Nevertheless, Earth at least might have condemned itself to total isolationism in a vast and lonely universe, were it not for the chain of events initiated by the arrival of the strangers from the sky.Every Federation schoolchild knows that Earthmen’s first encounter with alien life was the result of the voyage of the UNSS Icarus to Alpha Centauri in 2048. The establishment of peaceful relations between the two safely similar humanoid worlds made it easy for Terrans to overcome any residual fears they might retain about “little green men.”The rest of the history of that era reads like a utopian dream. The cooperation between Earth and Centauri, together with the genius that was Zefram Cochrane, produced the breakthrough in warp drive technology in 2055. Subsequent contacts with Vulcan, Tellar, and Epsilon Indii, homeworld of the Andorians, made the establishment of the United Federation of Planets in the year 2087 a logical progression.The first encounter with Vulcans, according to official sources, came about when the Earth ship UNSS Amity rescued a disabled Vulcan craft adrift inside the solar system in 2065.
