The times they are a changein’ …

Over 250 years ago, the colony ship Sagan was launched toward a small habitable planet around a non descript class g star.

Their jump drive malfunctioned. When they exited from jump space, they had no idea where they were, none of the stars they could see were on any map they had. The jump drive was destroyed, and the colony ship with almost 1000 people in cold sleep was in the middle of nowhere.

The original plan had been to orbit their new home world for a few weeks while the advanced team of engineers, and builders carved out a basic colony, then the others would be woken up in stages and shuttled down to their new world.

The captain and crew realized that the only way to have any chance of survival was to find the nearest colonizable world and head for it. Without jump drive it would take years, but what choice did they have.

A survey of near-space only found one system within reasonable travel time. A solar system comprising of a red dwarf star, and at lest 4 detectable planets was only 50 years away.

The decision was made, the course was laid in, the ship moved out. The original crew of engineers took it in shifts to spend a few months awake guiding the ship along her long trip.

A lot of those engineers never made it. Cryo-sleep capsules are not 100% safe, and many died over the years. But they made it in the end, after almost 53 years of travel, the Sagan was in in orbit around an Earth sized rocky planet in the Goldylocks zone of the star. Due to the nature of the system, the planet is tidally locked with the star making her day the same length as her year, about 2.4 standard days. (57 hours, 36 minutes).

The planet is made up of over 80% water and a smattering of middling sized contenents. There are islands in abundance.

The star was christened by the settlers as Serendipity, and the planet was called Avalon.

Avalon is a bit smaller than Earth and generates about .96 earth G. The large oceans act as a kind of thermal buffer with strong currents that lets the heat from the sunward side move to the side in shadow and keep the temperature much more uniform. Even so the planetary average temperature is a rather warm 34C.

The sunward side also tend to have large amounts of cloud cover from the oceans evaporating and coming down as rain.

The thing that really surprised the new colonists of Avalon was they were not alone on the planet. Moss, lichen and other primitive plants and algae were prolific, and the planet has a very Earth like O2 / N2 atmosphere comprising of almost 12% O2.

Of the original 1,047 members of the colony ship crew, 814 managed to survive the trip. The Sagan was not a true colony ship. Rather she was designed to move a lot of people and a fair bit of basic gear.

You could call this the “bargain basement” colony package. The idea was for the engineers and support staff to build, essentially barracks enough for everyone to live, drop them off, and the rest was up to them.

They would be left with one spaceship, a shuttle that could move people and small amounts of cargo from space to the planet’s surface, and a planet side main complex with a fusion power plant, infirmary, and library.

Animals also made the trip, hundreds of baby pigs, goats, chickens, cows and the like also frozen. Along with a few hundred tons of foodstuffs and seeds to get started.

The Sagan was to get them established and leave. The ship is not capable of landing in an atmosphere.

A lot more happened over the last 200 years. The colony has grown to several million. And their are science and mining colonies all over the system.