Ken Burns' Planet: A History said:

We keep talking about a project. But that very term implies a discipline we never really achieved. It was many minor miracles held together with string. Zakharov and his star drive. Mongkut's unbelievable political gymnastics. The staggering corruption of Morgan Industries, the Saladon Futures Corporation, and Cornet Marine. Incredible failures of security by the United Nations. When she was disconnected from the space elevator for the first time, Unity was cheered. Not because the people of Earth were excited to see her off, but because they were finally relieved of the burden of having to sacrifice for the sake of this expensive folly that did nothing to quench the fires burning all around them. - Commissioner Pravin Lal

The United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri was, in generous terms, an unmitigated disaster. First conceived as the American Ares III intra-solar foundry, Unity's derelict skeleton had been a fixture in the nighttime sky above North America for more than a half-century before it was purchased by the U.N.'s Janović Commission for conversion. The ship then finished another forty-three years in geosynchronous orbit, followed by six of trials that took it only as far as Pluto. By both length and volume, it was the largest object ever built by man. Knowing that technological progress would outpace them before completion, her shipwrights opted for dated but proven systems and modular design, hoping to install the engines, reactor, and computer mainframe last, while swapping out secondary systems if and when necessary.

Unity's development was a case study in design flaws, self-destructive behavior, and the perils of consensus-based project management. Amidst countless arguments, industrial accidents, and incidents of terrorism and sabotage, entire sections were started, gutted, and started again as political will and available resources waxed and waned.

A revolving door of visionaries, sponsors, and builders produced a "Frankenstein's Ark" of obsolete and incompatible systems. Political imperatives often spoke louder than practical science. When the Western powers temporarily suspended their participation in the Project from 2014 to 2050, the U.N.'s new Chinese and Warsaw Pact partners dismantled and stole entire modules for closer study Earthside. During one of countless breakdowns in contract re-negotiations, Morgan Aerodynamics sealed over dozens of cargo bays previously installed by competitors, including Serrol-Merowe, Fairchild-Grumman, and the American Reclamation Corporation, then charged the U.N. to rebuild and restock similar bays on the ship's opposite side. To a U.N. Board of Inquiry completed just hours before his departure for the lunar cradle, Unity's captain, Jonathan Garland, observed wryly that there was not a single integrated or accurate schematic--let alone a proper inventory--of the whole ship anywhere in existence.

Providing a crew for the ship presented a separate brace of problems. Tens of thousands of crew members perished in training, while many more died at the hands of mobs and terrorists incensed at the idea of being left behind. During times of extremity, the U.N. made a habit of accepting donations from corporations, private individuals, and even criminal enterprises. Earth's best and brightest shared their one-way trip with exiles, outcasts, and stowaways of every conceivable stripe. Pursuant to a mission charter further amended beyond recognition after most were placed in cold sleep, led by a multi-national crew on the verge of dissolution since the day it had formed, they were destined for a world where contact with a smaller, earlier mission launched in better times, the Pathfinder Probe, had been lost for reasons still unknown.

Unity took forty years to travel the distance between its point of origin, the Lunar Cradle, and Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our own.


More than 450,000 colonists and crew were entombed in Unity's seventeen-mile-long hull for the silent crossing to Chiron. The selection process was a monument to bureaucratic rationalism.

In the early years, each recruit was first nominated by a national commission, then processed by a panel of experts operating under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council. Virtually no trade or calling was excluded. Our species's future was to be secured not only by astronauts and botanists, physicists and physicians, but judges and civil servants, poets and preachers, lawyers and musicians. Most had advanced degrees prior to selection. A very high number were nationally or even internationally renowned. There were Olympic gold medalists, Fields Medalists, and Nobel laureates by the carload lot.

Just under a third of all recruits received at least three additional years of mission-specific education and training, half of it in classrooms and the rest at a network of habitats on Luna and Mars. The curricula were designed by Morgan Adaptive Learning Associates in cooperation with the University of Tokyo and the Indian Institute of Technology.

Senior command staff were appointed directly by the Security Council. Ship's crew were seconded from the uniformed services of various donor nations and corporations. As expected, space agency alumni predominated, but some countries also used the project as a way to sideline politically unreliable military personnel.

The quality of the more than 80,000 charter colonists varied even more widely: while American industrialist Oscar van de Graaf's hand-picked franchise holders were almost all luminaries, Struan's Pacific Trading Company provided their representative, pharmaceutical scion and former MI5 man Roshann Cobb, with less salubrious characters. Against Garland's dire warnings, Charterists were even permitted to board their own private military service providers for future defense.

Selection protocols relaxed substantially over time. The U.N. made numerous high-level political appointments to senior staff in exchange for funding and access to required infrastructure such as space elevators, orbital factories, and space construction vehicles. Inclusion of re-socialized prisoners, a Warsaw Pact innovation, represented the most controversial change, and prompted the Security Council to grudgingly furnish Garland and his officers with a complement of marines to ensure their safety. Robotic servitors were introduced in the 2050s after spectrographic analysis of Chiron indicated that planetary conditions would be considerably more hostile than initially projected.

Because of the very large number of personnel moving through the program, the first "sleepers" were placed in suspended animation in October 2061, and the last immediately before departure in February 2071. After March 2065, cryogenic stasis was performed only according to the Wespe-Quinn-Vagner Process, selected for its comparatively high rate of patient survival.


The U.N. settled on Wespe-Quinn-Vagner after a thorough investigation of more than two dozen alternatives. On this, the mission's ranking medical personnel achieved a rare full consensus. Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal's official memorandum of recommendation to the United Nations Medical College, now housed in the archives of his alma mater, The Aga Khan University, is counter-signed by Unity's Director of Neurosurgery, Dr. Aleigha Cohen; its director of Genetic Medicine, Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi; and Psych-Chaplain Miriam Godwinson, who attended to the ethical implications associated with artificially extending human life. Himself a recognized expert in geriatric therapies, Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov took the unusual step of appending an amicus note.

Sources:
First picture is Midgar from Final Fantasy VII.

American Reclamation Corporation is from Beyond Earth.

Struan's Pacific Trading Company is from The Asian Saga by James Clavell, who passed in 1984.

Picture of U.N.S. Unity is from this webpage. Artist unknown.

Picture of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw is from Ridley Scott's Prometheus (2012).

Story Fundamentals
Construction of Unity began in 2030. Unity departed Lunar orbit in May 2071. Unity reached the edge of the Alpha Centauri star system in 2115.

The setting is one of cassette futurism. Consumer technology strongly resembles what we see in Fallout.

The mid-twentieth century Atoms for Peace program resulted in widespread non-military use of atomics for civil engineering purposes. Industrial, and especially nuclear, disasters were a commonplace. Artificial island chains were built worldwide to help manage rising sea levels and increasingly catastrophic weather events. Nuclear power plants were a dime a dozen. Nuclear power made its way into many consumer products. A huge amount of nuclear-powered equipment was loaded aboard Unity to assist with the colonization effort, and plans to terraform Chiron featured atomics.

In North America, the United States and Canada were gripped by a long period of social instability that led to a Second American Civil War and a Second Quebec Crisis. The Restored United States was made whole again after more than a decade of bitter fighting that devastated the South and Midwestern states, but corporations like the American Reclamation Corporation played an outsized role in government. The conflict pitted groups of so-called Hypersurvivalists, popularly called Holnists, and fellow travelers, including States Rights enthusiasts, against Unionists and undecided communities, and it tracked mostly according to modern political sensibilities. After a period of ineptitude, Union reaction was extremely heavy-handed, notwithstanding a general amnesty issued soon after reunification. The Kellerites (Tribals) became a punching bag for both sides. The Holnists envied the success of Kellerite communities while Federal forces had difficulty distinguishing Kellerites from Holnists or were influenced by Holnist propaganda in spite of themselves. Separately, Soviet, French, and U.N. involvement helped Quebec to assert permanent independence.

The legacy of the war influences our story in two ways. First, hypersurvivalism didn't die. A large number of hyper-survivalists smuggled themselves onto Unity and stayed a mutiny just after the ship was struck by a rogue micrometiorite. The mutiny crippled damage control efforts and, in the chaos, the expedition's leader, Captain Jonathan Garland, was assassinated by an unknown assailant. The mutineers, consisting of Spartans and their Holnist allies, escaped to the surface after much indiscriminate killing. Second, many people became open to the idea that corporations could do more for them than national governments, providing purpose (and therefore dignity) along with a guarantee of basic necessities through work programs during the long post-war reconstruction.

A short, sharp nuclear war ruined the Indian Subcontinent in the early twenty-first century. The U.N. funded an attempt to resettle millions in the so-called Indian Ocean Expansion Zone (IOEZ, colloquially known as the "Big E-Z") on thousands of artificial islands, platforms, and reefs, and later, Antarctica and undersea. Knowledge of how to deal with radiological contamination advanced by leaps and bounds. So did understanding of the techniques needed to build pressure hulls for the abyssal depths.

China and the Soviet Union were beset with internal problems of their own, and therefore invested heavily in a suite of "re-socialization" technologies, including something called the Nerve Staple, which is virtually self-explanatory. These compliance tools made it aboard Unity despite the misgivings of the United Nations.

The Americans militarized space before the Soviets, but the Soviets called the American bluff and escalated indirect conventional confrontations worldwide on the assumption that the Americans would not engage in a preemptive first strike. This gamble was correct, and the Americans responded by farming out Rollback to various allies including the British, Belgians, Dutch, Portuguese, Iranians, South Koreans, Taiwanese, Argentines, Chileans, Pakistanis, and South Africans. That explains some of the unusual character backgrounds.

By the time of Unity's departure, permanent scientific and commercial operations were established as far out as Neptune. The Moon and Mars boasted populations in the low hundreds of thousands. Nuclear pulse propulsion was the most common method used for space travel.

Contribute to the Ongoing Story!
Feel free to contribute your own questions, comments, reactions, and ideas. This is an exercise in worldbuilding, mostly. Letting the imagination soar.

I do ask that everyone follow some first principles.

• Tensions on Unity and Chiron arise from ideological preferences, not nationalistic sentiment. Groups and individuals have sharp axes to grind over what happened back on "Old Earth," and national symbols are a treasured form of nostalgia for the survivors, but their politics revolve around how we should live, not who we should live with.

• Each faction answers three implicit questions in a different way. First, what is the fundamental truth of the universe? Second, why did civilization on Earth fail? Third, what is needed for our species to survive, and thrive, in the future? Thus, for the University of Planet, the answers are as follows. First, that every problem can be understood and overcome through the empirical process. Second, because religion and folkways were favored over embracing the technological tools that could have prevented cataclysm. Third, a program of scientific inquiry unrestrained by conventional ethics.

• Each faction leader is an intellectual. Most have obtained a doctorate. Most are superlatives. The scientists might be Fields medalists and Nobel finalists or even laureates. While few were national leaders, most were global thought leaders and all were influential within their respective occupational lanes. All are incisive.

• Each faction has a particular Affinity as well as a perspective on the question of attempting "Recontact." Affinities are a concept borrowed from Beyond Earth. They are an analytical shorthand for understanding the way in which a faction's ideology both oriented and constrained its cultural and scientific development.

• Please avoid creating new stand-alone factions that are too alike. Rule of thumb: if you're doubtful, present your faction as a sub-faction to the primary faction it most resembles, either as a subordinate entity or in rebellion.

• If you will contribute, first familiarize yourself with the contents of our GoogleDoc.

The Factions
The University of Planet, led by Academician Prokhor Zakharov (The Technologist), intends to pursue scientific inquiry wherever it leads. Played straight, they are researchers. Subverted, mad scientists. Zakharov was a leading Soviet scientist. Zakharov was Chief Science Officer aboard Unity.

Gaia's Stepdaughters, led by Lady Deirdre Skye (The Conservationist), seek to live in symbiosis with Planet. Played straight, they are ecologists. Subverted, eco-terrorists. Skye was a prominent figure in the Green resistance movement. Skye was the mission's chief biologist.

The Human Labyrinth, also called the Hive, led by Chairman Sheng-ji Yang (The Philosopher-King), will establish an enlightened despotism. Played straight, they are slaves of a great liar. Subverted, they will prove more resilient than any society before them. The Hive has been established beneath the Great Dunes. Yang spent most of his life in Communist reeducation structures. Yang was a Chinese political officer aboard Unity.

The Spartan Federation, led by Colonel Corazón Santiago (The Survivalist), champions a philosophy of antagonistic self-reliance called Survivalism. Played straight, they are sociopathic marauders. Subverted, a corps of cadets that take themselves far too seriously. Santiago was a former gang member and fellow traveler of the Hypersurvivalist movement. She is a veteran of the Second American Civil War. Santiago was a stowaway aboard Unity.

Morgan Industries, also called the Dynamic Enterprise and led by CEO Nwabudike Morgan (The Mogul), is all about conspicuous consumption. Played straight, they are a company town. Subverted, geniuses who know the futility of tampering with human nature. Morgan was an arms dealer who became the world's richest man. Morgan Industries was one of the twelve prime contractors for the Unity Project. Morgan was a stowaway aboard Unity. Officially, Morgan is attempting to achieve the so-called "energy monopoly" on Planet.

The Peacekeeping Forces, led by Commissioner Pravin Lal (The Humanitarian), are the last remnants of the original mission. Played straight, they are the United Nations at its best. Subverted, they are the United Nations at its worst. Pravin Lal was formerly Chief of Staff to the U.N. Secretary-General. Lal was the mission's Chief Medical Officer.

The Lord's Conclave, led by Sister Miriam Godwinson (The Shepherd), is a group of religious pilgrims and their wards. Played straight, they are a faith community confronting the Apocalypse. Subverted, a new Crusade. Godwinson was an ally of the United States Government during the Second American Civil War. Godwinson was a Psych Chaplain aboard Unity.

The Human Tribe, led by Selectman Peter "Pete" Landers (The Defender), are anti-disestablishmentarians. In other words, compound cultists without the religious bent. Played straight, they are communalists trying to overcome past trauma. Subverted, they are consumed by dreams of retribution for pains suffered on Old Earth. Landers is a U.S. Army deserter and protégé of the cult leader Jean-Baptiste Keller.

The New State, also called L'État nouvel, led by Contre-amiral Raoul André St. Germaine (The Aristocrat), is an experiment in latter-day feudalism inspired by Salazarism. Played straight, they are finding the middle ground between personal freedom and group cohesion. Subverted, they are giving in to fascistic temptations. The New State has fled to the deep seas of Chiron. St. Germaine was a member of the French colonial army. St. Germaine was head of the mission's Aquatic Operations Division.

The Hunters of Chiron, led by Game Warden J.T. Marsh (The Adventurer), are nomadic work crews determined to prove themselves on the great frontier. Played straight, they are adrenaline junkies who refuse to fit in conventional society. Subverted, they are merely buccaneers. J.T. Marsh is an ex-special forces soldier turned big game hunter. Marsh was head of the Forward Contact Team responsible for preparing the first colony ahead of general disembarkation. He landed on Chiron a month in advance of the Unity Crisis in which the ship was lost.

The Children of the Atom, led by Plotter Johan Anhaldt (The Programmer), have created a great computer to manage every aspect of their lives. Played straight, they are redefining man's relationship with machines. Subverted, they are giving up on Free Will. Anhaldt was responsible for the mission's Atomic Computing Lab.

The New Two Thousand, also called Pilgrims, led by Governor Oscar van de Graaf (The Empresario), are charter colonists seeking an opportunity to live out a frontier fantasy. Played straight, they are settlers who occupy that liminal moment that comes before civilization takes firm hold. Subverted, they are the kind of people who perpetrate range wars. Van de Graaf is an American industrialist and ex-Cabinet member who helped fund the Unity mission in return for being granted a proprietary colony charter.

The Human Ascendancy, led by Director Tamineh Pahlavi (The Supremacist), want to force the next step in human evolution. Played straight, they are something like The Institute or whatever the Cloning Guild represents in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Subverted, they are trying to outrun death itself. Pahlavi was responsible for the mission's genetic library.

The Dreamers of Chiron, led by Factor Roshann Cobb (The Dreamer) and Dr. Aleigha Cohen (The Transgressor), are drug addicts and their captives. Played straight, they are a violent gang doomed to self-destruction. Subverted, they are calling attention to the real frontier: the human psyche. Cobb is an ex-MI6 officer and pharmaceutical scion. Cohen was a leader in psychological research that saw her blackballed in Western academia.

The Shapers of Chiron, led by Shoichiro Nagao (The Penitent), seek to terraform Planet into Earth. Played straight, they are homesick. Subverted, they are committing planetary genocide. Nagao was a leader in environmental recovery at Fukushima and elsewhere.

The Tomorrow Institute, led by Sathieu Metrion (The Preserver), is determined to preserve and share the intellectual legacy of Earth as captured in the ship's data core. Played straight, they are highly-motivated librarians. Subverted, they are putting principle ahead of common sense by putting certain knowledge into the hands of unscrupulous people for its own sake. Metrion is responsible for Unity's Information Services Division.

The Memory of Earth, led by Commander Kleisel Mercator (The Cynic), is attempted to unite the factions against an assumed external threat. Played straight, they have correctly internalized the lessons of the Cold War. Subverted, they are following in the footsteps of "Spooky" Mulder. Mercator was commander of the Unity's air assets.

SMACERS, a creation of @Strategos' Risk, are Scroungers, Malcontents, Antisocialites, Criminals, Exiles, and Rogues living free and dying hard outside the mains settlements.

Affinities
Purity
Humanity will forever be defined by our experience in the cradle of "Old" Earth. If Chiron is to be the last refuge of our species, then we should fill it with things that are familiar, both the physical and metaphysical. Planet should be remade in Earth's image. Likewise, humans can reach their maximum potential only if they preserve the traditions, artifacts, and, yes, the biological distinctiveness, inherited from their ancestors.

Purists look forward to eliminating the "pestilential" xenofungus and replacing the local ecology. The Shaper faction calls this process "rebuilding." At larger scales, Purists hope to stimulate the planetary Greenhouse Effect through a massive infusion of atmospheric hydrocarbons. Purist societies suffer less from the social dislocation of pollution and terraformation, which is an accepted cost of their grand project.

Purists prefer doctrine and ideology that presume a fixed and corruptible human nature, in need of close and constant tending. Culturally, Purists have a hard time giving up the routines they left behind. Some factions still use the 24-hour clock or Gregorian date-keeping.

Technology is a problem for Purists. Humanity has a physical dimension, with needs that cannot be satisfied through mental activity alone. Mechanization is synonymous with loss of authenticity, artistry, and, ultimately, dignity. Purists warn that cybernetics and mind-altering drugs are actually or potentially unsafe.

In conventional terms, a Purist is temperamentally sentimental and suspicious. This manifests in different ways. Purists prefer real beef to synthetic meat. Kellerites (Tribals) still eat communal meals. The New State restricts civilian access to the Planetary Datalinks. Members of the Tomorrow Institute interact with Chiron through bulky encounter suits.

Purist factions include the Lord's Conclave (Godwinson), the Human Tribe (Landers), the Shapers of Chiron (Nagao), the New State (St. Germaine), the Human Ascendancy (Pahlavi), and the Tomorrow Institute (Metrion).

Supremacy
Both Man and Planet alike bear changing in the honorable search for objective perfection. The simple goal of our species is to perpetuate itself—by any means necessary. Stronger is better. Faster is better. In this race against a pitiless universe, and indeed a hostile planet, we would hamstring ourselves to overlook any advantage. Supremacists embrace the possibility of social and ecological experimentation, which will serve as the forcing function to produce new insights about how now we must live.

Supremacists seek out what is practical and efficacious. They are neither above the introduction of invasive species nor below giving way to Planet when adaptation would be less work than resistance. Humanity is what Supremacists make of it. Machines are tools. Their use and sophistication can do nothing to invert the relationship between master and servant.

Since growth is the chief yardstick of success, the familiar is contemptible to Supremacists. "Humanity" is a concept that can be redefined at whim.

Supremacists are more likely to augment themselves with the mind/machine interface. They might use psychoactive substances for work and recreation. They trust in machines to take on tasks that demand the application of subjective judgement, not just high precision.

Supremacist factions include the Human Labyrinth (Yang), the Centauri Monopoly (Morgan), the University of Planet (Zakharov), the Spartan Federation (Santiago), the Dreamers of Chiron (Cobb/Cohen), the Children of the Atom (Anhaldt), and the New Two Thousand (Van de Graaf).

Harmony
Humanity, the intruder, must alert its rhythms to suit those of Chiron, or else perish in its obstinacy. The wisest understand that one does not merely make a home so much as one is made by it. The trappings of Old Earth are useful only inasmuch as they can be relied upon to temporarily bridge the gap between mere survival and full-fledged integration into the existing biosphere of Chiron, which, if it is to be preserved in functional condition, should be as little perturbed as possible.

Harmony, which takes its cues from living things which are classically vulnerable to tampering and thrive within carefully-controlled parameters of diet and temperature, says little about the utility of artificial intelligence. Persons inclined to Harmony usually wish to experience Planet directly. Creating mechanical servitors to do so in their place is rarely at top of mind.

Factions that promote Harmony usually practice lifestyles that require avoidance of traumas on the land. They are also, on the whole, fairly sympathetic to the nonconformist. For a Harmonist, the defining feature of a system is that it is complex and interactive, rather than that it is predictable, or even successful. Folkways are inherently legitimate as an expression of self, which can be as important as allegiance to an illusory "public-interest" objectivity.

Harmonious factions include Gaia's Stepdaughters (Skye), the Peacekeeping Forces (Lal), and the Hunters of Chiron (Marsh).

Recontact
Recontact means the attempt to restore communications with Old Earth.

This is problematic for several reasons. First, it usually means a return to space, which could be provactive depending on one's point of view. Second, the mission was launched with the assumption that Earth would very soon be incapable of sustaining human life. The smart money says that there is nobody left to answer the call home. Third, any follow-on from Earth carries complications. Do the Morganites want any competition in their pursuit of a planetary monopoly? Do the Kellerites or the Spartans want to reopen old wounds? Does Roshann Cobb want to answer to his estranged father?

Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:

The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms, we find electrons, and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries. - For I Have Tasted the Fruit

Soviet physicist Prokhor Zakharov, celebrated designer of the Unity stardrive. The second-eldest of the ship's half-million passengers, Zakharov was eighty-two years old at mission launch and in declining physical health. United Nations medical staff estimated his odds of surviving cold sleep at only sixty-two percent.

An impressive service record paid testimony to the genius that had won for him a Noble Prize. Born in then then closed city of Vladivostok in 1989 to a father employed by the Red Banner Pacific Fleet and a mother on the Central Auditing Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Zakharov was educated at Moscow State University. An inexhaustible pen and a clear taste for controversy earned him a place on the editorial board of Physics Letters A while still an undergraduate. Multiple papers on low-energy nuclear reactions, popularly known as "cold fusion," introduced much-needed rigor to the study of that subject, restored its prestige in the eyes of the global Academy, and paved the way to a PhD in nuclear physics. Following graduation, Zakharov served his universal military obligation in the Reactor Laboratory Division aboard Ulyanovsk, one of his country's two fleet carriers, achieving the post of Captain, 2nd Rank.

From 2035, he was Deputy Administrator of Experimental Design Bureau-1 (OKB-1), largest and most prestigious of the multiple design bureaus in the Soviet space program. Here, he presided over the successful design and testing of second-generation Tifon spaceplane based on designs stolen from the United States. During that period, OKB-1 experienced largest relative increase in cosmonaut deaths since the earliest days of the U.S.S.R.'s manned space program.

Zakharov became an active contributor to Pravda of opinion pieces intended for consumption by audiences outside the Soviet Union. From the first, he stood a technocrat. He was a consistent critic of resistance to mass vaccination and the use of genetically modified food crops. Consistent with Soviet teaching, he declaimed "the feudal crutch of religion" as "the foremost barrier to the social progress of our species."

At the height of his career, Zakharov was recruited by the Soviet Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine to develop a new program of geriatric medicine. His team was ultimately credited with major advances in anti-aging and preservational medicine, resulting in the "Long Politburo" of 2031-2065 and laying important theoretical groundwork for use of cryogenic stasis aboard U.N.S. Unity.

Zakharov was reassigned as head of Soviet delegation to U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission in 2052, and recommended unconditionally by U.N. Security Council for position of Unity Chief Science Officer in 2059. To mark the occasssion, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Subordinate only to Captain Garland and the Executive Officer, Zakharov became responsible for safe and efficient function of the ship's fusion drive and associated sub-systems.

Brusque and arrogant, Zakharov was widely disliked by his peers on the ship's command crew. During the Unity Crisis, Captain Jonathan Garland found that Zakharov was unwilling to place the collective interests of the survivors and their mission ahead of his personal ambitions. Rather than awaken damage controllers, the good Soviet doctor had instead sent for his own hand-picked reactor crews, summoning them to him despite an intervening meat grinder of Holnist fighters. Zakharov refused to seriously consider his captain's suggestion that the crew return to cold sleep and take the Unity into a slingshot orbit around Alpha Centauri A, lying about the feasibility of such a solution, which he alleged to be impossible based on the level of fuel and oxygen remaining. In truth, Zakharov was afraid of the near-certainty of his own death should he be placed back into Wespe-Quinn-Vagner suspension.

Hunted by the Spartans, frustrated by Kellerite interlopers, and working at cross-purposes to the general evacuation ordered by Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida, Zakharov's engineers proved unable to save the ship. Their doomed attempt to vent and recover Unity's collission-damaged reactors poisoned thousands. The burden of providing lifelong care for so many victims of radiation sickness, many of them permanently crippled and sterile, had dramatic implications for the community that would eventually become The University of Planet. Robotic servitors of Zakharov's own design outnumbered living colonists by an order of five-to-one as many as three decades after Planetfall.

Source:
Picture is, of course, Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Game Design Concepts
Sometimes, this idea has been presented as the basis for a mega-game. Perhaps it could also be considered a wish list for a sequel or a remake to the original computer game. In either case, I think such a game would feature four main resources and five types of assets.

Resources
Nutrients
Nutrients are food, plain and simple. This resource can be obtained by salvaging rations from Unity wreckage or grown on-planet. Nutrients drive population growth. Lack of nutrients results in disease and starvation as well as unhappiness.

Crop agriculture is the most common and certainly the most efficient method of nutrient production, although aquaculture and forms of non-crop-based micro-production (the infamous Recycling Tanks) are also available.

Settlements must make hard choices about what they will cultivate and how. Chironian soil is suitable for Terran crops, but they are disruptive to local ecosystems, registering as pollution, and Planet fights back hard against them. Purist populations demand familiar foods. Access to Chironian and hybrid foods requires advances along the Centauri spine of the Growth track of the tech tree.

The land can be terraformed and the weather and seas manipulated to become more or less suitable for farming. Greenhouses and fish hatcheries can be built to manage the risk of contamination and overcome deficiencies in local growing conditions.

In the narrative, nearly all the food taken by the colonists from Unity is badly irradiated.

Minerals
Minerals, sometimes misrepresented as "metal," represent the raw materials used to build a colony's physical plant and produce its material culture. Minerals are mined or otherwise collected from the planet's surface.

Early explorers can find and claim automated mines and other extractive operations previously set up by the mission's Forward Contact Teams.

Intensive mining and industry have consequences that should be carefully managed.

Energy
Energy is used as both a source of power for base operations and as a universal currency. Nuclear reactors provide the early colonies with abundant power, but safety and reliability issues will soon tempt colonists to build alternative generation sources such as renewables and nitrate combustion.

Early explorers can find and claim power stations previously set up by the mission's Forward Contact Teams.

Water
Water is the stuff of life. Also known as "hydro," water is everywhere on Chiron. Water is used in many industrial applications as well as in agriculture. Lack of water results in disease and death as well as unhappiness.

Early explorers can find and claim moisture farms and wells previously set up by the mission's Forward Contact Teams.

Assets
Emergency Supplies
Basic gear used to protect, sustain, and rescue life. Emergency supplies are obtained by salvaging Unity wreckage and plunder enemy bases. Players can use them to make up shortfalls of nutrients or water, convert SMACER outposts into friendly bases, and heal damaged infantry-class pieces. Gaia's Stepdaughters, the Human Tribe, and the Hunters of Chiron all begin with Emergency Supplies.

Medical Supplies
Complex pharmaceuticals and specialized diagnostic and surgical tools, including surgical robots. Medical Supplies are occasionally found during salvage missions but can also be manufactured following discovery of Biostatics. These assets can be used to heal damaged units, cure sickness, and for more nefarious purposes such as Dreaming and ReSoc. Both the Peacekeeping Forces and the Dreamers of Chiron begin with 1 Medical Supplies each--an expression of their very different philosophies regarding drugs and their benefits.

Trade Goods
Manufactured objects or consumables with explicitly commercial or recreational purposes. Examples include hand tools, construction materials, computer terminals, entertainment software, cooking spices, and reading material. Trade Goods can be sold or used to speed construction. Morgan Industries begin with 2 Trade Goods, reflecting Morgan's careful preparations.

War Stores
Weapons and ammunition in various grades. Hand weapons are frequently salvageable from Unity wreckage. Otherwise, War Stores are produced from arsenal facilities and their higher-tech descendants. War Stores can be used to upgrade existing military units, add a 50% defensive bonus to non-military units on base defense, or for trade purposes. The warlike societies begin with War Stores--Spartans with 3, and the Tribe, Hunters, and New Two Thousand with 1.

Research Pods
Self-contained datalinks libraries or modular science stations fully equipped to study the new world or convey the knowledge rescued from Old Earth. Research Pods appear on the map as Network Nodes. Taken to a friendly base, they can be connected to a Network Node for a free Tech advance of the present tier. Taken to a neutral or allied base, they may be sold. The Human Ascendancy, Children of the Atom, and, of course, the University of Planet all begin with Research Pods representing their preferred "take" from Unity.

Sources:
Use of the term "hydro" for water inspired by the 1995 Kevin Costner film Waterworld.

First image is "Vertical Farm" by JDNelms on DeviantArt.

Second image is "sci-fi mine" by Anna Mogileva on ArtStation.

Third image is from an article on Ottawa Life Magazine's website.

Fourth image is from Star Wars.

Fifth image is from the Netflix remake of Lost in Space.

Sixth image is from The Expanse.

Seventh image is from Bioware's Anthem.

Eighth picture is "Sci-fi Armory Workbench" by Gary Do on ArtStation.

Final image is "Intergalactic Research Pod" by Denis Osmanbegovich on ArtStation.

The Kokirri Armored Personnel Carrier was a favorite among Unity's pioneers because its thickly-armored cab was proof against the psychic attack of native mindworms.

J.T. Marsh's Forward Contact Team departed Unity more than an Earth-standard month before the micrometeorite collision that proved its undoing. Among other load-hauling and terraforming equipment, they brought with them twenty-six of these "tactical heavy tractors," refurbished after thirty-six years of service with the Republic of Korea Army. They spent the pre-Crisis period performing supply runs between the main landing site and outlying sensor towers.

Once Marsh released his subordinates to enlist with factions of their choice, most of the Kokirris and their crews apparently remained under his authority. In this capacity, they continued to be used on convoy duty through hostile territory.

Crews often replaced the smoke cartridges in the countermeasures launchers with incendiaries to help suppress fungal blooms. Jury-rigged flamethrowers were a not-uncommon addition to the dorsal turret ring.

Note the red jerrycans stored on the external rack. The diesel-powered Kokirri was one of only a handful of conventionally-fueled vehicles in the Unity motor pool.

This example demonstrates many of the survival adaptations made to the expedition's vehicles: additional road lamps, ground-penetrating radar to detect subterranean voids, winching equipment and tie-down points, radio communications mast, ample outward-facing stowage including tank-infantry telephones front and rear, and topside hatches for both commander and driver, useful when maneuvering in close quarters.


A rear-quarter view helpfully shows that that the vehicle is fitted with a second, detachable winch. The bowl-like feature above the pilot house just above the forward shelf of gas cans is an empty drone station.

Sources:
Image is "Sci fi cargo tank" by Anton Kavousi on ArtStation.