The cold, hard truth was... the Federation simply didn't have enough manpower!
Currently, their staggeringly low population was the single greatest bottleneck to their expansion!
Jason was practically pulling his hair out over the unsolvable population crisis. He had debated with sociologists and demographers for hours, but they couldn't produce a viable short-term solution.
Educating and integrating the reptilian natives required manpower. Strip-mining the Arctic required manpower. Excavating the ancient ruins required manpower. Where the hell were they supposed to find all these people?
It had been over nine years since Earth was destroyed. The total population aboard The Ark had grown to roughly 80,000 but nearly 30,000 of them were children!
With the High Council aggressively incentivizing childbirth and providing massive welfare subsidies, many families had finally agreed to have a second, third, or even fourth child! The population growth rate was practically redlining.
