After Contact, Peloran technologies let us go faster, farther, and cheaper.  And we did.  The Greeks had sent a colony mission out to a system on the inner edge of The Wall a year before.  With Peloran help, they sent another ship to the world they named Elysium, the Greek afterlife for heroes.  The second ship arrived before the primary colonists, which surprised them greatly.  They woke up to a new universe of possibilities, one where we were not alone.