Exploration, exploitation….what's the difference ?
Commander John Koenig watched as the planets in the solar system drew closer and closer, the Argonauts hyperspace scanners charting the planets, making rough surveys of remarkable accuracy and storing it in the ship's computers.
In a few short hours this whole system would be visited, samples would be taken for analysis and fauna would be discovered in short amounts of time, catalogued and processed. In a sense, Koenig knew that they were following the traditional and standard federation practices.
Privately, he knew different.
Koenig had been in Starfleet his whole adult life, he'd been born in space, so logically he'd followed his expertise and his earlier experiences. Koenig had seen how different the Starfleet he served in today from the one he'd heard stories of and read of in the past. Then again, could you blame them ?
Constant wars, new discoveries, races and older and deadlier empires, all of them made the prospect of exploration more and more harder to accept. The idea of discovery, whether out of base curiosity, or simple adventure was becoming more and more outdated as the years passed.
Koenig leaned back in his chair, giving the planets a contemplative look. It wouldn't be long before the committee decreed these planets as safe, allowing colonisation to begin. It would be a long, arduous process, prefab buildings, power and water facilities set up.
It would take years, but Koenig knew that the planet's future was already decided. Mining and industrialisation. How else was a planet to become viable and allow the process to occur again and again ?
Exploration and exploitation, in this case, meant pretty much the same thing. It would happen, Koenig knew already, to other races. Koenig had been a starship commander long enough to know that in time pseudo slavery would one day take place and he prayed he didn't live long enough to witness it.
