The Arc of 13...

I wake up in the middle of the night asking himself the question... "have I done the right thing?" I was born around the summer of 1969 and, like many of that era, has a name related in one form or another to the bible. Over the decades of my existence I amassed much wealth, through hard work, patience and being in the right place at the right time.

I think of what might have been and what could still be...

At this point in my life with money just being a number and the acquisition of wealth no longer a challenge that interests me the thoughts of a new challenge comes into focus.

With a portion of my wealth created through technology and further gains through the buying and selling technology companies. My first thought was to use this as a foundation.

I also always loved space and hoped I would live long enough to see mankind become a space faring civilization.

With that thought crystallized in my mind I decided to run down the list of private space companies until I discovered one that I believed was up to the challenge.

The meeting went like this... I want human kind in space With the goal of populating the cosmos in a decade. There was a silence and then laughter erupted from the executives of the company. But the CEO of that company noticed the seriousness carved into the face of the man at the other end of the table.

The CEO: I know who you are. This will be next to impossible and cost a fortune to complete, if it is possible at all.

The man at the other end of the table: Is that a yes?

With that the deal was made.

Five years had passed and progress had been made. The old man had enough influence to gather other men of wealth and even countries into this venture and gathered a war chest of funds of over $25 trillion dollars.

In the following years they were able to develop and perfect space based construction with an orbital construction yard. Then from there a Moon based construction facility. With a low gravity environment they learned to build bigger and bigger craft. the next step was to build, test and improve the electromagnetically based constant acceleration drives to move ships.

Just these few, monumental, steps allowed the human race to transit the solar system.

Year 6:
Study of human long duration hibernation starts.

Year 8:
The thought of space being a far away, abstract place, although still very dangerous, is now accessible to commerce and being rapidly developed further. The arc starts the development phase.

Year 10:
Cost over runs and delays push back the project to an undetermined date.

Year 15:
The solar system is now commercialized. there are colonies on many planets of our solar system. The human hibernation challenge was cracked with test subjects sleeping for two years with no issues and a projected hibernation time of 200 years with no aging and no lasting negative effects. The constant acceleration drives were completed which allows us to get to the nearest star within the hibernation window.

The arc is also complete. A 13 segment 1300 meter long cylindrical ship. It is technically 13 separate ships attached end to end with one drive system pushing the entire ship. Like a train with boxcars but instead of an engine pulling them the engine is pushing them.

These ships will go out from our solar system to the 13 closest stars that are likely to have planets that support human life. As the ship gets close to the the new planet a segment will detach and be left behind while the main portion of the arc moves to the next inhabitable system .

The segments will have everything needed for colonization and unfortunately the colonists will never be able to return to Earth. Therefore volunteers will be taken for this simple reason.

What will they think when they awaken? Will they even survive the journey? Now... I sitting here. thinking of the ones who have gone after us to start new worlds.