Lucidus mission preparation
Preparation for the Lucidus mission commenced on Earth multiple generations before the planned launch of the space-bound portion of the mission. This preparation involved the establishment of a complex network of educational and cultural institutions beginning more than an Earth-century in advance of the mission's launch.
These institutions were designed to cultivate a diverse and highly educated population on Earth possessing qualities favorable for populating the mission so that a healthy supply of suitable individuals would be available when the time came for selecting people to depart on the mission. It was understood Earth-based mission support would be important as well, so a broadly-targeted development process was implemented to improve the chances that the humanity remaining on Earth would be able to reinforce the mission remotely and would be unlikely to disrupt the mission.
Preparation also involved in-depth research into which protocols should be enacted for the space-bound stages of the Lucidus mission as well as development of guidelines for how the resulting human civilization would develop upon its newfound world.
Early development efforts
Development of Earthly institutions prior to the Lucidus mission was important to Lucidus organizers because the mission required a specially prepared crew of highly skilled crew and other passengers representing the full diversity of Earth's population, and the crew would be of a limited size.
Prior non-specific cultural and economic development efforts based on more traditional methods had proven insufficient to prepare a proper diversity of well qualified candidates to draw from for such a mission. Founders interested in a successful space-faring mission that would be designed to seed a population of humans on a far-off world understood it would be necessary to unfold a large-scale multi-generational development project over the long term to improve preparatory efforts and advance humanity on Earth to a status suitable for a mission if they wanted that mission to be likely to have a positive, humane outcome.
Social and cultural equity concerns
Preparation for the Lucidus mission on Earth involved the establishment of schools, cultural institutions, scientific research facilities, and other infrastructure in a wide variety of locations around the planet. Special attention was given to avoid perpetuating sociocultural inequity by avoiding overinvestment of these resources in highly developed regions or underinvestment in economically disadvantaged and geopolitically deprived global regions. Lucidus mission preparers wanted to ensure preparatory infrastructure was distributed without prejudice to geography or the nationality, ethnicity, or cultural or socioeconomic characteristics of the populations being served. The spirit of equity was paramount. Organizers understood they would need to provide additional support in underdeveloped regions of the world to ensure these populations acquired parity with the world's most economically developed societies. This was necessary to ensure no one cultural or ethnical background would be over-represented or dominant aboard the mission due to a failure of traditional educational and social systems in disadvantaged regions of the world.
The mission's primary early organizers give special attention to developing resources in linguistics and philology to lay the groundwork for the planned eventual establishment of a common neutral language for mission participants to utilize in written and verbal communication. As planned, the Glossa Communi language developed during the late middle stages of Lucidus mission preparation. This new invented language allowed for mission organizers to avoid the cultural dominance of any one Earthly linguistic majority. The people born on Earth who left aboard the mission were familiar enough with Glossa Communi to use it as a second language. They shared this knowledge with Earth-based support personnel so that the space-bound mission could effectively communicate with Earth.
Earthly strategy
Lucidus mission preparations were purposely made independent of and without the expressed cooperation or direction of any governmental entity in order to avoid any political interference, which organizers feared would most certainly be detrimental to the mission and possibly perpetuate historical Earthly conflicts and inequities aboard the mission. Lucidus organized wished to avoid duplicating these perennial Earthly struggles in their new civilization.
As developmental efforts commenced, Lucidus organizers established themselves as a non-governmental organization to assert independence from governmental influence and pressure. Lucidus founders wished for political propensities and power-based considerations to have the lowest possible chance of impacting the mission's foundations. In fact, the mission's preparatory global developmental efforts took place somewhat clandestinely for the majority of the mission's preparatory phase. Efforts were disguised as genuine endeavors to improve education and human rights for all of Earth's population—which was not entirely untrue—although the ultimate purpose of these developmental efforts was kept relatively quiet until the latter days of Lucidus mission preparations.
As rumors circulated regarding the connection of these monumental efforts with various types of space exploration, operatives were allowed to provide the public with alternate explanations indicating the unprecedented developmental efforts were associated with desires to augment economic output and consumerism, which was a highly-believable capitalist rationalization in the view of most Earth citizens. Other waves of rumors were met with explanations pointing to efforts to recruit personnel to combat global warming with extraordinary engineering efforts, which was also a plausible story considering the dire climate situation Earth was experiencing at the time.
Mission launch preparation
Following the developmental phase of Lucidus mission preparation and preceding mission launch by a number of years, organizers commenced a high selective recruitment process for individuals who would populate the mission.
Final crew members were selected based on a process that weighted multiple factors to ensure not only a workforce of the proper intellectual and aptitude-related qualities to carry out a highly scientific mission, but to also populate the mission with non-staff passengers who possessed the appropriate level of cultural, ethnic, experiential, and genetic diversity to ensure the long-term self-contained survival of a quality human population in long-term isolation from the rest of humanity.
The population of 9,000 individuals that eventually departed upon the launch of the Lucidus mission's three spacecraft contained both crew members employed in maintaining the mission's operations as well as general population members who were selected to contribute culturally and socially. A proportional population of children and youth of various ages were included to ensure a stable age distribution upon the Lucidus inhabitants in the long term. Mission organizers wanted to safeguard the mission against sudden population fluxes that might occur if too many of the mission occupants were of a similar age. Excessive numbers of deaths and/or births might otherwise occur within an inconvenient and potentially mission-threatening span of time.
The population regulation measures planned for the Lucidus mission were put into effect using equitable and ethical methods far exceeding the morality and equity seen by any prior Earthly population regulation scheme. A descendent of these measures survived the mission and into the governmental structure of Illuminatia once humans populated the newfound Neonisi planet.
Planning for mission situations
Astrophysicists and theoretical physicists concerned themselves particularly with a very thorough, highly-detailed set of protocols in anticipation of a wide array of possible situations the Lucidus mission might encounter during the space-bound portion of the undertaking. Mission crews internalized a strict and solemn duty to execute these instructions and procedures precisely as written with no variation. Even the details of various responses to changing circumstances are prescribed in the mission protocols, as well as conventions for developing new procedures in the event of unforeseen circumstances of a novel nature.
One well-known and fateful set of these protocols is that of the Existential Crisis. The execution of these instructions—with automated assistance from the Lucidus ships themselves—was credited with saving the entire mission, preserving human life, and allowing for the settlement of Illuminatia when the Lucidus mission encountered a space-time anomaly that resulted in the declaration of an Existential Crisis situation and the subsequent termination of the mission.