#colonial administration

Habitability

Every DO is given a habitability rating which is based on a few key pieces of information about conditions on the surface: average temperature, extreme high and low temperatures, force of gravity, and composition of the atmosphere.  This rating sorts the DOs into three classes: Habitable, Habitable with Modificiations (Habitable-M), and Uninhabitable.

Habitable DOs are celestial objects where humans can be expected to survive when left with basic supplies (food, water, shelter, medicine).  Note that in this definition basic supplies does not include any form of climate control (heating elements, air conditioning systems . . . even fire).  There are very few true (known) Habitable DOs in the galaxy, since the human organism is so temperature-sensitive; even our own planet of origin, Earth, might not be classified as a Habitable DO since in many regions the temperature (even before the Habitability Crisis) reached extremes that were fatal to humans without some form of climate control.  This classification goes back to the earliest days of the Colonial Administration’s expansion from New Terra; in those days, the CA planted hundreds of seed colonies on various planets, some of them without guaranteed resupply for as many as 50 years.  It was essential, for this reason, to tag for colonization only planets where the colonists would be able to survive without making any modifications to their environments, since the resources needed to perpetuate those environmental modifications might not be available in the long-term.  Recently, there has been discussion of changing the rating system to create a sub-class of Habitable-M DOs where the only modifications required are basic climate control.

The modifications required for Habitable-M DOs, then, include a wide range of technological supports for human life: everything from heating devices to filter suits to protect against indigenous microbes to atmospheric bubbles of the kind often used to create temporary moon or asteroid colonies.  The Colonial Administration has an internal system of codes to be used for describing the exact technological supports colonists on a particular DO would require; in informal communication, a Habitable-M DO may be described by indicating whether the modifications are required due to atmospheric composition (or lack thereof), temperature extremes, or other hazards.  ”Other hazards” can be a controversial subgroup, as it includes local fauna; some people believe that fighting off predators is a natural human behavior and does not count as an extra modification.  From a supply point of view, however, guns are a nonrenewable commodity, and for this reason, if a planet contains native fauna so aggressive that guns are needed to survive on its surface, then the Colonial Administration counts it as a Habitable-M DO.  (Several planets originally classed Habitable were downgraded to Habitable-M when a resupply visit found all or most of the colonists dead due to the local fauna.)

Uninhabitable DOs are places where it is impossible for humans to survive for 144 hours even with technological supports.  Generally, these are planets where the gravitational force or the atmospheric pressure is so great that humans would be crushed or completely incapacitated just by being on the surface.  Planets with extreme temperatures (mostly extreme hot temperatures, since our current technology can cope with extreme cold, though not without significant energy costs) also fall into this category.  As a recent article in the Journal of Astronomical Statistics noted, this category is continually shrinking as our technology develops to withstand more and more extreme planetary conditions.

Resources

The second part of the DO rating relates to the kind of resources available on the object.  Because the Colonial Administration is concerned with promoting the survival and development of the human species, it categorizes all DOs according to the kind of natural resources they possess.  The value attached to these resources is related to the materials needed by the Colonial Administration for development on New Terra and the other Inner Planets as well as for resupply of current colonies and expansion of the colonial project to new sites.

The three major resource groups are:

SR - standard resources (the 20 most abundant elements in the galaxy, which include iron, carbon, silicon, and sulfur)

VR - valuable resources (rare elements that are in high demand for industrial or technological purposes, such as copper, gold, plutonium, rhodium, etc.)

OR - organic resources (a more vague category, added later in the colonization process, which indicates that a DO has lifeforms that show potential to be used as a food source or in genetic engineering or that exhibit some scientifically interesting trait)

The Colonial Administration began as a logistical operation intended to focus and coordinate humanity’s efforts toward survival over the next hundred and fifty years by establishing a colony on what is today known as New Terra.

For hundreds of years, humans had been abusing the fragile ecosystem of Earth and burning through its natural resources like there was no tomorrow.  It wasn’t until around the year 2000 that it became widely recognized that this was a problem; however, for various economic and cultural (including religious) reasons, many world governments and major corporations refused to act on this information, and by the year 2050 it became clear that the global climate change process had reached a critical point, and there was no stopping what was already in progress.

Still, the people of Earth clung to the belief that they could adapt to the emergent new world and continue to inhabit the planet, even if this meant major changes to industry and lifestyle.  This was not true, and in the year 2116, a group of scientists published a 129-page report that incontrovertibly proved that, even with palliative efforts, the Earth would become uninhabitable by the year 2250.

The Li Report (after its leading author, Li Xia) produced a global panic.  Six months of wild rumors, desperate last-ditch environmental interventions, and an outbreak of crime and riots ended with the Global Summit to Address the Habitability Crisis (today, known as the Global Summit).  In this meeting, the world’s 28 most powerful nations came to an agreement: They would combine all their resources--capital, raw materials, scientific experts, and labor--to the task of saving humanity by establishing a permanent human colony on a planet that hadn’t been ruined by human intervention.  A planet then known as Gliese 832c, 16.1 light-years away, was selected to be the “new Earth,” or New Terra, as it came to be called (in a public relations move designed to recall feelings of optimism and nostalgia associated with entertainment media in the science fiction genre), and the world’s brightest minds went to work on the problem of getting people there--with enough supplies and tools and knowledge to survive--before the Li Report’s 134-year clock ticked down.

The account of this time that appeared in children’s educational texts for hundreds of years (once humanity had advanced to the point of producing educational texts for children again) is this: The Global Summit ushered in 120 years of unprecedented technological progress and international cooperation, with all of humanity “pulling together” to make possible the survival of the species.  

Recently, historians and social archaeologists have called this narrative into question, however, suggesting that this spirit of working together did not reach as deep into society as the publicity of the time suggests.  They point out that, even with the lotteries, the average human had, calculated generously, only a 0.109% chance of benefiting from the survival efforts--”benefiting” here defined as themselves or any human in their circle of acquaintance being selected as a colonist.  It is true that the worldwide industrial output increased nearly 260% in the years following the Global Summit, but much of this increase can be attributed to the shift in many developed countries from a service-based economy back to an industrial one.  The average person did work toward the colonization effort, and they probably did work harder than they had in previous years--but whether this was due to a spirit of humanistic dedication to the species’s survival or to the control which the world’s governments and corporations exerted over the mass of the population is unclear.

Even with 60 percent of the Earth’s population of 11 billion working directly toward it, the goal of putting together a colonization expedition in just 120 years was a huge one.  It was for this reason that the Colonial Planning and Implementation Administration--the body that later became known as the Colonial Administration--was created: To handle the coordination of this monumental task with so many different players.  In recognition that the goal would never be achieved without a single clear voice directing operations, the Colonial Administration was given full authority over the colonization mission, guided only by the general tenets and requirements outlined by the participants at the Global Summit.

After 110 years and many unexpected developments and emergencies along the way, the Colonial Administration succeeded in its mission: The colonization fleet was launched toward Gliese 832c/New Terra on July 28, 2227, with arrival anticipated in the year 2262.  None of the people remaining on Earth would ever know whether the mission had been a success; the distance between New Terra and Earth was too far to make communication practical, and with the habitability clock expected to run out sometime between 2250 and 2275, the challenges of developing long-distance communications systems for the new colony had been deemed not worth the expense or extra time it would require.  The new colony was on its own.

The Colonial Administration, as the body in charge of the logistics of the colonial operation, continued to be the primary authority over the colonists while en route to New Terra and during the first few decades of the colony’s development.  A surface government, which ended up being almost a direct transplant of the fleet’s chain of command, was established almost as soon as the colonists reached New Terra; however, with the Colonial Administration retaining control over all colonization logistics and priorities, the surface government’s role ended up being mostly restricted to the prosecution and punishment of crimes.

The Colonial Administration continued to control all major colonial planning and logistical operations.  The colony, of course, was extremely successful and experienced an unforseen boom in population growth.  After only about 500 years, the colonists were looking for additional planets to expand to, and the Colonial Administration, having successfully launched humanity onto one world, stepped up to again oversee this process.