"Officially, it’s about spreading humanity to other worlds, of course, and the national prestige that goes along with it. But tensions are high between nations, and have been for some decades. This whole subject is seen as a zero-sum game, and to a large extent, it is. Each world that we claim is a base of operations denied to everyone else. It’s also a base of operations outside the range of surveillance or attack. Unofficially, there’s a large military component to the push."