After the habitable planet Chiron was discovered in the Alpha Centauri system, colonizing it was only a matter of time and effort. Launching the I.S.S. "Unity" was a colossal international project, incomparable to any other astronautical endeavour. The ESP Center became the axis for this effort, managing the cooperation and optimizing the mission parameters. The I.S.S. "Unity" held thousands of human volunteers, aided by an equally large collective of non-human SI. Despite the ship's critical failure on Chiron's orbit, most of the human crew made a successful planetfall with enough raw materials to continue the project, eventually building first cities on the planet. The AI were not as lucky, since only a handful of them survived the crash, but they also made a huge contribution to turn Chiron into a new home.