Backstory

In the year 2251, Jiji Corporation sent a colony fleet of 5,000 people to the faraway planet of Arca (Kepler-452b), the nearest analog to Earth anyone had found by that time. It had been heavily analyzed by an unmanned research mission started nearly 100 years prior, and there was apparent confirmation that it had an earth-like ecosystem that could support humans.

After a near-extinction event on earth, the need for a “backup” of humanity was evident. However, the cost would be so extraordinary that the only entity that could plausibly do it was multinational conglomerate Jiji Corporation.

An extraordinary deal was struck, giving Jiji exclusive rights to harvest Arca’s resources and to control transit to or from the system for a period of 100 years. This seemed like an easy deal to make. It wasn’t practical for those resources to come back to earth, so nobody minded giving them up.

Travel to Arca was done through near-light travel to a wormhole that allowed the trip to be made in around 50 years each way (or about 2.5 relative years on board), despite being over 1,400 light years away as the crow flies.

Jiji assembled a fleet of 5 large ships, each with a crew and passenger count of 5000 people (including many family members of Jiji’s owners), as well as the supplies and machinery needed to establish a colony and the industries needed to survive and thrive, including duplication in case any of the ships failed along the way.

The goal was eventually to be able to restock the ships for a trip back, at which point Jiji would theoretically be able to reap the benefits of its grand venture.