UEFSA Foscolo flight to Alpha Centauri

Expedition

First interstellar flight

Using a Foscolo Drive (F-Drive) powered by the rare element Ununpentium (Element 115, later dubbed Foscolium), the UEFSA spaceship Foscolo makes the first interstellar flight to Alpha Centauri by opening a portal into F-Space, traversing this region and emerging at pre-calculated coordinates. At a distance of 4.39 light years from Earth, the Foscolo makes the journey in just over one Earth week. After a week-long communications blackout, the first news from the Foscolo crew reports a successful F-Space journey, which deposited the ship at the edge of the Alpha Centauri A planetary system.   After several days of realspace travel inbound to the system, the crew report the discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A. This sparks the first wave of mass interstellar colonial expansion from Sol, now known as the First Exodus (2115 - 2135), as thousands of people seek to escape from the troubles on Earth to the new 'frontier'. Suddenly space exploration becomes a commercial industry, and several of Earth's larger corporations begin to fund space exploration and colonisation efforts. As interstellar distances increase, cryosleep becomes a necessity of interstellar travel. Ununpentium mining becomes almost as big business as Helium-3 mining.