The Terran Age of Discovery-AD 02200s and 02300s

The Terran Age of Discovery, also known as the First Age of Exploration, was a period in history starting in the 02200s and continuing into the mid-02300s during which Terran humanity engaged in extensive exploration of their corner of the Mosaic Galaxy.  In the process they established direct contacts with many xenoalien races, including the ascended Promedians, the birdlike Pauk, the various Felinoid races of the Dispersion, numerous Preservationist-transplanted humans, and others all the while mapping the vast regions they explored. Galactic historians would oftentimes refer to this 'Terran Age of Discovery' as being defined by the efforts of the descendents of mankind and their intensive travels in search of alternative trade routes throughout the Sirius Subsector and beyond, compelled by the various interstellar trade opportunities presented and the chance to make discoveries of ancient technologies that could benefit Terra.

Ships of the VanGuard began to systematically explore the Sirius Subsector in the early 02200s, but those efforts really began bearing fruit a century later.  The first half of the 02300s were a time of relative peace and unbridled passion about voyages of discover.  

The 'Terran Age of Discovery' is seen in Galactic History as a bridge between the time of the ancient Progenitors and the rise of the Galactic era which would over time be dominated by beings descended from the little backwater world of Terra.  Accounts from distant worlds fueled the rise of scientific curiosity and thereby ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry. Terran expansion in the 02300s led to the rise of a vast colonial confederation called the TransStellar Federacy, with the contact between the homeworld of Terra and these intriguing new worlds producing the Sirius Exchange: a broad-spectrum economy built upon the transfer of non-sapiant biological lifeforms, exotic foods, xenohuman populations (including slaves), trans-species communicable diseases, and aspects of culture between the Terran and xenoalien spheres of influence. 

A new class of starships began to enter the VanGuard just before 02300.  These vessels were capable replacements for the Venture class and her brethren and served throughout the first half of the century in both scientific and military functions.  

Terran knowledge about other remote sapiant cultures was sourced in reports from allies such as the Promedians or from captured data from species like the Cronans, Pauk, and T'Garans and were often obscured by legends.  Many of these legendary tales dated back from the time of the Great Zetan and his/her/its successors and gave what little was known of the Preservationist account of early Galactic History. Another source were reports from the time pre-dating the Galactic Assembly's founding and that vast organization's oversight of the Sirius Subsector.

These two exploratory cruisers along with their attendant exploration frigate are seen here over Calvin's World, a distant colony from Terra orbiting a strange-acting orange star called Hobbes.  While the derivation of its name is unknown, the fact that Calvin's World was the only world in the valuable Hobbes system made it a source of contention between several of the inhabited worlds.

The prelude to the Terran Age of Exploration was a series of VanGuard expeditions across the Sirius Subsector in the late 02200s.  Although the vile Cronans had threatened many of the inhabited worlds with violence and destruction, the Cronan fleet also indirectly unified much of the Sirius Subsector and with the rise of the influence of Terra and the vaunted VanGuard safe trade routes and lines of communication soon stretched from Rigel to the Antares Maelstrom.

The Zarlacks had not only overthrown the Cronans in the 02260s and 02270s but eventually took the territories of that ancient empire for its own.  They would become a nominal ally during most of the 02300s, but in the later half of the century they would withdraw their cooperative efforts and re-militarize.