The Founders of the Old Earth Movement are decendants of the UGA scouting and colonization efforts in the Andromeda galaxy. upon engaging in FTL travel they discovered several other planets with human and silica based life forms. These planets were usually peacefully incorporated into the OEM, but if required they were forcefully assimilated.
Losing contact with one of their scout drones in the center of their cluster of planets, the OEM inadvertantly discovered the UGA's Andromeda teleport relay. From this they determined the coordinates of what the databanks called "Tau'ri'den". Initiating the teleport sequence described in the manuals, they sent a tactical scout drone with long range gravitic communications.
The planet discovered was larger than any three of the planets in the empires current territories. Having a normal breatheable atmosphere and relatively normal gravity, the OEM sent a complete colony team to inhabit the planet and discover what if any natural resources it contained. Renaming the planet Prometheus, the team discovered a high quantity of natural monochromium, and set up a permanent relay and comms base on the planet.
The OEM is a dictatorial technocracy occupying the UGA extragalactic colonies and an area about twice the size of the Tau'ri empire in the north-eastern sector of the galaxy. While the majority of the people have moved to Prometheus and its surrounding star systems, we still maintain a strong presence in the Andromeda galaxy. We have discovered how to create and manipulate singularities of all sizes, due to a millenia of study of the singularity generator on Chronos in the Andromeda territories. Due to the effects of long term exposure of organic material to a singularity, we have created and integrated into our society a race of sentient robots.
I have to ask this, how did the Sol system and its neigbors lose their entire vertical farming infrastructures?