First Landings

With the ability to send ships through portals, interest in this planetary exploration grew. Not many could afford to explore but those that did, did it properly. Hundreds of systems were checked and a handful of planets were found that were similar to Earth and would be good for colonisation, but they all had one fundamental issue. Earth didn't have this issue due to its history.

The first round of life on Earth changed the atmosphere so fundamentally that round two of life evolved in this 'unnatural' and 'polluted' atmosphere. When a planet forms the natural chemical reactions that follow lead to oxygen reacting with everything it can. Planets therefore had very little pure oxygen. On Earth, round one of life, plants, evolved to use sunlight as an energy source to split the super abundant CO₂ to take the carbon to build with, and store energy as carbohydrate. As plants grow, they lay down carbon and release the waste gas oxygen. In storing so much carbon, the plants effectively depleted the resource they were dependant on, destroying their atmosphere and creating climate change where the planet surface cooled significantly.

We are part of the second round of life, the animals. The respiratory reaction is more energetic than the photosynthesising but the plants could only use the energy they captured and stored. So although carbohydrate can be burned much faster and release more energy, the plant could only on average, burn carbohydrate at the same slow speed as its production. Other life that evolved to eat the plants around them, could therefore eat carbohydrate at the rate of production multiplied by the number of plants available, but limited to the speed of burning, known as metabolising. On a planet this means that the speed of metabolising is the limiting factor. The production speed verses consumption speed is why the pyramid of life is a pyramid. As animal life, we unfortunately found all the planets that would be suitable, were in fact too hot oxygenless sharp rocky wastes. All planets that would be Earth like if they had a round of plant life became known as protoearths.

The lack of oxygen on the protoearths didn’t however stop two corporations from achieving ‘landing’ in 2128. REC had a secret project it wanted to bring to market, now known to be the Impossibility Engine, but it did not feel anywhere in the Sol System was secure enough. It began establishing a planet as REC headquarters and developed very advanced double diamond domes technology that allowed a town sized structure to be built. Regal Calculus controversially genetically engineered algae called Oxgae and seeded the ocean. By 2130 it had multiplied phenomenally and raised the oxygen level by a few percent, and had lowered the carbon dioxide level. At this point REC and Regal Calculus agreed to swap technology and by 2140 both had establish company towns on Earthlike planets where the outside air was breathable. By 2150 all the newly found worlds had been terraformed. Popular culture wanted to call these worlds ‘New Globes’ but wiser heads who knew that settlement would continue, making these the older worlds, and gave them the official name of ‘First Landings’. As the population of each crossed 20,000 they automatically qualified under the Settlement Act 2109, as democratic states backed up by the Astry. Typically a fleet of HAAS NorAm Class ships would enter orbit around the 19,000 population mark, ensuring peace and stability. All but one of the land owners voluntarily ceded their land claim to the democratic populous in various ways engendering very good good-will, appropriate to the succession. The one exception was Regal Calculus who kept their land claim rights on Initium Novum but freely provided the means for the population to be allowed their full rights under federal HA law (not that they had a choice).

Despite the unification of Earth as a federal entity of the Humanitarian Alliance, each country political group wanted their own planet. They wanted a planet even knowing that the Settlement Act meant that any planetary population of significance would be given independence. Experience of Earth colonisation shows that even as a separate political body, the new nations still disproportionately help their cultural parent over others (ethnicity as a specific thing is a fallacy). As all frontier space exploration is expensive, only the super-rich could afford to claim a planet. The result was that every large nation and political block went looking for a planet as part of a colonisation race, even though there was technically no need. Psychologists refer to the domino effect and game theory as mechanisms of psychological pressure for this need to colonise from fear of becoming weak and a victim of a stronger group. They call it 'Frontier Expanding Control Extension Requirement' or FECER where the C is pronounced as an 's'. Critics prefer to pronounce it as a 'k'.

Photosynthesis Equation

6CO₂ + 6H₂O + 6(2.178x10^-18 J) -> C6H12O6 +6O₂
Carbon Dioxide + Water + Photon -> Glucose + Oxygen

Respiratory Equation (How plants and animals use sugar)

C6H12O6 +6O₂ -> 6CO₂ + 6H₂O + 6(2.178x10^-18 J)
Glucose + Oxygen -> Carbon Dioxide + Water + Energy Out

Earth's Atmospheric Composition

78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, carbon dioxide 0.03%