I record on a word file by date. I try to write in such a way that I can come back to the file months later and be able to read what I wrote, so I avoid short hand whenever possible. Then I write the actual story in another word file. Here is a section of my notes for my recently died Republic of Earth AAR.
January 2050
Terraforming Task Group enters Mars orbit to start terraforming the planet.
Large amounts of minerals found on Venus and the Cargo Task Group starts shipping automated mines to the planet while Earth starts creating two mass drivers, one of which will be moved to Venus.
On the 6th Mars was mapped by Geology Task Group 1 lead by Captain Cornelius Schneider of the Darwin and found to have a decent amount of Boronide and a lot of Vendarite, almost 6 million tons but both were hard to find. The first jump point was found by Gravity Survey Group 2 lead by Commander Norris Burrus of the Fermi.
The mass drivers are completed on the 8th and one is send to Venus on the 11th after field testing.
On the 29th over 25 million tons of Sorium was found on Uranus but it was not the most accessible.
February 2050
Commander Merry Couture of the Enterprise leads the Enterprise and the Valiant to the jump point starting on the 3rd. It’s a journey of 1.89 bkm and will take four days and just under nine hours. At 22:44:00 on 7th Feb, the Jump Exploration Task Group became the first two human vessels to make a jump. They landed in Alpha Centauri just inside the orbit of Alpha Centarui A III.
At 22:49 EST Jump Exploration Task Group make first contact with an alien group living on Alpha Centauri A II. The Enterprise turned on active sensors and the task group started toward Alpha Centauri A II with the intention of orbiting the planet at 100,000 km. At 2,000 km/s it would take just shy of 22 hours to reach the planet. At 08:09 3 ships were discovered. All three were 8,400 tons, one was designated Orc class, one Hydra class, and the third Vampire class. These ships were at the edge of the LASS at 33.6 million km. Twenty minutes later a fourth ship class was detected, it was called the Chimera was 1,000 tons and found at a distance of ~722,000km. The other three ships were seen to go 1714 km/s so the task group started heading back to the jump point still at 2,000 km/s. They are nine hours forty minutes out. The Chimera turned on active sensors that appear to only have a range of 8.76 million km. The Chimera can also keep pace at 2,000 km/s so the task group speeds up by 500 km/s which reduces their journey to 6 hours 56 minutes by this time the Chimera is 9,000 km astern. Within 30 seconds of speeding up the Chimera has sped up to 2499 km/s so the task group speeds up by another 250 km/s. The Chimera starts falling astern not speeding up to catch the task group while the other three ships continue at 1714 km/s.
At 10:39 they attempt to make establish communications. At 15:49:11 they transit back into Sol. A diplomatic team made up of Commander Gene Jetton, Brigadier General Ahmed Patin, Commander Aretha McArthy, Charla Stratford, and Lieutenant Commander Edgardo Figg are set to start trying to decipher the communications of the aliens.
Another segment later looks like
15th May
JETG jumped into Sirius, a binary star system with the second star orbiting at 20 AU from the first. There are six planets orbiting Sirius A, four inside the orbit of Sirius B and two outside. There are also two planets orbiting Sirius B.
17th June
Morrical Freight Company launched a Morrical Small F5 class Freighter, the first civilian ship ever launched.
3rd July
First colonists settle on Mars.
Postlewaite launches a Postelwaite Large F5 class Freighter, the first ship for that company.
17th July
MFC launches a Morrical H5 class Fuel Harvester, the first ship of its kind ever.
20th July
Geology Task Group 1 finishes surveying all the planets and moves to Neptune and is retasked to survey the moons. Geology Task Group 2 has surveyed all moons out to Saturn and is currently working on Uranus.
The Coontz finishes building the jump gate at Alpha Centauri and heads toward Sirius to build a jump gate there.
