Event · event
The first test tube
Earth to Saturn; a capsule rides home in thirteen seconds; stored array power.
Read more in The Corridors
Tube physics and the Halcyon Breach (2410, 2418). The first test tube opens, a Mirror Race prestige project. No mirror array of 2410 collects more than about 30 GW and its two anchors draw about 200 GW, so it runs for eleven days on power stored from an early array's beam over about six years (see The Mirror Race). Eight years later comes the Halcyon Breach, when a gatekeeper team smuggles replicator designs from the Mandate's Vaults to an Open City faction. The Open Cities entered the race on replicator designs of their own; they stay in it on Halcyon's (see Superintelligence in 2497, in Recursive self-improvement, and The Mirror Race).
Prestige projects. From the 2400s each bloc needed something to show for its array: beam-launched probes, power for the tubes, plans for a Venus sunshade, and a run of "firsts" each bloc still claims. The first test tube opened in 2410, the Settlement's prestige project, run on its own array's beam stored over years (see Tube energy, below); it ended at Saturn, in Settlement space (see The Corridors). The array-pushed seed ships of the 2470s are the same kind of project, launched in the standoff (see Reaching outward).