The problem with both the NK arc and the Clone arc is that Deborah Joy Levine had left the show and the powers that be could care less of the cannon set forth for the show by Deborah. They just decided they needed what they thought was a cool idea for some episoded and someone pulled stuff out of their butts to use as ideas for some of these episodes.
It you remember in the messages in the globe Jor-El talked about adapting the hyperlight drive to a ship. I believe (but not sure) that Jor-El alluded to the fact that only probes had been sent out by Krypton up to this point. Making the ship for Kal-El the first manned ship. Since in the globe messages we see the planet blow up when could any other manned ships been sent out. Now remember this is SEASON 1.
Even if a colony ship had been sent out Zara would have had to be born on Krypton about the same time as Kal-El for a marriage to be arranged. So the colony ship had to leave about the same time as his ship so why wan't he put on the colony ship.
Then there is the time problem for the colony. How did a ship holding enough people to populate a colony, find a suitable planet and build up said colony in 30 years. Also they talk about how difficult it is on New Krypton so how did they come by the specular palance ship.
So in my opinion though there are parts of the NK arc I liked this whole arc was pulled from someone's butt.
