumps a drive like that can withstand before it burns out. A solar clipper with an average life span of 40 years and mouth and a half trips between stars only makes a little over 300 jumps in it life times. so if it is making multiple jumps every day it could burn out in under a year. Which would mean that they would have to build a new one every year or so and that could get pricey if the drives coast a lot to build.
Second maybe the drives are very fragile and delicate or just need to be recalibrated or the machinery could burn out and need to be replaced every jump or every few jumps. If that were the case every jump or every few jumps a human would have to recalibrate the machine or replace parts which defiantly would make it impossible to have a remote small ship making the jump.
Third it might require to much energy and one small satellite sized ship would not be able to store enough energy to make the jump. The Lois has four power plants generating electricity along with multiple other sources of energy, along with the space necessary to store massive capacitors if a massive burst of energy was needed to make the jump. a small ship might not have the capacity to complete multiple jumps even if it had the energy to make one jump stored in batteries there really would be no way of recharging the batteries. If you think about it, the jump point is so far a way from the star that it is orbiting that it is no brighter then any other star so if you were using solar panels to recharge the batteries, it would be like trying to use solar panels at night (not gonna happen).
Ok so there are just a few reasons why establishing a communications network like that would not work. Obviously I am just saying what if and providing reasons why the world is like it is in the books. But it is your would and you should do whatever you want to do with it Nate, and I will sit back and enjoy whatever you decided to write next. Ok so that is my two cents worth (more like 25 cents worth) of speculation into the would of the Solar Clipper.
Comment from Jim
Time: May 9, 2008, 2:04 pm
Also, if there were an “access charge” for the information, then it may be rather expensive for a ship to get the data every time. For personal messages there would be a lower charge, but for economic data, communication with home office, and such then the charge would be higher. This way the company that ran the drone could be recovering the cost for building/maintaining the drone and making a profit. Why else would they run such a thing, if they couldn’t make a profit?
Comment from Bruce
Time: May 15, 2008, 8:18 am
We clearly need to come up with a justification which allows the plot device to remain. So I say it should go back to the RIAA. Around the same time as the great diaspora, the RIAA tried to figure out how to avoid ongoing intellectual piracy problems, and figured out ways to water-mark information broadcasts by embedding cryptographic signatures at multiple layers in the broadcast and data organization. Local system licenses are granted to distribute information, but this information is licensed for broadcast only on a single system. Realizing the impossibility of keeping information to a system, they turn a blind eye to people storing anything on their own personal storage media, but re-broadcasting information in an un-licensed system is a felony. This system is supported not only by recording artists, but by associations of traders and other folks who find that keeping trading and other arbitrage opportunities open is more profitable. This is why entertainment cubes remain a viable trade good - it’s allowed to transmit physical media, but illegal to re-broadcast this information across systems. This ongoing mindset of information segregation also explains why it didn’t occur to earlier astrogaters to hook up an automatic interface between the computer systems, as Ish did in Full Share - they’re not used to thinking about automatic, free distribution of information.
Comment from nowon
Time: June 30, 2008, 5:01 am
this is great, and i thought star trek fans were involved. when and where are we going to have the first convention, and what do we call it. i have dibs on cc.
Comment from The Bee Lady
Time: July 25, 2008, 10:26 pm
Bruce - thank you! That bit about Ish being the first to think about hooking up an automatic interface for the astrogaters has been bothering me. I love blaming the RIAA. Too funny.
Nathan - I’m having withdrawal symptoms. Please write more. 
I am so happy that you have put all this extra information up on the web so I can dive back into your story at will. The addition of how people in different systems keep in contact would be appreciated. If it weren’t a free or relatively easy system, like email, then it would explain why Ish does not have much contact with others during Double Share.
This is what is so cool about this world you are letting us play in - it’s just real enough that we can have fun rationalizing it into reality.
Comment from christine
Time: August 10, 2007, 1:44 pm
i’d been wondering about some of these things (propulsion, population, aliens and such) as i listen to your podcasts, so thanks for the details!