News from the Federal Constellation

Constellation Station - Cities across Prosperity rejoice as the Communion Party announced that they would back down on the Prosperity sovereignty issue, clearing the final roadblock to granting sovereignty to the colony. Prosperity has been fighting for the past couple myriochrons to be reclassified from a colony under Constellation Colonial Assembly (CCA) jurisdiction to Full Member of the Constellation, and with the majority of the Constellar Council now supporting, the monumental event is set for next hectochron, when the final vote on the Prosperity Accession and Next-Generation Colonial Plan is held on Constellation Station.

Accompanying this change are the plans for colonizing Tranquility, Horizon, and Verity, the impetus for the change in the Communion Party's stance. Corporations who offered to invest and develop infrastructure for the new colonies were sent into a panic when Prosperity threatened to boycott the rest of the Constellation, leading to a cumulative 9.7% dip in the Interstellar Industrial Index. Following this, the corporations formed the Colonial Industry and Infrastructure Interest Group (CIIIG) and issued an ultimatum refusing to accept government contracts in the new colonies unless they agreed to Prosperity's sovereignty demands and established an oversight committee of private-sector representatives in the CCA to keep this from happening again.

After the Constellar Council's hearing with CIIIG, the government agreed to establish the Industry and Development Council (IDC) within the CCA, advising the CCA on colonial industry and coordinating contracts with the private sector. Opponents to the IDC note a conflict of interest, with mostly corporate representatives in the IDC advising the CCA to create contracts with corporations. On the other hand, proponents say that giving the private sector a more powerful voice in the CCA will streamline the development of colonies and prevent the economic upheaval experienced during the Prosperity boycott crisis.

Though the IDC remains steeped in public controversy, the Communion Party is happy to put a stop to the rapid stock market downturn and to be the first government to create three new colonies. With the turbulence in Constellation politics, they're going to need the new colonies to be a smashing success if they're to make government in the upcoming election.

Constellation Station - Amidst the Assembly's deadlock over the colonization issue, the cabinet prematurely built colonial infrastructure in Tranquility despite the lack of an approved colonization plan. This happened by exploiting a legal loophole and temporarily classifying the whole system as a deep space military outpost, which do not need a legislative vote to be established. To many, this is clearly a bad faith tacic from the Communion Party and a dangerous one given the looming threat of the Prosperity boycott.

Though Prosperity has not yet acted on their threat, the cabinet's loophole tactic created a panic over the possibility, leading to panic selling and a sharp downturn in stock prices across the Constellation. Just a hectochron after the tactic was revealed, the Interstellar Industrial Index (III) market cap decreased 5.6% without returning to normal levels, even after a kilochron without a boycott.

This drove several corporations who were interested in developing the new colonies to form a corporate lobbying group, the Colonial Industry and Infrastructure Interest Group (CIIIG), to force the government to resolve the conflict with the Prosperity Party. Among their ranks are industrial giants Royal Gold and Copper Corporation and Red Valley Group, as well as high-profile Prosperity companies like Iceberg Systems. Their stated goals are to declare Prosperity as a sovereign Full Constellation Member outside of the Constellation Colonial Administration (CCA), to establish an oversight committee in the CCA made up of industry leaders for future new colony affairs, and to increase the representation of new colonies by bumping the CCA's seats in the Assembly.

The CIIIG have made clear that they will refuse government contracts for colonial infrastructure until their demands are met. Combined with the market upset, the Constellation President has called for a hearing with the CIIIG and the Prosperity Party to revisit the possibility of Prosperity's accession to Full Member and restructuring the CCA.

While the Communion Party backing down on their anti-Prosperity sovereignty stance is a huge win for Prosperity rights groups, some critics are concerned that a corporate consortium catalyzed the change. "Anyone who's pro-colony rights needs to understand that putting colonial administration in the hands of corporations degrades rights for the average colonist in the long run," says anti-corporate critic Determined Messenger, "the CIIIG's oversight committee is an obvious ploy to bolster corporate power in the government." Others are more optimistic, and as political commentator Resplendent Fortune puts it, "an industrial oversight committee is a much needed opportunity to harmonize economic development and colonial policy, creating better economies that everyone will benefit from."

No matter the outcome, colonial politics have blown up to proportions far greater than the government could have anticipated. The stock market dip is only the tip of the iceberg, and the Communion Party now knows the Prosperity boycott is not to be trifled with. Political experts believe the hearing this hectochron will determine once and for all the fate of Prosperity and the proposed new colonies.

Constellation Station - The debate over colony rights rages on, sparked by the recent talks to colonize Tranquility, Horizon, and Verity. Fuelling the unrest in Prosperity, rumours of increased corporate influence in the Constellation Colonial Administration (CCA) and the Communion Party's unwavering stance on granting sovereignty to Prosperity led to threats from the Prosperity Party to cut off trade with the home systems. The Communion Party and its coalition remain adamant that Prosperity is unready to leave the CCA, proposing instead to increase the CCA's seats from 60 seats to 120, compared to the two homeworlds' 432 each.

Prosperity Party leader Valiant Defender declared the Prosperity Party's counteroffer to be "an insultingly awful deal akin to slapping the faces of every colonist a dozen times," and that it was "hilariously ironic given the minuscule support provided [by the government] though the CCA compared to the revenues Prosperity generates for the Constellation."

While the CCA currently provides to Prosperity a quarter Gigastella more funding than Prosperity pays in Constellation taxes, the addition of up to three new colonies in the CCA means Prosperity will be against them for an increasingly limited funding pool. Given the home systems' dependence on Prosperity's land and resources, the threat to refuse Constellation business at trade hubs like the Reflection Point Internetwork Exchange and the Prosperity Spaceport could send shockwaves through the economies of both Prosperity and the rest of the Constellation.

The Communion Party's insistence that Prosperity remain under the CCA's jurisdiction makes Prosperity becoming a sovereign Full Constellation Member seem unlikely. One alternative proposed by Moderate Party Assemblyman Refreshing Splendour is to guarantee Prosperity a minimum amount of CCA funding and allocate additional seats per new colony to the CCA to solve the representation issue. The Prosperity Party rejected this plan, stating that it still does not address the underlying need for self-determination for Prosperity.

Some have speculated that this deadlock in the Assembly will make the government turn to the private sector to administer and support the new colonies, namely corporations that have already offered to investment in new colony infrastructure. Because of this, anti-corporatists are calling for a quick resolution to the Prosperity matter, with many in the opposition pledging support for Prosperity's cause.

In the current climate, the government must seriously weigh the economic impact of a Prosperity boycott against the influence it currently holds over the colony, which has been instrumental in relieving land and resource shortages in the home systems. Tensions have boiled up to the point where if the Assembly doesn't act fast, it could end up destroying more than just its dreams of new colonies.

Constellation Station - Three myriochrons ago, the new soliton superluminal drives sparked a wave of interest in colonizing systems from the Exosystem Habitability Study rejected in favour of Prosperity: Tranquility, Horizon, and Verity. Though all habitable, only Prosperity was selected due to logistics: rich resources combined with close proximity meant it had the highest chance of success given the tech available at the time. However, with much faster and less costly soliton drives, colonization of the then-rejected systems is being discussed in the Constellation Assembly once more.

Though colonization plans have been drawn up for each of the systems, they must all stand up to review by committee before the Assembly can pass judgement. So far the Tranquility plan has the most support, since despite the minuscule size of its one inhabitable moon, it has resource rich terrestrial planets and is closer to Everlasting Communion than even Prosperity. Several large mining firms are interested developing Tranquility, including the Royal Gold and Copper Corporation which has already offered to contribute 900 Megastella in labour and resources.

The Horizon and Verity systems, on the other hand have large habitable planets with ample space for agriculture and population growth. While Verity is much closer than Horizon, its gravity is also so strong that Insectoids will be unable to fly. As such, delegates from the Celestial Imperium have been lukewarm on the Verity plan despite the added logistics costs.

What about colony rights?

Naturally, talks of colonization have heated up the debate on the rights of colonies in the Constellation. Though Prosperity currently controls all the votes given to the Constellation Colonial Administration (CCA) in the Assembly, the inclusion of up to three new colonies under the CCA's jurisdiction could aggravate Prosperity's existing concerns over representation in government. If the CCA stays with the same number of Assembly seats, Prosperity's representation would dwindle further, so colonial rights parties are staunchly against more colonization without Assembly reform.

"The time is now for a much needed update to the laws surrounding the CCA," says Prosperity Party Assemblyman Vigilant Warrior after last kilochrons' colony rights rally in Reflection Point, "The Assembly must step up and grant the colonies more autonomy and better representation, otherwise Prosperity's businesses that create jobs in the Constellation and Prosperity's families who are holding them up will be forced to reconsider whether it really needs the Constellation."

However, the sweeping reforms the Prosperity Party and its allies seek are much more complicated than they claim, according to Communion Party Assemblyman Forest Whisperer. "The whole reason the CCA exists and why Prosperity isn't fully sovereign is because it's not developed enough for that yet. There are issues of planetary infrastructure, supply chain, and immigration which will take myriochrons before Prosperity and any new colonies can sort them out on their own."

Most people agree that how the government looks at CCA law now will be a deciding factor for the success of future colonies, not just Prosperity. For now, the Constellation anxiously awaits what distant planets, as well as the Constellation Assembly, has in store for the future.

Spirited Frost, Prosperity System - When Blessed Wanderer, founder of Iceberg Systems, started the planetary data farm at Spirited Frost, it began as a simple idea— to make the best of a cold, uninhabitable world by putting a bunch of computers on it. What she couldn't have known was that it would spark a computing revolution, bolstering the computing power of the Prosperity System to that rivalling Giver's Ring.

The runaway success has drawn grosses of companies and billions of Stella in investments to the Prosperity system. One such company is quantum computing giant, Subatomic, which partnered with Iceberg Systems to build quantum data farms on the frosty planet. To test its capabilities, Subatomic has been donating compute power to the Brain in a Pocket project. The project lets volunteers donate their computers' unused resources to simulate the brain of the spritely button, a species of lesser fungoid smaller than an Insectoid hair's width.

Brain in a Pocket is a collaboration between labs studying how different types of brains work, starting with simulating simple microscopic worms and now complex species like the spritely button. Originally it just used idle computers from each lab, but as the simulations grew more complex, more computing power was needed. Taking cues from Eyes on the Sky, another volunteer computing project for discovering signs of alien intelligence, Brain in a Pocket started crowdsourcing compute power, making complex simulations possible.

Now that genes from new species of life are being used to solve problems like ocean pollution, scientists hope that understanding life at tiny quantum scales now can make a big impact in the future, since many potential applications are locked behind nano-scale mysteries. As the name implies, quantum computers like Subatomic's are uniquely well suited for quantum simulations, plus other tasks like handling databases. In fact, most people already use quantum computers without even knowing it, since they currently power social networking sites and search engines.

Though impressive, greatgross-fold speed increase to Brain in a Pocket is just a test, claims Subatomic, a demonstration of only a fraction of what Subatomic plans to build on Spirited Frost. Subatomic believes it can lower the cost of quantum computing enough that even small businesses can afford to process their data with quantum computers within the next dozen myriochrons. For now, it is putting its power to good use and making a tremendous contribution to science, which you can see at the Brain in a Pocket internetwork node.

Communion Wormhole Observatory, Grand Throne System - For most people, making the trip from Giver's Ring to the Prosperity colony is a major life decision. Crowds of colonists buy tickets on the Prosperity Shuttle Service, which includes deep-space lodging and meal plans, up to myriochrons in advance for a new way of life on the distant colony. Without a wormhole like Everlasting Communion to get you there, 1.6 myriochrons is the fastest possible trip— long enough to produce an entire TV drama and then some. Luckily, engineers have been working with experts at the Communion Wormhole Observatory to develop the next generation of superluminal drives, called Plasma Soliton Drives, which could slash the Prosperity trip time from myriochrons to kilochrons, which is an entire magnitude of improvement over currently available Warp Bubble Drives.

Instead of simply contracting space in front and expanding space behind it like a Warp Bubble Drive using expensive strange matter, the Plasma Soliton Drive uses a supercharged electromagnetic plasma in a delta-formation in order to generate soliton waves in spacetime. These soliton waves are like tsunamis in oceans, propagating itself over long distances and carrying a calm, inner region of space through great distances. Unlike the Warp Bubble Drive, these solitons can be maintained using only ordinary, positive-energy matter, and only need strange matter for starting and stopping.

While such soliton drives have been theorized to work since before even the first Warp Bubble Drives were built, it is not until now that improvements to spacetime soliton theory made by physicists during the last few 4c Barrier Conferences allowed the creation of the first practical Plasma Soliton Drive. These refinements not only lowers costs needed to power the massive particle accelerators for creating strange matter, but are also much faster and could lead to more frequent trips to and from Prosperity.

Currently the main challenges for mass-transit with Plasma Soliton Drives include the Superluminal Communication Problem, where the complex geometry of soliton spacetime interfere with superluminal communications links with deep space beacons and refuelling stations. The size of the safe region between the solitons also needs to get much bigger for the economics of the shuttle service to make sense. However, the researchers and engineers at the Communion Wormhole Observatory are confident they can solve both these problems in the near future.

Reflection Point, Prosperity - Researchers at Reflection Point University have announced they have successfully implanted genes from several recently discovered species of exotic microbes into algae from Giver's Ring that can clean up heavy metals from oceans and rivers. About a myriochron ago, the Curious Ranger survey ship was constructed at Prosperity Orbital Shipyards and started collecting water samples from several moons around the Prosperity System suspected to harbour exotic microbial life. These samples were brought back and analysed by Researcher Equitable Arbiter and his team, who confimed the presence of extremophile microbes in several samples.

In one of the samples they discovered that a microbe, named Silver Breath 8-216, produces proteins which bind with lithium, then aggregate in large clumps after binding. Recognizing its potential to clean up lithium pollution in water, Researcher Equitable Arbiter and his team first created a concentrated protein solution and put it in industrial waste water. They found that the resulting protein clumps could be taken out, and with the lithium attached, a large amount of lithium was also removed.

Lithium can pollute water through improper storage and dumping of old electronics, especially old lithium-ion batteries. Lithium mining and drug manufacturing can also have lithium byproducts, which leech into the ground and can make its way into water sources. Excessive lithium consumption leads to several neurological issues, including cortical dysfunction, muscle spasms, and Driven Remembrancer's Syndrome. Equitable Arbiter's discovery could improve the lives of millions living in polluted areas.

Equitable Arbiter and his team don't know what the purpose of this protein is for the microbe, but have identified the part of its genome that produces it and have implanted it into the Swimmer's Spots algae, native to Grand Throne. While Silver Breath 8-216 can't survive in most climates habitable to known sentient species, Swimmer's Spots can survive, and using the newly dicovered genes produces the anti-pollutant at the same time.

Though it is undergoing continued testing to determine its overall ecological impact if released into different polluted oceans in the Constellation, the Researcher and his team are excited at the prospect of a low-maintenance, genetically-engineered solution to lithium pollution.

Spirited Frost, Prosperity System - Just beyond Prosperity's orbit in its star system is Spirited Frost, a cold, uninhabited planet without notable natural resources that Iceberg Systems wants to turn into a planet-wide server farm. The startup has already constructed its pilot server farm on the planet and has bought the deeds for significant portions of the planet's surface. Iceberg Systems was founded by Insectoid Blessed Wanderer, a former electrical engineer at Red Sky Heavy Industries who quit her job after using her life savings to start her business and has since gotten sizeable investments from venture capitalists.

Blessed Wanderer says that unlike most planets in the Constellation, Spirited Frost is unique among uninhabitable worlds in that it has a magnetic field that protects it from cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are a known problem for computers, as excessive cosmic radiation can cause a kind of data corruption called a bit flip, where parts of the binary data unexpectedly flip from 1s to 0s and vice versa. Computers in spacecraft and planetoids without magnetic fields have to be protected by expensive radiation shields which are costly to scale up to planetary-proportions, which Blessed Wanderer explains is why there are no server farm planets in the Constellation so far.

Spirited Frost also has the perfect temperatures for running computers, she explains. True to its name the planet is frigid, but it's not so cold that mass-produced computer hardware will fail. Temperatures across Spirited Frost are similar to conditions on regions in the far side of Giver's Ring where the permanent cold provides excellent cooling for servers without needing air conditioning.

Since Spirited Frost's lack of natural resources and uninhabitability make buying up land extremely cheap, Iceberg Systems is expanding rapidly after the success of its pilot server farm. However, the lack of previous interest in the planet also means a lack of infrastructure, so its expansion is limited largely by its ability to build power plants and uplinks to the Constellation's superluminal internetwork.

"Sure we have limiting factors," says Blessed Wanderer, "but looking at what we've accomplished so far, we are confident that we can build a planet that serves the computational needs of not only Prosperity and the homeworlds, but also the new industrial settlements that are cropping up every kilochron across the Prosperity System. We are unburdened by the local regulations on Prosperity, and our scalability means we will soon become the most cost-effective cloud computing solution in the Constellation."

Celestial Lowlands, Grand Throne - A breakthrough Pseudo-neuronal bacteria (PNB) was engineered at Celestial Lowlands Biotechnical University which would allow bacterial colonies to perform simple computations and connect reliably with a typical neural-computer interface. These bacteria have axons and dendrites much like a neuron in a brain, and grow in a sugary, polysaccharide mixture. Electrical impulses are initially random, but binding with an artificial protein called the Dumbbell Protein, will allow scientists to adjust when the PNB send electrical impulses to each other and at what strength. The Dumbbell Proteins are produced by the university's Ribosome Machine, an on-demand protein fabricator.

While the precision of Dumbbell Proteins is currently low, the researchers have been able to create and "train" the colony of PNB and create a deep neural network, not unlike traditional neural algorithms in a digital computer. Researchers first replicated the Exclusive Or operator, which activates if exactly one signal of two input signals is activated, and moved on to more complex functions like integer addition. They found that by connecting colonies of bacteria to a neural implant, they could get one colony to "communicate" with the other.

Another problem that limits the computational power of PNB is that as soon as the colony becomes too large, it is unable to hold a stable structure and collapses. The only working PNB "brains" currently consist of a maximum of a few dozens cells, although multiple neural interfaces can connect at least a few colonies together without degradation.

While a long way from the power of devices we take for granted presently, this breakthrough opens up a plethora of possibilities. These bacterial colonies could be used to augment someone's brain or eyes without the need for invasive surgical procedures needed for a traditional neural or optical implant. In the distant future, we may even be able to reduce the complexity of computer components by growing a large vat of PNB and reprogramming bacterial colonies for whatever we need. Who knows? maybe one day, we'll write our e-mails and watch holograms on bacteria!

Prosperity, Prosperity System - New job opportunities and bright futures are abound for the Constellation's new colony, Prosperity. Since the beginning of Prosperity's settlement, growth has been limited by the lack of mining outposts on potentially resource-rich planetoids in the system. With the recent completion of the Prosperity Orbital Shipyards, several companies have obtained contracts to build survey, mining, and transportation ships to deploy within the next 3 myriochrons. Companies are already hiring thousands of workers in the shipbuilding and mining industries, with additional colonists arriving from Grand Throne and Giver's Ring within the next myriochrons.

The Constellation Colonial Administration (CCA) expects it will be able to build infrastructure six times faster in the next 15 myriochrons once mining outposts on all mineral deposits identified during Propserity's initial colonization feasibility study have been developed. The increased shipbuilding capability of Prosperity also means more ships available to make close-range geological surveys, which the CCA are confident will prompt further discoveries and attract more colonists.

The completion of the shipyards also means the Prosperity Shuttle Service will service the new mining outposts and make more frequent trips between Giver's Ring. Unfortunately for many riders, the length of the trip to and from Giver's Ring leaves much to be desired. Researchers at the Everlasting Communion Research Centre have been looking for ways to generate artificial wormholes, albeit at a smaller scale than Everlasting Communion. The Superluminal Steering Commission will also be hosting the 14th 4c Barrier Conference, where scientists will exhibit their latest research in trying to breach speeds greater than 4 times the speed of light, in about 3 kilochrons.