Event · future
Barnard's Star arrival
Mandate seed ship.
Read more in Reaching outward
Barnard's Star · 6.0 · 6 years · \~70 years · Mandate light seed ship in flight, arriving around the 2540s
In the solar system the Mandate holds Jupiter's moons, half of Mars and half of the Moon's south pole, about a third of the roughly 3 billion people off Earth (see The solar system divided). Almost all of them are genetically adapted to their worlds, by state plan (see Designed children, in Ageing slowed, not ended). Beyond the solar system it has no colonies yet. Three light seed ships are in flight, launched for resources and prestige alongside the Line and Belt ships of the 2470s, to Barnard's Star, Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti. The Mandate never signed the Lifeboat Laws, and its ships carry embryos to be raised on arrival by AI crews, the practice the Laws forbid. The Settlement already disputes the standing of the colonies they will found.
The first to arrive owns the anchors. An uninhabited system can be wired by whoever reaches it first, and every anchor falls under the law of the system it sits in. A probe cannot hold a claim; people on the ground can. That is one reason the Mandate sent people to Barnard's Star rather than a probe.