Human colonies
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Under the administration of the Unified Earth Government, humanity has surveyed and colonized several hundred worlds across a portion of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy over 200 years of superluminal travel via slipstream space, following nearly three centuries of expansion across the Sol system. The planets under the jurisdiction of the UEG, together with humanity's homeworld, are collectively referred to as "Earth and Her Colonies".[1][2] Human space is divided into three regions: the Sol system itself, the Inner Colonies, and the Outer Colonies.
History[edit]
Prehistory[edit]
- Main article: Prehistoric human civilization
Over 110,000 years ago, humanity was an advanced, spacefaring race, and had colonized thousands of worlds across the Orion Arm of the galaxy. However, after being exhausted by the parasitic Flood and eventually suffering a disastrous defeat against the Forerunners in the human-Forerunner wars, the Forerunners forcibly regressed humanity to a Tier 7 species and all traces of this advanced civilization were erased.
Interplanetary age[edit]
- Main article: Early history of the UNSC
The concept of space colonization was born out of the need to expand human habitation outside of Earth to prevent overpopulation, to alleviate the consumption of Earth's resources by conducting planetary mining on other worlds, and to better understand the universe as human civilization expanded. Various approaches were suggested to achieve this, such as colonization efforts of the Moon and Mars, building facilities on orbiting asteroids and creating artificial platforms.
The first recorded success of human colonization in the modern age was made in the First Diaspora of the later half of the 21st century, more specifically in 2080. The Moon and Mars saw humanity's first expansion, followed by a number of asteroids and the natural satellites orbiting Jupiter. The rapid pace of interplanetary colonization was driven by commercial interests more than the efforts on the part of national governments: Earth bio- and nanotechnology corporations sought to conduct scientific research unhindered by Earth's international law as well as its gravity. Mars, in particular, quickly became an important hub of leading-edge science and industry, and would continue to be so for hundreds of years, particularly in the area of spaceship manufacturing. Advancements in terraforming technologies transformed many of the formerly inhospitable planets and moons of the Solar System into worlds capable of sustaining life.[3]
Despite these successes, the efforts did not solve Earth's overpopulation issue. It eventually led to political unrest, contributing to the formation of political movements promising independence from the national governments on Earth and the perceived oppression by the United Nations.[4] Operating across the colonized worlds and orbital platforms of the Sol system, the Frieden movement and the Koslovics were the most prominent of these rebel factions. Beginning with a Frieden attack on the United Nations Colonial Advisors in the Jovian Moons and the subsequent UN response, battles were fought over the colony worlds—as well as Earth itself—from 2160 to 2170, culminating in a UN victory in the Interplanetary War. The outcome of the space wars led to the establishment of the Unified Earth Government as a centralized governing body tasked to ensure Earth's influence over the colony worlds and a powerful, united military force known as the United Nations Space Command.[4]
Expansion beyond Sol system[edit]
- Main article: Domus Diaspora
The technological innovation of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine in 2291 sprung the human civilization into the space-faring age, allowing them to travel beyond Sol system. In 2362 CE, the UEG constructed its first line of colony ships - led by Odyssey - to initiate the expansion of human habitation, relieving the growing pressure of overpopulation on Earth and the off-world colonies across the Sol system.[4] To manage governance in the extrasolar colonies as well as to ensure their security from pirates and other threats, the UEG established the Colonial Administration Authority and the Colonial Military Authority in 2310.[5] Two centuries later, both bodies would be marginalized—the latter due to widespread insurgent sympathies in its ranks—and eventually absorbed into the UNSC's emergency military government in 2525.[6]
Domus Diaspora[edit]
- Main articles: Domus Diaspora, Inner Colonies, Outer Colonies
As faster-than-light travel was still new and highly expensive, potential colonists were subjected to rigorous physical and mental testing to determine their suitability for the extrasolar colonization programs. As such, the colonists who formed the basis for the 210 first-wave colonies settled before 2390 formed humanity's elite; these worlds would later be known as the Inner Colonies. Earth and the Inner Colonies soon became the political and economic basis of the UNSC as humanity began expanding to the Outer Colonies.[4] For humanity at large, this was a time of unparalleled prosperity and optimism which has later come to be referred to as the "Golden Age" of human colonization, a period which would eventually come to a violent end in the later years of the 25th century.[7]
By the time the settlement of the Outer Colonies began, many of the initial difficulties of interstellar tr