So I just saw the new intro....

[Major Ahole]

The human space ships were just floating above earth the entire time? They didn't try find a new planet?

Tell me at the least they returned to earth after exhausting all attempts at a cure...

[Nekochan]

Cause floating in space and traversing space are entirely different sets of tech, we have stuff float in space now, but we can't make it go to another system.

Now spoilers time

You are among several attempts to see if humans can return to the surface to find a cure, resources are low, people in space are also infected and it's become critical a cure be found because everyone is about to die in space too from being infected. Most notably the first few missions are you following up on why one of the teams didn't report back after landing. The datapads have lots of this lore on them in the form of personal logs.

[Major Ahole]

Originally posted by Nekochan:

Cause floating in space and traversing space are entirely different sets of tech, we have stuff float in space now, but we can't make it go to another system.

Now spoilers time

You are among several attempts to see if humans can return to the surface to find a cure, resources are low, people in space are also infected and it's become critical a cure be found because everyone is about to die in space too from being infected. Most notably the first few missions are you following up on why one of the teams didn't report back after landing. The datapads have lots of this lore on them in the form of personal logs.

We could float to mars right now if we wanted to, the problem is funding and a reason. All of that goes out the window when Earth has no landing areas. Theres no reason to stick around an inhabitable planet. With the deatomizing tech these guys have, it makes no sense why they don't have mars and moon bases at the least, as in this game world, it's safer to land on them and create, and their tech can create pretty fast...

[Nekochan]

Theres no potential for a cure on mars or the moon, only Earth, so fairly solid reason to stay in orbit. Also floating would then imply a generational space station to do it, our fastest shuttles now with a tiny crew burning a ton of fuel can do the trip in about 6-8 months depending on the position. All of the stuff that happened in game accelerated pretty quickly, they would not have had time to set anything up to do that.

[FFH_Greg]

The Ark is a colony that houses whats left of the human race after we were forced to abandon Earth following an ecological disaster.

Its not a space ship, its more of a space colony/station. Think of a massive ISS that houses whats left of us You can't travel through space on it. Your player character returns to Earth to find the cure to a virus that only became apparent once they were onboard the station.