In this latest edition of our series revisiting key points in human history, award-winning journalist Fiona Parker discusses ‘the missing’ – the lost explorers who played a key role in the golden age of human exploration.
“Our preoccupation with progress means we tend to forget about those who fall by the wayside, but our present-day interplanetary civilisation would arguably not have come to pass without the pioneers of the mid-third Millennium.”
“Between 2200 and 2700 the galaxy bore witness to a period of massive expansion, as huge numbers of expeditions and colonisation missions set off into the black. At the time, sending messages at faster than light speed was impossible, so it could take years, or even decades, for a message to reach its destination. In those days, you really were on your own, with nothing but your own ingenuity to rely on in times of crisis.”
“We knew much less about the galaxy then than we do now, and scanning technology was considerably less sophisticated, so colonisation missions were particularly risky. Sometimes colonists were confronted with issues they couldn’t possibly have prepared for, and many of the early settlements lasted only a few years.”
“Of course, this phenomenon is not confined solely to the past. Only last year we lost Jasmina Halsey, the former Federal president, when her starship disappeared during an interplanetary tour. It’s a fact both of our past and our present – an inescapable reality of life among the stars.”