Long distance communication has always been a problem. At the moment, the best way to send a message is to put it on a data disk and physically send it via a courier. As a result of this, there is a huge market for commercial vessels to carry information back and forth across the stars. Since only early stage colony worlds import materials and commercial products on any great scale, the biggest trade across the known worlds is data.

There are a few small, independant companies and traders who transport information. It is these vessels that keep the prices down, despite the best efforts of the larger corporations.

Anyone with a ship can give it a go, so long as they can pay for the fuel.

The Grand Unification is the name given to a momentous event that occured around Y8.

Started in Y6 by Teaan the Righteous, The Grand Unification was a plan to unite all the peoples and resources of the old Earth under one government. The goal was to put everything into saving the Feline species. With the discovery of the Rogue Star a few years earlier, few realised the implications that came with it.

Teaan understood that with the way the world was organised at the time, all the conflicts and petty bickering would waste resources (and more importantly - time) so that when the threat became more imediate it would be too late to do anything.

The basic idea was to try and get the Felines off-world as soon as possible. It wasn't until several lifetimes later that any plans that had any possibility of actually working were finally presented. But it was through the singular efforts of Teaan that it was even possible for the Felines to leave the doomed world.

As it turned out, there was just over two and a half thousand years in which to leave the planet. Seven hundred and eighty years after Teaan died, FTL flight became possible, and with the discovery of new, compatible worlds the exodus to leave began in earnest.

By Y2480 the entire remaining population of Earth had been relocated, and the last scientific observers left in Y2565, officially abandoning the planet.