nance by the
totally foreign open sky government of Earth,
billions of kilometers distant.

Disengagement, the opportunists agitated, was
long overdue; Earth inhabitants would never really
understand what life in deep space was about.

The crisis came in the middle centuries.
Bureaucrats representing the central government
on Earth were isolated from the affairs of the
colonies they administered. The indigenous populace
ignored their authority, their credentials were
challenged, and they were invited to return to
their home planet -- with no options.

The central government on Earth, weakened by
shortages and distracted by agitators at home
and in space, was neither vigilant nor prepared.

Early in the second millennium of the
Interplanetary Era, several colonies in the Outer
Region declared their independence of the original
United Planetary System and of each other. Other
colonies and outposts joined and within a decade,
all had proclaimed themselves as newly constituted
nation-states. Each reserved exclusive rights to
negotiate with other nation-states of the Region.
New agreements were implemented on matters
of common interest, such as credits, industry, a
judicial system, trade and commerce, science and
technology, space traffic control, education and
cultural exchange, and creation and management
of infrastructure and management of life-support
resources within their territories and jurisdictions.

The Outer Region's proclamations panicked the
central government.

On the one hand, Earth ethicists argued, were the
rights of the inhabitants of the space colonies. As
members of distant societies they had modified
their bodies, their environment and their cultures,
therefore, they had a right to seek their own
destiny unfettered by well-intentioned, but
obviously impotent laws that originated on Earth.
The advocates of this philosophy emphasized
the Outer Region's right to their own physical,
technological and cultural development. As unique
civilizations, evolving at an unprecedented rapid
pace, they were already radically different from
the humankind that had remained on distant Earth.

On the other hand, claimed others, the system-wide
scarcity of natural sources vital to the survival
of the species was a shared crisis. The crisis
could be solved, if at all, only through the most
concerted application of humankind's intellectual
and collective genius. In one context, they were
indeed unique ci