Editing Astronomican (section)

==That Other Thing==
It's not mentioned much, but the Adeptus Astronomica '''is''' the single most important organization in the entire Imperium. Without it, there is no Imperium. Humanity is only able to leverage its numbers and make war on a galactic scale because of the reliability of its warp travel. Yes, sometimes ships are lost to the Warp or arrive two centuries too late. However, sometimes every successor chapter answers a call and arrives to bail out [[Baal]] or [[Terra]] all at once. Sometimes crusades of hundreds of ships go cleansing a path hundreds of star systems wide. No other race in the galaxy has the same combined [[Tyranids|numbers]], [[Eldar|reactiveness]] and [[Tau|coordination]], and it is owed to the Astronomican. The last time Mankind was unable to make use of Warp, the first intergalactic empire Mankind had (this was before the Age of Strife, in fact it was the same government that ruled at the time of the Dark Age of Technology, implied to be some form of corrupt but functional and effective democracy) fell apart, entire planets lost contact with each other, Terra became a shitpit (And THAT forced the Emperor to come out of the shadows and begin his preparations to end the Age of Strife), AND it was even smaller than the Imperium of Man, AND that time period didn't have all the nasty shit that plagues the galaxy today.

Also warp travel being what it is sometimes it fucks up in a beneficial way and [[What|the fleet arrives several years before it left]].

In all seriousness, the lore depicts response fleets arriving even while invaders are still off-loading troops or after the battle has peaked but before it can swing either way. This implies Imperial Warp travel is usually very reliable and extremely quick. The rapidity of the Great Crusade itself also supports this.

Arguably, the '''real''' reason (beyond the plain absolutist argument of [[heresy]]!) as to why the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] should be left to maintain his brutal, uncaring and overall dystopic [[Imperium]] is that the vast majority of humanity utterly '''''needs''''' the Astronomican working at tip-top shape (all those [[Hive World]]s with their highly-cramped living spaces surrounded by nigh-uninhabitable barren wastelands are ''not'' the least bit self-sustaining in the foodstuffs department) lest countless trillions or even quadrillions starve if Warp travel becomes unfeasible and supply ships can't reach their destinations...so if one cared about human lives, simply trying to overthrow the Imperium's clearly-horrible system would tragically never work without some viable replacement of the Astronomican to facilitate Warp travel or otherwise leaving the Emperor and his daily meal intake be entirely...and successfully overthrowing all other sources of authority in the [[Imperium]] while doing the latter would probably cause [[Tzeentch]] to bow out and admit you've bettered him. The best an Imperial planet could probably hope for is ousting their asshole planetary governor in a quick and sudden coup while keeping the fuck away from any [[Chaos Cults|obscure]] [[Genestealer Cult|groups]] offering to help, after which the planet manages to improve living standards while continuing to pay their [[Imperial Tithe]] in full and on time so the [[Administratum]] probably won't bat an eye about the new management...and they're lucky enough that the [[Administratum]] isn't saddling them with a nigh-impossible tithe too which, as we know, [[Grimderp|is rather asking a lot in 40K]].