An excerpt from a speech to the Assembly 1,500 years ago:

...until about 3,000 years ago. It was then that a Doctor Thomas Brice, working for the entity then known as NASA, discovered how to create a Worm Hole artificially. These Brice Holes - or Brice Tubes, as they are now called - allow us to travel great distances in a very short period of time.
In one stroke, Dr. Brice not only created the means for mankind to expand out into the stars, but provided the common ground for mankind to finally unite and pool it's resources for a common goal.

Unfortunately, too much time in a Brice Tube would eventually crush the hull of any ship traveling through it due to the dense nature of it's gravity well. This did not stop mankind, however, and we traveled throughout our own Sol System freely, using 3 days as the maximum amount of Tube-time, setting up colonies that prospered and provided additional resources for continued exploration. Reaching out beyond our own system was being done in increments, 3 day jumps that allowed us to establish beacons in empty space as anchors for the next jump. And then...

A research fellow at the Academy, Dr. Kurt Nellis, discovered that if one were to enter a Brice Tube at an angle, going counter-clockwise, and traveling around the inner rim, one could go indefinitely through the Tube without fear of being crushed. To the fictional world of "warp drives" and "hyperspace" we can now add the reality of Brice Tubes and the Nellis Process.

And the Great Age of Expansion began. The short Brice Tubes were still used for local travel, and the Great Tube was established at the edge of our galaxy, pointed outward to...we still don't know because we haven't reached the end. Traveling outward - and onward - this way has been referred to as "Surfing the Tube".

The colonies that have been established to date along the Great Tube Way, and the current Terminus, take 20 Common Years to travel. We have settled in countless places, and met countless other races who have either welcomed us or not, as they chose.Two of the largest vessels ever built travel this route, carrying passengers, workers, materials, and goods back and forth. And still, from each of these established colonies, and, yes, from even the current Terminus itself, we continue to send manned vessels through Brice Tubes in search of new opportunities, new races, new experiences.

We go on...................