Concordat of Habitable Exoplanets
This powerful organisation’s central function is to limit conflict by controlling Da Silva traffic between star systems. (Between habitats around one star, travel is mostly slower than light, and locally controlled). It strictly controls mahabhavium, which is essential for Da Silva drives. Drives are licenced, can be nulled via the Concordat-controlled grid.
Since simquakes can cut off a planet from contact with other solar systems for a locally-experienced century, planetary governments must be robust in case of isolation, with local enforcement of locally accepted laws. This requires considerable local autonomy, and (in combination with differences in history and environment) variability.
Human travel is largely unregulated between Core worlds, though tracked. Citizens of Associate worlds need to pass toleration and flexibility tests to travel to Core worlds, and more severe ones to travel to other Associate worlds, whose folk are less cosmopolitan. Fringe-worlders are more limited still.
The most visible privilege of Starfolk status is freedom to go anywhere. The Valkyrie team are still probationary Starfolk, while on Qish, but ‘probationary’ is sometimes dropped for courtesy or brevity.
This system is one of travel control by the Concordat, not a visa system managed by individual governments.
The Concordat discourages interstellar censorship, because it builds up stresses and potential culturequakes, but is not dogmatic about this.
Concordat Timeline
Histories of one planet tend to use that planet’s solar year as the dominant time unit, though a planet without axial tilt is without annual seasons and (like the Balinese on Old Earth’s equator) their people find other cycles more interesting.
Histories involving multiple planets still use standardised forms of Old Earth’s solar year, or of multiples of a second (originally 1/(24×60×60) of an Old Earth solar day). Attempts to take the basic unit of time as the fundamental oscillation period of the mahabhavium nucleus have not won wide acceptance.
Old Earth still labels years according to the CE (Common Era) system, originating from the AD (Anno Domini) scheme which attempted to begin with a religious figure’s conception or birth, which (if he existed) occurred between 3 and 8 years before 1CE.
The Concordat uses “GE”. Arguments about whether the G represents Gagarin (whose 1961CE orbital flight defines its zero date), or Galactic, have been settled by the rule that it stands for GE. Even on Old Earth this ceased to cause confusion after the General Electric company founded in 1892CE (a Year 0 promoted by some corporate technophiles) was acquired by Google in 2048CE. The Concordat-centric timeline below follows the GE system.
Histories involving multiple planets still use standardised forms of Old Earth’s solar year, or of multiples of a second (originally 1/(24×60×60) of an Old Earth solar day). Attempts to take the basic unit of time as the fundamental oscillation period of the mahabhavium nucleus have not won wide acceptance.
Old Earth still labels years according to the CE (Common Era) system, originating from the AD (Anno Domini) scheme which attempted to begin with a religious figure’s conception or birth, which (if he existed) occurred between 3 and 8 years before 1CE.
The Concordat uses “GE”. Arguments about whether the G represents Gagarin (whose 1961CE orbital flight defines its zero date), or Galactic, have been settled by the rule that it stands for GE. Even on Old Earth this ceased to cause confusion after the General Electric company founded in 1892CE (a Year 0 promoted by some corporate technophiles) was acquired by Google in 2048CE. The Concordat-centric timeline below follows the GE system.
DATE GE EVENT OR PROCESS
0 Gagarin flight
71 Jayavarmasukihara’s equations for the karmabhumi field
75 Synthesis of a few atoms of ‘unbihexium’: placeholder name replaced by mahabhavium.
Predicted karmabhumi resonance properties confirmed.
65-- Climate change becomes dramatic, environmental disasters on the rise.
78 Establishment of shaky world government.
82 Invention of Da Silva drive, necessity of mahabhavium confirmed.
85 Remote detection of substantial quantity of mahabhavium in outer Oort Cloud,
approximately 1 light year from Earth, out of reach for reaction drives.
87-- Holland, Florida, Bangladesh, etc. under water.
Global refugee crisis, plagues out of control, starvation barely averted by synthlife factories.
89, 91, 92, 97 Fission reactor accidents that render several countries uninhabitable. Mismanaged ‘Turn from Nuke’ crumbles the world economy.
98— Vast ‘To the Stars!’ effort to create 1.2gm of mahabhavium for Oort-capable spacecraft, as unifying theme for Earth's people.
Heavy environmental costs.
111 Star Pyramid launched: pilot lost, but enough mahabhavium returned to jump-start interstellar travel.
World Government sets up Far Travel Legislature (FTL) to manage it.
114 Need for extreme engineering precision and quality, in a world with education and infrastructure in decay,
prompts draconian controls within FTL.
121 First habitable-seeming planet reached: colonisation a disaster.
124 FTL demands extreme requirements of intelligence, health and mental stability for future colonists.
‘Anti-elitist’ radical-green group takes World Government power, FTL declares itself autonomous, tightens admission rules.
125 World Government fails to re-impose authority, collapses.
Earth reverts to an unclear number of national governments.
128— FTL establishes toehold on several planets: bases are not colonies.
132 FTL reorganises as the Concordat of Habitable Exoplanets.
Concordat's governmental structure reflects the k-weather limits to centralisation.
133 Establishment of the first-generation global galactic grid.
135 Concordat builds first Colony Vessels, recruits colonists mostly from Old Earth population.
136 Lalande Colony Vessel landing.
137 Tau Ceti Colony Vessel landing.
138 Lalande Colony disaster.
139 Groombridge 34 Colony Vessel landing.
139 Tau Ceti Colony disaster.
140 Groombridge 34 Colony disaster.
140-144 Colonisation policy reassessment.
145 '100-year Sink or Swim’ rule established
150 Second Colony Vessel to Lalande (now New Earth)
157 Hidden monitors report New Earth success, but colonists detect monitors.
‘Sink or Swim’ policy confirmed, strengthened to ‘absolute hands off, with no monitors’.
160— Diaspora — colonisation of Fallow, Hildesheim, Balnibarbi, V’vv, Smole, Monday, Tempest, Nyny, Squamish, Hippolyta, and others.
165 Colony Vessel Magog launched, crashes on Qish, lands in the Nuh Wisp.
175 Vega Uprising (see Liselotte Shiujin-Miao, Water Power: the Rise and Fall of Hydraulic Empires)
450 Wave of CVs ends, as Old Earth becomes ever more hostile to Concordat and to space in general.
Some eco-regeneration makes fewer ready to risk ‘sink or swim’, or to accept lifetime separation from kin.
370— Concordat exploration continues, leads to in-contact settlements using Concordat stock with social memory
of the hardships and triumphs of their own colonies.
Colonisations like Inferno, a Concordat ‘core world’ from the start.
560— Centauri bubble cities grow from Concordat mahabhavium-mining bases on an airless dwarf planet
orbiting half a light year from Beta Centauri: around this vital resource, Concordat maintains very tight control.
New Earth becomes Core World
613 Revolt of Centauri bubble cities quashed by threat of air supply denial:
new Concordat policy declares there will never be more than a disciplined Concordat base
in the same solar system as a significant mahabhavium resource.
620-- Extensive development of the Concordat.
Sporadic discoveries of alien life — all rudimentary and non-cellular.
1230 First discovery of complex alien life: silicoid flakes in the interpolar belt of the tidally resonant vulcano-trojan Alkalurops Ic.
1237— Series of discoveries of alien lifeforms, each radically different from the others and from all terrestrial lifeforms,
in a variety of non-terrestrial environments. Nothing more complex than a beetle.
1488 Discovery of first planet with an HOC ecosystem. All organisms are exoskeletal plasms that reproduce
by template budding. No separate hereditary code: genotype = phenotype.
1507 — Increasingly complex alien organisms discovered, culminating in the deathstalker horde of Likely Prospect.
1633 System of galactic citizenship training and tests established.
1666. First intelligent aliens discovered: the photosynthetic carpets of the Proetus-Acrisius double planet system
with a woven herd-history.
1754 Discovery of Gamut.
1759 Fionora Wylde publishes Running the Gamut.
1817 Discovery of Rock Star: long, cautious investigation begins.
1823 Maiden voyage of Valkyrie, third of the caltrop-design Da Silva vessels
1868 Final voyage of Valkyrie
1877 Metamaterial theory of syntei confirmed. Construction of first synthei (synthetic syntei) by empirical biomimetic techniques.
1890 Marco Bianchi and Marco Bianchi discover Bianchi identities, creating theoretic foundations of syntelics.
1892 First successful interplanetary synthelic transmission of experimental probe.
1904 Elinora Wittinghame discovers metafibrial stabilisation, making it possible to fabricate
macrosynthei capable of transporting starships.
0 Gagarin flight
71 Jayavarmasukihara’s equations for the karmabhumi field
75 Synthesis of a few atoms of ‘unbihexium’: placeholder name replaced by mahabhavium.
Predicted karmabhumi resonance properties confirmed.
65-- Climate change becomes dramatic, environmental disasters on the rise.
78 Establishment of shaky world government.
82 Invention of Da Silva drive, necessity of mahabhavium confirmed.
85 Remote detection of substantial quantity of mahabhavium in outer Oort Cloud,
approximately 1 light year from Earth, out of reach for reaction drives.
87-- Holland, Florida, Bangladesh, etc. under water.
Global refugee crisis, plagues out of control, starvation barely averted by synthlife factories.
89, 91, 92, 97 Fission reactor accidents that render several countries uninhabitable. Mismanaged ‘Turn from Nuke’ crumbles the world economy.
98— Vast ‘To the Stars!’ effort to create 1.2gm of mahabhavium for Oort-capable spacecraft, as unifying theme for Earth's people.
Heavy environmental costs.
111 Star Pyramid launched: pilot lost, but enough mahabhavium returned to jump-start interstellar travel.
World Government sets up Far Travel Legislature (FTL) to manage it.
114 Need for extreme engineering precision and quality, in a world with education and infrastructure in decay,
prompts draconian controls within FTL.
121 First habitable-seeming planet reached: colonisation a disaster.
124 FTL demands extreme requirements of intelligence, health and mental stability for future colonists.
‘Anti-elitist’ radical-green group takes World Government power, FTL declares itself autonomous, tightens admission rules.
125 World Government fails to re-impose authority, collapses.
Earth reverts to an unclear number of national governments.
128— FTL establishes toehold on several planets: bases are not colonies.
132 FTL reorganises as the Concordat of Habitable Exoplanets.
Concordat's governmental structure reflects the k-weather limits to centralisation.
133 Establishment of the first-generation global galactic grid.
135 Concordat builds first Colony Vessels, recruits colonists mostly from Old Earth population.
136 Lalande Colony Vessel landing.
137 Tau Ceti Colony Vessel landing.
138 Lalande Colony disaster.
139 Groombridge 34 Colony Vessel landing.
139 Tau Ceti Colony disaster.
140 Groombridge 34 Colony disaster.
140-144 Colonisation policy reassessment.
145 '100-year Sink or Swim’ rule established
150 Second Colony Vessel to Lalande (now New Earth)
157 Hidden monitors report New Earth success, but colonists detect monitors.
‘Sink or Swim’ policy confirmed, strengthened to ‘absolute hands off, with no monitors’.
160— Diaspora — colonisation of Fallow, Hildesheim, Balnibarbi, V’vv, Smole, Monday, Tempest, Nyny, Squamish, Hippolyta, and others.
165 Colony Vessel Magog launched, crashes on Qish, lands in the Nuh Wisp.
175 Vega Uprising (see Liselotte Shiujin-Miao, Water Power: the Rise and Fall of Hydraulic Empires)
450 Wave of CVs ends, as Old Earth becomes ever more hostile to Concordat and to space in general.
Some eco-regeneration makes fewer ready to risk ‘sink or swim’, or to accept lifetime separation from kin.
370— Concordat exploration continues, leads to in-contact settlements using Concordat stock with social memory
of the hardships and triumphs of their own colonies.
Colonisations like Inferno, a Concordat ‘core world’ from the start.
560— Centauri bubble cities grow from Concordat mahabhavium-mining bases on an airless dwarf planet
orbiting half a light year from Beta Centauri: around this vital resource, Concordat maintains very tight control.
New Earth becomes Core World
613 Revolt of Centauri bubble cities quashed by threat of air supply denial:
new Concordat policy declares there will never be more than a disciplined Concordat base
in the same solar system as a significant mahabhavium resource.
620-- Extensive development of the Concordat.
Sporadic discoveries of alien life — all rudimentary and non-cellular.
1230 First discovery of complex alien life: silicoid flakes in the interpolar belt of the tidally resonant vulcano-trojan Alkalurops Ic.
1237— Series of discoveries of alien lifeforms, each radically different from the others and from all terrestrial lifeforms,
in a variety of non-terrestrial environments. Nothing more complex than a beetle.
1488 Discovery of first planet with an HOC ecosystem. All organisms are exoskeletal plasms that reproduce
by template budding. No separate hereditary code: genotype = phenotype.
1507 — Increasingly complex alien organisms discovered, culminating in the deathstalker horde of Likely Prospect.
1633 System of galactic citizenship training and tests established.
1666. First intelligent aliens discovered: the photosynthetic carpets of the Proetus-Acrisius double planet system
with a woven herd-history.
1754 Discovery of Gamut.
1759 Fionora Wylde publishes Running the Gamut.
1817 Discovery of Rock Star: long, cautious investigation begins.
1823 Maiden voyage of Valkyrie, third of the caltrop-design Da Silva vessels
1868 Final voyage of Valkyrie
1877 Metamaterial theory of syntei confirmed. Construction of first synthei (synthetic syntei) by empirical biomimetic techniques.
1890 Marco Bianchi and Marco Bianchi discover Bianchi identities, creating theoretic foundations of syntelics.
1892 First successful interplanetary synthelic transmission of experimental probe.
1904 Elinora Wittinghame discovers metafibrial stabilisation, making it possible to fabricate
macrosynthei capable of transporting starships.
