Final Farewell to the Known World

The space fleet Star Hopper had just launched from the out post on Pluto. The four ships chosen for the mission represented the four participating planets who had promoted and funded the program. The mission at hand was a daunting one, humans were attempting to leave the solar system for the first time. It was decided that the ships would head to the star Proxima Centauri. The target planet was Proxima Centauri b, a small planet with thorough promise of hosting human life. The qualifications a planet needed, to be able host human life, had proportionally gone down as human technology had gone up. The planets orbiting our sun were living proof of human engineering.

The solar system that Star Hopper was leaving behind was a thriving multi-planet system. Humans had optimized space travel so well that it took only two weeks to travel from Earth to Pluto. Humans had also perfected terra-spheres to the point that they could safely put them into orbit around Jupiter as mining facilities, and Mars had essentially become a second Earth. Humans were ready to expand.

Star Hopper 1 was the commanding ship of the mission. On board were scientists from literally all over the solar system. The ships, cleverly titled Star Hopper 1, Star Hopper 2, Star Hopper 3, and Star Hopper 4, were each specifically designed to do a separate task. The flag ship, SH1, held the brains of the project and most of the colonists who were chosen to be the first people on Proxima Centauri b. Ships 2 and 3 carried scientific equipment and resources from the other planets. Ship 4 was a single, giant, communications device. It broadcast powerful waves of energy and received like pulses from Pluto. The small outpost on Pluto would be the fleet's primary link to humanity. A secondary communications station had been set up on an asteroid only a few thousand miles away from Pluto, this one was to be used only if something happened to the base on Pluto. However, it also served to pinpoint the exact location of the signals source. The Star Hopper fleet said there final good-byes and jumped into the accelerated speed profile. The ETA was only nine years.

Stephen Johnson Jr. was the lead scientist in the expedition. His father was the fellow responsible for designing the accelerated speed profile; because of him, this mission was possible. The travel to Proxima Centauri b went surprisingly smooth, no accidents and no mutinies. Mr. Johnson, he wasn't known as Jr. on board SH1, let out a great big sigh of relief as they came within the gravitational pull of Proxima Centauri. The red giant filled the ships with an other worldly glow. Soon the ships would be landing on a new Earth, at least that was Johnson's hope. Most of the studies pointed to a habitable planet, but he held secret doubts about what this planet would hold, or wouldn't hold.

*Authors note:

This was inspired by my other post "Letter from the Future" (you can read it here, https://theprose.com/post/137703/letter-from-the-future). I wanted to expand upon the trip to Proxima Centauri, although my brain did fry a little towards the end of writing this post.

I highly recommend, and would greatly appreciate, you read my post Letter from the Future as it will help explain what happened to the "Blue Marble" just 27 years after the Star Hopper fleet left Pluto.