[RP] Codex Entries for the Sol System

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AlphaMach
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[RP] Codex Entries for the Sol System

Post by AlphaMach »

Preliminary observations:

0. There's no template for the codex, so each entry is formatted as some text and a few useful bits of
information approximating what their in-game presentation could look like for the time being.

1. These can probably be cut up into multiple entries if deemed too long for Codex standards,
most entries mention physical aspects, some kind of economic, resource or other
contribution to the system and what the habitats are like, orbital infrastructure, etc. roughly
divided by paragraph.

2.There’s a lot of political and cultural structure missing that I think could be fleshed out for
these places, I’m not particularly good at writing those, and it’d take a LOT of extra time for
me to do it here. My recommendation is that whoever has good ideas on that front, please
write them, maybe under a new entry for [X or Y] Culture/Politics/etc.

3. I’m assuming we’ll be able to hotlink between entries in the Codex, you’ll see lots of
capitalized names for Places. (But I couldn’t be bothered to make them all look like fake
links, you get the idea.)
I threw in some “node” entries for the Inner and Outer system that are just meant to group
and bridge between other entries since I’ve no idea how this stuff is gonna end up looking, it
could just as easily use a folder structure or something.

4. The wiki (currently) says
“Three of the eight planets, one of the dwarf planets, and three moons are currently inhabited by
Humans. Of the planets, Humans have colonized Venus, Earth, and Mars. Pluto is the lone inhabited
dwarf planet. Earth's Moon (formally named "Luna"), Mar's moon (formally named "Phobos"), and
Saturn's moon ("Titan") have likewise undergone terraforming processes, and are now inhabited by
Humanity.“
[Race: Humanity\History\Origin System]

However:
- The general consensus on the Discord from #Lore-discussion exchanges seems to
indicate that the Sol system should be much more thoroughly colonized than presented on
the wiki.
- I agree that is a good and reasonable idea for a FTL interstellar civilization;
- Speaking to the Head Lore Maintainer about this prior to writing, there was no objection to
expanding the list of colonized worlds.
(“Terraforming” was also part of that discussion, leading to the current iteration of the
planets.)

5. Terra and Luna particularly have a lot very confusing lore that I’m not terribly familiar with
the evolution of beyond what the wiki says on it right now. If there’s anything wrong with it or
I’ve used outdated information, etc, please tell me.

6. Not everything is described. There’s a lot of room for more writing, sub-items, etc, imo,
(Some places are even described as colonized but have no entry) and anyways the idea was
to give any Sol-related characters more room to build upon rather than constrict them with
super close-ended lore.

7. Ex3-378/AIMMO had some ideas for Titan, those are not incorporated here because I do
not know the specifics of them and I suspect they’ll get their own non-Codex submission
eventually.

8. Current “Humanity” wiki page also calls people from the moon as just “Lunar”, I’ve slightly
changed it to “Lunarian” and was told to keep it.

9. Slightly obscure detail: Titanian vs Titanean (From Titania and Titan, respectively)

10. POPULATION NUMBERS:
When asking #lore-discussion, the general suggestion seems to be 15 billion as the
population for Terra.
Terra is a useful yardstick for measuring, roughly (and depending on context), the general
population of Sol.
The issue of Terra’s population has been separated into a few different points:
8.1: Population growth
8.2: War and emigration
8.3: Surface Area
8.4: Narrative aspects.

10.1 – POPULATION GROWTH

The 15 billion estimate seems to follow the current worldwide population trend of leveling off,
it is expected that modern populations will plateau roughly around 11 billion people, possibly
even diminishing over time due to several factors of modern life.
The first issue with this is TIME.
500 years ago, the worldwide population was 461 million. Currently it is 7.9 billion, a ~1614%
increase. While this does not mean that the population will inevitably be 12 trillion in another
500 years, it does mean that a lot can happen in half a millennium, and regardless of the
course of IRL human civilization, in SS13 it clearly has not stagnated to the point that
population numbers would remain essentially static for that long if you’re colonizing other
stars.
The next issue is GROWTH itself.
Population growth is derived from two things, a population’s fertility rate, and it’s mortality
rate. IRL, the drop in population growth is largely related to lower fertility rates. Mortality
has largely gone down historically, but has not changed much recently.
In SS13, it is reasonable to expect drastically different mortality rates due to the great
amount of medical handwavium involved. This by itself will boost your population growth,
because it cuts the amount of births not contributing due to first needing to hit replacement
level (which is determined by the number of people dying). But not only that, people who live
longer will also have the time to pursue careers and start families, as they find themselves
no longer restrained by current biological limits.
The general higher technological level of the setting should give most people nicer living
conditions as well, which again would help population growth rates.

10.2 – WAR AND EMIGRATION

The next issue are factors external to the population growth statistic itself.
The first is WW3 around 2083-2105. Thankfully, this war is rather early in the timeline
between Present Day and SS13’s in-game time.
What this means is that while it’s significant, it’s a lot less catastrophic to the population than
if it had happened later due to the general tendency of total population numbers to
compound over time. Even if the war killed every other person on Terra (from a predicted
10.8 billion to 5), even an average doubling time of 50 years would see well over a Trillion
people on it by 2564. As a doubling time, that’s a conservative estimate considering all the
life extension benefits just mentioned, lower numbers have been reached historically, it’s
also assuming a very deadly war. If humanity should’ve obliterated itself almost completely
in the lore, then refer to “8.4: Narrative reasons”.
Either way, emigration would not cost nearly as many people as the war. Few people would
likely have the means to move offworld, and either way, rebuilding on largely-still-habitable-
in-astronomical-terms Earth where all the remaining industry and people and breathable air
and water is, will almost inevitably be easier than after some massive exodus to a dead
barren airless radiation-blasted rock like Luna or Mars. Nor are those colonies likely in any
shape to receive a mass exodus this early on.
Even with diminished numbers, millions could emigrate and not make that much of a dent in
Terra’s several billion population.

10.3: SURFACE AREA

Though I’ve mentioned trillions of people, that’s not the current suggestion either, though
maybe it should be, honestly.
To see why, we arrive at the issue of Earth’s surface area and the lore of large nature
preserve zones.
Let’s start with a baseline for Ecumenopolis Earth.
If all of Earth’s land surface area were city with the density of Tokyo, it’d hold ~917 billion people.
Just this means that you could make a third of the planet’s land area nature reserves and
still hit the ~600 billion proposed. But there’s more:
Firstly, this is modern Tokyo, no sci-fi building materials, no arcologies, those would
obviously allow more people per square meter, likely with more actual space per person as
well by stacking much further vertically.
Secondly, this also does not consider the continental shelf colonization mentioned, which
add another 27 million km2 to the surface area available.
But thirdly, and this is the more significant one, the currently presented figure (622 billion)
does not differentiate between populations on the surface and in orbit, which includes Ark IV
and all the impressive space infrastructure and big stations near Earth. This essentially
gives a fairly handy and vague variable on what the population density on the surface
actually is, though I’d assume like over 80% of the currently suggested population is on the
surface.
In fact I think we could even bump up some of the numbers a bit further in general, but
they’re already a far cry from a few billion.

10.4 NARRATIVE REASONS

“So, Earth has nuked itself, barely anyone has survived, in 500 years, the lucky few who have
climbed back up the gigantic corpse pile of war with help from Luna and Mars are ready to
once again explore the cosmos, the population of Sol is maybe 50 billion if you’re optimistic
and, as they set out, they’re crushed by a random nobody Minor Race’s navy who have
several thousand ships for each one of Sol’s. Hm.”

If Earth sabotages itself to the extent of barely growing in 500 years when there’s so many
reasons other races, even ones with seriously later starts than Humans, could completely
outstrip their growth by just not doing that, either by design or by chance, that Sol would not
be very important at all. It’s entire military could get smoked by just the scout fleets of
anyone who felt like bullying Humans. Even if the galaxy is very peaceful, economically and
diplomatically, Sol would be at best the Liechtenstein of the milky way. Not really a viable
foundation for a galactic megacorporation like NT.
If humans are a Common Race, then they need a significant population, and Earth is going to
be the place for it for a LONG time. In the lore proposed here, it is still FAR from capacity and
most of these places should keep growing for a long time beyond current IC time to, one day,
surpass Terra. But not yet.

USEFUL GRAPHICS:

Image
Inner Sol + Ceres (No Mercury because 0 pop)

Image
Some bodies sorted by size, Terra to Triton

Image
Some bodies sorted by size, Luna to Oberon, not on the same scale as last image (Use Luna/Europa/Triton overlap)

Image
Population pie chart, all bodies.

Image
Population pie chart, Luna and smaller

Image
Population pie chart, Callisto and smaller

Image
Population pie chart, Ceres and smaller

Image
Population pie chart, Enceladus and smaller

Image
Population pie chart, Titania and smaller

Pie charts don't include pop. in orbit of gas giants, asteroids, etc.


Entries start here:

Sol System
Star system

Sol is the home system of humanity, housing both their homeworld of Terra and the current capital of the Orion Confederation, the space station Unity.
The Inner Sol system consists of four rocky planets, and is separated by an asteroid belt from the Outer Sol System, which consists of four gas giants. Beyond these, the Kuiper Belt and eventually Oort Cloud separate it from the interstellar medium.
A significant portion of the system is currently colonized by Humanity, and it's territory is united under the flag of the Orion Confederacy.

Thanks to the advent of artificial gravity, many bodies of the Sol System which would've been too low-gravity to settle otherwise have been colonized through the construction of facilities with artificially supplemented gravity. This has, at times, led to considerable differences between living spaces and exterior regions, almost always compensated for by including gravity transitioning to the operation of any external airlocks found there.

The majority of Sol’s large population is human, whose two primary languages are Sol Common and Galactic Common, however, other dialects and older human languages still see use in a limited capacity.

Stars: 1 (G2V)
Radius: 200k AU
Planets: 8
Approx. Population: 1 Trillion 140 Billion 280 Million
Faction: Orion Confederation



Inner Sol System
Astronomical Feature


The Inner Sol System is the region of space closest to the central star, Sol. It is officially separated from the Outer Sol System by the Main Asteroid Belt.

The Inner System contains all four Telluric Planets of the Sol System:

[Entry: Mercury]
[Entry: Venus]
[Entry: Terra]
[Entry: Mars]



Outer Sol System
Astronomical Feature


The Outer Sol System is the region of space spanning between the Main Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt.

It contains the Sol System’s two Gas Giants and two Ice Giants:

[Entry: Jupiter]
[Entry: Saturn]
[Entry: Uranus]
[Entry: Neptune]



Sol
Star


The single central Star of the Sol System, Sol is a G-type main-sequence star and contains 99.8% of the system’s mass.
While not considered colonizable, and nearly always avoided for it’s deadly temperature and radiation, it’s lower orbits are home to many fleets of solar power collectors, with only appropriately shielded scientific probes ever skimming any closer to it.
Early humans were often known to worship Sol as a deity for it’s profound influence upon Terran life, however this belief has largely fallen out of favor even within the minority of religious Humans today.

Spectral Class: G2V
Abs. Magnitude: 4.83
Surface Temperature: 5,772 K
Radius: 696,342 km
Age: 4.6 billion years



Mercury
Telluric Planet


The nearest planet to Sol and smallest of the Sol System, Mercury is a barren, if metal-rich, terrestrial body which is non-synchronously tidally locked to it’s star, rotating three times for each two orbits it completes.
Appropriately named after an ancient Human god of travelers, Mercury has been the site of scientific expeditions, weapons testing, transient mining operations and many other assorted temporary ventures, however it has never been permanently colonized due to it’s scorching proximity to Sol and violent asteroid impacts from the lack of an atmosphere coupled to a high orbital speed. In addition, it’s weak magnetic field, while providing nearly no protection from solar wind, causes powerful magnetic storms to sweep across it's surface due to reconnection events with the interplanetary magnetic field.

Surface operations directed anywhere other than polar craters and lasting longer than the mercurian day often incorporate driving away from the sunrise, made possible by the planet’s slow rotation, to avoid it’s lead-melting daytime temperatures.
Due to it’s elliptical orbit and long day, the planet’s orbital speed temporarily outpaces it’s rotation near perihelion relative to Sol. This makes the star seem to slow to a stop in the sky, then drift backwards for around eight terran days, before resuming it’s travel to the west, meaning that certain longitudes see two sunrises or sunsets each mercurian day.

Mercury’s orbit is equally as barren as it’s surface, if not more so, as the radiation exposure is further complicated by the gravitational disturbance from Sol, making stable orbits around it undesirable and short-lived.

Radius: 2,439.4 km
Surface Gravity: 3.7 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 2781 hours
Approx. Population: 0
Avg. Distance from Sol: 0.39 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Venus
Telluric Planet


The second planet from Sol, Venus shows certain similarities to the planet Terra, primarily of it’s comparable mass, size and consequently surface gravity. However, it’s thick sulfuric acid clouds float over a dense atmosphere hotter than even Mercury, hiding a layer of supercritical carbon dioxide which coats it’s fiercely volcanic surface. It’s slow retrograde rotation leads to extremely long days and nights.

Due to the difficulties of settling it’s surface, Venus’ colonization has largely happened in myriad stations around it’s orbital space, taking advantage of the plentiful sunlight as a power source to drive industrial production. However, some recent aerostat outposts exist, often tethered to the surface to allow for freight elevator travel moving robotically mined resources from it’s geologically active surface to the upper parts of the atmosphere where they may be launched into orbit. The atmosphere of Venus itself is also used as a valuable source of Nitrogen and Sulfur.

While plans exist to eventually begin the terraforming of the planet for surface settlements in the distant future, they have yet to be put into motion by the Orion Confederacy, owing to the complexity, time investment and cost of the operation, which would interrupt the planet’s current operations.

Radius: 6,051.8 km
Surface Gravity: 8.87 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 2802 hours
Approx. Population: 158 Billion
Avg. Distance from Sol: 0.72 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Terra
Telluric Planet


Informally known as “Earth”, Terra is the home planet of Humans and third from Sol. It hosts a natural biosphere and extensive oceans, and it is by far the most thoroughly inhabited celestial body of the Sol System, housing over half of it’s population.
The planet is an Ecumenopolis, or “City-World”, with over half of it’s land area, poles included, occupied by urban development, with the remaining areas acting as designated permanent preservation zones which contain examples of it’s original natural environments. Following a period of ecological upheaval in it’s past, mega-structural dams and canals were built to manage ocean levels and preserve coastal settlements. Similar construction techniques developed for such a task would later be used to allow colonization of Terra’s continental shelves and occasionally deeper regions of it’s oceans.

Space around Terra mirrors it’s surface developments, wrapped in a cloud of orbital stations and infrastructure. Both people and cargo are constantly moved between the surface and orbit by shuttles, and particularly for cargo, done so with aid from it’s three Lofstrom loops.
One of the most significant pieces of terran space infrastructure is the Ark IV Station, a space-arcology which houses examples of nearly all of Terra’s original biosphere, being also the largest population center in cis-lunar space.

Many individual Nation-States hold ownership and govern over different regions of Terra, however it’s main planetary capital for representation in the Orion Confederacy is the city of Rome. Despite the planet’s importance to Humanity, it does not hold the capital of the Confederacy itself, which is the station Unity instead. Similarly, Luna holds the designation for Capital of the Sol System.
Though the “Old Nations” of early Terra no longer exist, much of their cultural influence still persists in Sol, both from the Human pre-war Diaspora, and within Terra’s myriad Nation-States owing to it’s survivors.

Radius: 6,371 km
Surface Gravity: 9.80 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 24 hours
Approx. Population: 622 Billion
Avg. Distance from Sol: 1 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Luna
Moon


Known to Sol’s inhabitants as “The Moon”, Luna is Terra’s only natural satellite and the first place to be settled by Humanity beyond their home planet. Though relatively large for a moon of a planet the size of Terra, it possesses no meaningful atmosphere, making it a barren and dusty world.
Tidally locked to it’s planet, Terra always occupies roughly the same spot in the Lunar sky, presenting different phases to it’s satellite depending on it’s orbit, which always coincide with the same time of Lunar day thanks to it’s 1:1 orbit-rotation ratio.

Due to it’s inherently desolate surface characteristics, Luna’s extensive colonization consists in it’s majority of reinforced, energy-shielded biodomes, often built taking advantage of natural craters, with secondary domes and facilities built within, usually curving upwards along the crater walls, and connected to extensive underground complexes which constitute the bulk of lunarian cities.
Sharing a great similarity in composition to Terra’s own crust, Luna is one of Sol’s greatest sources of Aluminum, Titanium, Uranium, Thorium, “Rare Earth Elements” and many other minerals not always readily available to other colonies. These, coupled with Luna’s low gravity has meant that most ship and station construction projects for Terran clients are often carried out on Luna.

Officially designated as the capital of the Sol System, Luna is it’s primary cultural and legislative hub, housing intricate and deeply layered cities, prestigious academies, and convenient access to both Terra and space itself, making it a hub for Human activity.
Though it hosts some local space infrastructure, Luna’s often unstable orbit contains relatively few space stations in favor of easy transport to the surface and Terra’s own orbit, with the bulk of orbiting satellites being serving as waypoints for communications and power transmission, as well as fuel depots and dedicated sensor fleets ready inform the airless world’s asteroid point defense systems.

Radius: 1,737.4 km
Surface Gravity: 1.62 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 709 hours
Approx. Population: 13.2 Billion
Avg. Distance from Terra: 384,300 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Mars
Telluric Planet


The fourth and furthest terrestrial world from Sol, Mars is a cold arid world, with a northern hemisphere of flat smooth deserts and a southern hemisphere of mountainous and cratered regions. It’s surface is distinctive for it’s dark basaltic rock and red ferric oxide sands.
Mars’ cold climate, though usually calm, is capable of generating the largest dust storms of the Sol System during it’s summer, at times wrapping around the entire planet, hiding it’s striking blue sunsets from it’s inhabitants for several weeks at a time. Over the course of human colonization, Mars has developed a sparse natural flora, composed of certain types of opportunistic moss, fungi, and a few algae in the form of lichen, which have survived and adapted to the martian environment, particularly nearer to it’s equator, as well as inside caves and mine shafts.

Though far from fully terraformed, Mars’ atmosphere has been steadily supplemented with Nitrogen exported from colonies such as Venus, and small amounts of Carbon Dioxide from it’s polar icecaps for over a hundred years. This atmosphere is protected, despite Mars’ lack of a magnetic field, by a magnetic shield at the Sun-Mars L1 point. While unbreathable and low-pressure given the lower gravity, this has nonetheless both helped tame the extremes of the planet’s cold temperatures, and offered some protection from meteors to it’s cities.

While Venus has a high proportion of primary industrial production compared to it’s population, Mars has the highest absolute manufacturing capabilities in all of Sol. Martian mines boast of relatively safe mining operations compared to Venus or Mercury, and it’s higher availability of certain specific resources such as Gypsum, Silicon, Neodymium, Niobium and other metals useful in computer hardware manufacture and photovoltaics, as well as five times more phosphates than present on Terra, Phosphorus being a vital resource for farming. Generally, martian ores are most abundant near it’s extinguished volcanoes, such as Elysium Mons, Olympus Mons, Alba Mons and the three Tharsis Montes, nearly all of which have direct tethers to Pavonis Station.
Mars’ proximity to the Main Belt has also allowed for a strong relationship with Ceres and it’s asteroid mining industry.

Mars’ geographical dichotomy has meant that most of it’s large cities and population are located on the southern hemisphere, since early colonization efforts had for some time avoided the open wide deserts of the north. The northern planitias, more thoroughly colonized as the initial settlements expanded, developed a much higher proportion of hydroponic farms, exploiting their subsurface and north-polar water ice reservoirs and building on the flat sedimentary terrain to support the city populations. A space elevator services the region around Tharsis, with ground stations as far as Argyre and Arcadia Planitia, connecting their cities to Pavonis Station, so named for it’s position over Pavonis Mons, despite the tether’s lack of direct equatorial connections due to Phobos. The elevator permits high-throughput cargo shipping between the surface of Mars and it’s many orbital and moon facilities.

The population profile of Mars is remarkable in Sol as it is not only one of it’s largest single-body population centers, second only to Terra, but in that nearly 10% of said population is composed not of Humans, but Tyrmalin, members of the Orion Confederation who hold a favorable reputation in Mars due to their natural proficiency in the mining sector.

Radius: 3,389.5 km
Surface Gravity: 3.72 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 24 hours 39 minutes
Approx. Population: 341 Billion
Avg. Distance from Sol: 1.52 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Phobos
Moon


Phobos is the largest of Mars’ two moons. It is a small and irregularly shaped object, a considerable amount of which has been mined through. The moon’s orbit is the closest to it’s primary body than any other planetary moon in Sol, orbiting the planet fast enough to rise in the martian west and set on the east in only 4 hours and 15 minutes, doing so twice each martian day.

Although inconvenient to settle by traditional means, Phobos’ importance as a concentration of easily accessible ore in the orbit of Mars led to it being extensively mined over the course of martian orbital settlement by Humanity. In the early days of martian colonization, a tether system extending from Phobos towards Mars and it’s outer orbits was used for facilitating slower-than-light transport, it was eventually decommissioned in favor of the Pavonis Space Elevator.

The moon currently operates as the largest shipyard and dry-dock of the inner Sol System, housing a permanent population of related staff on site, with most of it’s pressurized facilities buried within it for protection.

Radius: 11.08 km
Surface Gravity: 0.0057 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 7 hours 39 minutes
Approx. Population: 72,400
Avg. Distance from Mars: 6,376 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Deimos
Moon


The smallest and outermost of Mars’ two moons, Deimos is an irregularly shaped rocky body. It is only 56% the size of Phobos, Mars’ larger moon.
Although inconvenient to settle through traditional means, Deimos has been extensively mined through for it’s easily accessible water ice deposits and currently functions as the primary fuel depot for martian spaceship traffic. It houses no permanent settlers, but is consistently staffed by a small population of depot personnel and mining crews.

Radius: 6.2 km
Surface Gravity: 0.003 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 30 hours 19 minutes
Approx. Population: 0
Avg. Distance from Mars: 23,458 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Main Asteroid Belt
Astronomical Feature


The “Asteroid Belt” is a region of the Sol System between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in which are concentrated small solid objects of varying compositions. It contains roughly 1.6 million objects larger than 1 km in diameter and billions larger than 100 meters. The largest single body in the Belt is the dwarf-planet Ceres.
Many different settlements exist across the Asteroid Belt, some permanent, such as Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and countless smaller way-stations, as well as many more temporary mining sites which are distributed along this region of space. Although not as prevalent as on Mars, the Belt is also home to it’s own share of Tyrmalin inhabitants, owing to it’s mineral wealth and close economic relationship to Mars’ mining and trade guilds.

The largest and still ongoing mining operation of the Belt is around 16 Psyche. Measuring 226 km in diameter, it is composed almost entirely of Nickel-Iron, with five parts per million being Platinum Group Metals, roughly 110 billion tons of them in total, before mining operations had begun.
While the total mass of the Main Asteroid Belt is estimated to be only around 4% that of Luna, it’s main advantage within Sol is the great accessibility of it’s resources. The Belt provides Sol not only metals, but is also a source of Phosphorus, large amounts of water ice, as well as plastics and aramid fibers refined from it’s plentiful carbonaceous asteroids.

Inner Radius: 1.78 AU
Outer Radius: 3.51 AU
Approx. Population: 252 Million
Faction: Orion Confederacy



Ceres
Dwarf-Planet


The largest object in the Main Belt, accounting for nearly a third of the it’s mass, Ceres is unique for being the only body between Mars and Jupiter massive enough to hold a spherical shape. It’s also the Belt’s largest settlement, and widely considered to be a “small slice of civilization” in this otherwise sparse region of space.
Rich in water, hydrated minerals and many salts useful for farming, Ceres hosts surprisingly extensive underground cities and impressive armored domes in a manner similar to Luna.

Although home to many refining centers, shipyards, farms, and even legislative centers for the belt, Ceres’ status as a large outpost has made it one of the preferred destinations for miners searching for new expeditions, or simply on leave after one, looking to spend their pay and enjoy some downtime. Due to this, the small dwarf-planet has seen much success in leisure and tourism-related business, from gambling strips to hotels and conservation parks hosting rare examples of terran flora and fauna, it is rightfully considered as completely unlike anywhere else on the Belt and a common stop for ships traveling between the Inner and Outer Sol System.

It’s orbit houses a respectable amount of habitat stations, many with their own tourist attractions, as well as a similar protection grid to Luna, communications satellites, orbital farms taking advantage of the dim, but still usable sunlight, as well as plenty of fuel depots and repair stations which handle the constant flow of mining vessels through the region.

Radius: 469.7 km
Surface Gravity: 0.28 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 11208 hours
Approx. Population: 204 Million
Avg. Distance from Sol: 2.8 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Jupiter
Gas Giant


Jupiter is the fifth planet from Sol, and the most massive planet of the Sol System by a large margin, it is twice as massive as every other planet combined, and large enough to fit every one within it’s radius at the same time. It’s rapid rotation rate and large outer core of metallic hydrogen give Jupiter a powerful magnetic field, and by consequence, forms deadly radiation belts around it.

Close orbits to Jupiter are not permanently populated due to the high radiation, however many appropriately shielded spacecraft transit up and down to the planet seeking to harvest it’s Hydrogen, Helium and Deuterium despite the deep gravity well. It’s powerful radiation belts are also used for industrial-scale nuclear spallation processes. Further away, countless stations occupy the large gravitational influence bubble of the giant planet with plenty of volume to spare, treated to a distant view of Jupiter’s shimmering bands and cloud tops. Yet further away, some settlements and mining posts occupy the groups of Trojan asteroids trapped within the planet’s Lagrange points instead.

Being the closest Outer Sol System planet to Terra and largest overall planet, the Jovian System is a complex system in it’s own right, holding vast amounts of stations, moons and asteroids. Almost as close to Ceres as Ceres is from Sol, it receives only 4% the amount of light Terra does for the same surface area. The size of the Jovian system and it’s high radiation zones can often make it seem sparsely populated despite holding the largest population of any gas giant in Sol, and travel between many of it’s population centers is rather easy and surprisingly commonplace compared to even most interplanetary travel.

Radius: 69911 km
Surface Gravity: 24.79 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 9 hours 55 minutes
Approx. Population: 3.5 Billion
Avg. Distance from Sol: 5.2 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Io
Moon


Orbiting closest to Jupiter out of it’s four major Moons, Io is a world slightly larger than Luna known for it’s oddly colored greenish yellow appearance and hazardous surface conditions. It is the most volcanically active site of the Sol System, covered in sulfur compounds and blasted with enough radiation from Jupiter’s magnetic field to cause radiation sickness in minutes, and certain death with only a few hours of unshielded exposure.

Although sparsely mined for it’s ubiquitous sulfur, the moon and it’s orbit are largely avoided in favor of other nearby options, as such, it has no permanent inhabitants and is almost never visited “in person”. Tidally locked to Jupiter, the gas giant hangs stationary in Io’s sky, appearing over 35 times larger than Luna as seen from Terra.

Radius: 1,821.49 km
Surface Gravity: 1.79 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 42 hours 27 minutes
Approx. Population: 0
Avg. Distance from Jupiter: 421,700 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Europa
Moon


Europa is the second major moon of Jupiter, out of four. It’s surface is made largely of water ice, with little elevation changes and few craters, but covered with many cracks and dark-reddish lineae. Though it’s surface radiation fluxes are less instantly deadly than Io, the moon is still well within Jupiter’s radiation belt, enough to cause radiation sickness in a couple hours and certain death with one day of unshielded exposure. The moon is tidally locked to Jupiter.

Due to the radiation hazard and lack of an atmosphere, most settlement of the moon has happened under the protection of it’s icy crust, though rafe surface domes and outposts exist. Many Europan cities dwell within the ice itself, at times being surprisingly spacious due to the relative ease of melting through it. Most large settlements stretch down vertically to the bottom of the crust, where they meet Europa’s hundred kilometer deep underground ocean, sprawling along the underside of the ice crust over it’s aphotic depths.

The moon, despite being only a fourth the diameter of Terra, holds approximately twice the amount of water. As such, it is the main resource with which it’s associated, making it the main supplier of it to the Jovian System. It’s oceans also hold a small amount of salts and other elements dissolved within it as well. This ready availability of local water, ease of importing methane from Jupiter and certain minerals from the other moons also makes Europa a center for large-scale hydroponic farming in the system, hosting a whole subsection of farm complexes, food companies, research institutes and more.

Radius: 1,560.80 km
Surface Gravity: 1.31 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 85 hours 14 minutes
Approx. Population: 202 Million
Avg. Distance from Jupiter: 671,100 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Ganymede
Moon


Ganymede is the largest moon of the Sol System, it is in fact, larger than the planet Mercury, alongside the second largest moon, Titan. It is also the only moon of the system to have it’s own magnetic field. It is the third major natural satellite from Jupiter. The surface of Ganymede is covered in about a third by dark rocky regolith, and two thirds lighter material, a mix of cryovolcanic ice and some rock. Beyond it’s abundant presence in the soil composition, water is also present as ice in most of the moon’s crust, and in it’s subsurface oceans, each separated from the other by layers composed of varying ice phases. It is tidally locked to Jupiter.

Though orbiting in a less dangerous part of Jupiter’s radiation belts than Io and Europa, Ganymede’s surface still receives enough radiation flux to warrant shielding and care from it’s inhabitants in surface level operations. Ganymede’s more inhabited regions are at times broken up by relatively sparse areas, particularly near the poles, with most of it’s infrastructure buried or covered with a protective layer of rock and ice. It’s orbit, though not completely devoid of satellites, demands extra radiation shielding for prolonged stay. One side effect of the moon’s own magnetic field is the formation of large auroras over it’s polar regions.

Unlike Europa, Ganymede’s cities are often more horizontally sprawling, favoring rail transport and only tunneling down to the liquid water layers for industrial and commercial purposes, rather than for habitation, as it is a fierce competitor with said moon in the water sector.

Radius: 2,631.20 km
Surface Gravity: 1.43 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 171 hours 42 minutes
Approx. Population: 519 Million
Avg. Distance from Jupiter: 1,070,000 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Callisto
Moon


Callisto is the fourth and furthest major moon of Jupiter. It is an extremely geologically stable body with an ancient surface saturated by impact craters, and despite it’s distance from the gas giant, is also tidally locked to it. It’s surface is composed of varying mixtures of crushed ice and silicates, giving it a darker appearance, which rests above a crust of rock and water ice, riddled with useful minerals and metals due to it’s largely undifferentiated nature. Though hosting some underground water reservoirs, it has no true subsurface ocean.

Due to it’s place outside of Jupiter’s radiation belts, the surface of Callisto is safe from radiation. This led it to be the first Jovian moon to be settled, and the one currently most populated, leading it to carry a reputation of being the "capital" of the Jovian system, though such a title is unofficial. Unlike the other moons, callistoan settlements often take advantage of the plentiful craters with surface domes similar to Luna’s, though still using the terrain as a shield from meteorite strikes.

Half water ice and half stone, Callisto serves a myriad purposes to the Jovian system, legislative hub, manufacturing center, military base, and more. It’s two densest urban regions seem distinctly ring-shaped when viewed from orbit, having been built into the two impact basins Valhalla and Asgard. Safely out of the radiation belts, Callisto’s orbit is home to many of it’s own stations, shipyards and satellites.

Radius: 2,410.30 km
Surface Gravity: 1.24 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 400 hours 21 minutes
Approx. Population: 1.6 Billion
Avg. Distance from Jupiter: 1,883,000 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Saturn
Gas Giant


The sixth planet from Sol, Saturn is sometimes referred to as the “jewel” of the Sol System, due to it’s lightly banded golden cloud tops and extensive, striking ring system. Over the course of the saturnian winter, the shadow cast by said rings upon the surface slows Ammonia cloud formation and exposes the blue atmosphere hidden beneath. It’s poles host large, hexagon shaped cloud vortexes.

Unlike Jupiter, Saturn’s radiation belts are much less powerful, and don’t represent a significant barrier to activities on any of it’s major satellites. In addition, it’s lower gravity compared to Jupiter makes it easier to return large amounts of gas from it’s atmosphere, such as Hydrogen, Deuterium and Helium-3, particularly useful in the saturnian system and beyond due to the distance from Sol making Fusion the dominant method of power generation in it’s region of space.

Far away from Sol and the inner Sol System, Saturn hosts it’s own internal systems of trade and transit, composed of myriad space stations and settlements on most of it’s moons, including every major one. It’s Lagrange points see much less activity than even Jupiter’s however, due to their fewer resources and even greater distance from the planet. The entirety of it’s ring systems are currently considered by local authority to be a natural wonder preservation zone, prohibiting any ring mining operations, shepherd moon disruption and protecting the existence of their unique visage in the Sol System for the foreseeable hundreds of millions of years before their expected natural decay.

Radius: 58232 km
Surface Gravity: 10.44 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 10 hours 32 minutes
Approx. Population: 2.1 Billion
Avg. Distance from Sol: 9.5 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Titan
Moon


Accounting for 90% of all mass in orbit of Saturn, Titan is it’s largest and busiest moon. It is the second largest moon of the Sol System, exceeding the size of Mercury alongside the first-place holder, Ganymede. It is also the only moon of the Sol System with a substantial atmosphere, composed primarily of Nitrogen, Methane and Hydrogen, given it’s golden-browned hue by the presence of hydrocarbons within it. Said atmosphere’s high fluid capacity gives rise to Titan’s characteristic weather, one of months to years of dry twilit haze, interrupted by several days or weeks of torrential hydrocarbon monsoons and flash flooding. Titan is also tidally locked to Saturn.

Thanks to it’s extremely low surface temperatures, Titan’s settlements are known for their high-efficiency computing, hosting well-equipped research institutes of all kinds, as well as extensive and highly efficient industry, able to use the dense atmosphere as a heat sink for industrial processes fueled by the widely available petrochemicals Methane, Ethane, Propane, as well as other hydrocarbons for export and the production of fuels and polymers, making it a significant manufacturing hub in the Sol System.

Titanean cities often occupy the moon’s surface and immediate subsurface, using the icy regolith as insulation where possible, protected from meteorite impacts by the thick atmosphere, and readily able to filter said atmosphere for it’s resources. Most partially dome, tunnel or otherwise isolate themselves to allow human-livable conditions and easy traversal between it’s large buildings, keeping the cryogenic temperatures, haze and occasional monsoon outside. Settlements are often composed of many large monolithic and multipurpose buildings on the surface, which minimize their surface area to volume ratio, and which branch out once underground. The pressure on the surface of Titan is low enough that pressurized EVA suits are not necessary to traverse it, slightly facilitating surface activities, however, said suits must still be thoroughly insulated and heated to protect from the extremely low temperatures.

Radius: 2,574.73 km
Surface Gravity: 1.352 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 382 hours 41 minutes
Approx. Population: 987 Million
Avg. Distance from Saturn: 1,883,000 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Enceladus
Moon


Only the sixth largest moon of Saturn, Enceladus is an icy body, similar in some ways to Europa, being covered in a crust of water ice floating over a liquid ocean. It is tidally locked to Saturn, and is responsible for replenishing the ice dust which forms Saturn’s E-ring. Much of this fine-grained ice eventually falls back onto to the moon’s surface, covering it in a thin layer of very fine ice sand.

Enceladus features large fissure canyons on it’s surface, the walls of which host the majority of the moon’s settlements, particularly near it’s south pole, a region notable for it’s thinner and fractured crust, which allows for easy access to it’s main advantage over the other moons of the planet: liquid water, kept warm by the tidal forces of Saturn and the decay of abundant long-lived radioactive materials in it’s rocky core. Unlike Europa, Enceladus’ much smaller size allows for the shallower seafloor to be easily mined for said radioactive materials, as well as many ordinary metals otherwise difficult to source in the saturnian system.

Though the moon has no significant atmosphere, settlements in the southern canyons of Enceladus are no strangers to seeing plumes of water and snow blanket it’s skies during curtain eruptions from geologically active fractures. Given it’s small size, most is made of the moon’s volume, with enceladean cities almost always spanning the distance between the surface and the ocean layer, and often extending into it. Some outposts exist on the seafloor itself, but don’t typically host a permanent population.

Radius: 252.1 km
Surface Gravity: 0.113 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 32 hours 53 minutes
Approx. Population: 52 Million
Avg. Distance from Saturn: 238,037 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Uranus
Ice Giant


Uranus is the seventh planet from Sol, it is a frigid cyan world, bearing the classification of Ice Giant, due to the significant presence of Water, Ammonia and Methane in it’s mantle, as opposed to traditional Gas Giants such as Sol’s Jupiter and Saturn, composed almost exclusively of Hydrogen and Helium. One of the most distinctive aspects of Uranus is it’s axial tilt of 97.77 degrees, rotating in retrograde at nearly a right angle compared to the rest of the system. All of Uranus’ major moons follow this orientation, orbiting out of plane with the Sol System’s ecliptic.

In addition to it’s faint rings and moons, the space around Uranus hosts it’s own stations and orbiting infrastructure, nearly all of it following the system’s inclination, including many low-orbit refineries for gas-harvesting operations, some particularly interested in it’s relative abundance of rare trace gases compared to other gas giants of the Sol System, such as Methane, Helium-3, Hydrogen Deuteride and Ethane.

Most of the Uranian system population lives and works in orbit around the ice giant or it’s moons, with the exploitation of it’s resources and associated industries being the primary drive for expansion, leaving the water ice mining and hydroponics on most of it’s moons as a secondary activity.

Radius: 25362 km
Surface Gravity: 8.69 m/s2
Sidereal Day Length: 17 hours 14 minutes
Approx. Population: 7 Million
Avg. Distance from Sol: 19.8 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Titania
Moon


Titania is the largest and most massive uranian moon, it is home to the highest population of any moon in the Uranus system and in many ways is the blueprint which other settlements follow. It is a body of mixed composition, roughly equal parts water ice and rocky components. It’s surface is composed of water ice, interspersed with rock and covered in a dark layer of carbon-rich compounds, as well as the occasional formation of carbon dioxide frost. Titania’s surface is subject to extreme seasonal cycles due to the inclination of it’s orbit and axial tilt, with the sun traveling along it’s sky in spirals, with each pole observing 42 years of sunlight or darkness at a time. It is also tidally locked to Uranus.

Settlements dwelling under the ice of Titania are large by uranian standards, but smaller than almost any moon cities around Saturn or Jupiter, being widely scattered over the moon in local towns and communities, or even down to small outposts. Due to the ease of transportation to and from the moon’s orbit, and around the ice giant’s sphere of influence, most Titanians simply make the short trip into space to visit the more populated space stations when in need of specific goods or services not available at the surface.

Composed of mixture of water ice and stone, Titania contributes the largest share of local, low-complexity resources of the Uranian system, though assisted by the other moons, providing liquid water, food, building materials and metals to support station-bound operations.

Radius: 788.9 km
Surface Gravity: 0.379 m/s2
Sidereal Day Length: 208 hours 57 minutes
Approx. Population: 1.2 Million
Avg. Distance from Uranus: 435,840 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Neptune
Ice Giant


The eighth and furthest planet from Sol, Neptune is an ice giant with a deep azure atmosphere and sparse white clouds, shaped into thin streaks by it’s near-supersonic winds. Similar to Uranus, it’s composed primarily of ices such as Methane, Ammonia and Water, with an upper atmosphere of Hydrogen, Helium and Methane. It’s equatorial region often upwells Ethane and Acetylene, circulated to the surface from deeper parts of the atmosphere. It’s faint ring system exhibits “arcs”, zones of denser material accumulated in certain parts of the ring.

The Neptunian system is in most respects busier than uranian space, as the former, while having less than half the atmospheric Methane of Uranus, has the highest concentration of rare trace gases such as Helium-3 and Hydrogen Deuteride of any gaseous planet around Sol, which has made it a main source of fusion fuels to the Sol System. Especially in the Kuiper Belt, the trident seal of neptunian gas refineries is nearly synonymous with He3-D fuel. Due to this, few stations stray far from the Ice Giant itself, with the only other significant group of satellites orbiting around it’s single major moon, Triton.

Radius: 24622 km
Surface Gravity: 11.15 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 16 hours 6 minutes
Approx. Population: 18.7 Million
Avg. Distance from Sol: 30 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Triton
Moon


Comprising over 99% of the mass in orbit of Neptune, Triton is it’s only major moon. It is tidally locked to the planet, but orbits in a retrograde orbit tilted 23 degrees from the neptunian equatorial plane. Unlike most icy moons closer to Sol, Triton has a lower water ice content in favor of other ices, with most of the water ice buried deep within it’s crust. Most of it’s surface is covered in a transparent layer of annealed nitrogen ice, known as the “Glaze”, with opaque nitrogen ice underneath it, alongside a small part of water and carbon dioxide ices. Despite it’s distance from Sol, Triton is geologically active, with geysers of gaseous nitrogen and cryovolcanoes of liquid water and ammonia.

Due to it’s retrograde rotation, most settlements on Triton are located on it’s trailing hemisphere, relatively near it’s surface, including many domed regions as the majority of asteroid impacts hit the leading hemisphere. Far from uninhabited, however, leading hemisphere cities burrow deeper within the icy crust for protection. Large settlements often wrap around the bases and surrounding cryolava lakes of tritonian volcanoes for their liquid water and ammonia, stretching out onto both it’s fresh ice plains and older cratered terrain. Only Triton’s poles, capped in large glaciers of solid Nitrogen, lack any permanent settlements.

Triton provides support to the many stations in Neptune’s orbit with it’s supply of water and hydroponic activity from all the available nitrogen, ammonia and carbon dioxide. With most of it’s rocky materials far below the surface, however, little of it can be viably mined. Tritonian cities, in addition to their primary role, host many tertiary activities, such as tourist-oriented destinations for orbital visitors and research centers closely related to the neptunian fuel export industry. It’s orbit houses the moon’s own communications infrastructure, small stations and docks.

Radius: 1352.6 km
Surface Gravity: 0.779 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 141 hours 2 minutes
Approx. Population: 3.4 Million
Avg. Distance from Neptune: 354,800 km
Faction: Orion Confederation



Kuiper Belt
Astronomical Feature


The Kuiper Belt is a toroidal region of space beyond the orbit of Neptune, objects in this region are known as Kuiper Belt Objects, a subset of the larger group of Trans-Neptunian Objects. It contains several hundreds of thousands of objects larger than 100km in diameter, mainly composed of ices.
After the main zone of the Kuiper Belt ends at 50 AU from Sol, another zone, known as the Scattered Disk continues on to nearly 1,000 AU.

Other than the largest colonies, Pluto-Charon and Eris, only very few mining, scientific or military stations dot the massive volume of the Kuiper Belt, it’s only other notable outpost being on the metal-rich dwarf-planet of Haumea.

Inner Radius: 30 AU
Outer Radius: 55 AU
Approx. Population: 131 Million
Faction: Orion Confederacy



Pluto-Charon
Double Dwarf-planet


Pluto-Charon, so named after it’s dwarf-planet Pluto and it’s moon Charon, are a binary pair of Kuiper Belt objects. The pair of tidally locked bodies have retrograde orbits around a mutual barycenter, located closer to the surface of Pluto than to it’s moon Charon, which is only half it’s diameter, and an eighth it’s mass. The binary system’s orbit is also highly inclined, similar to the uranian system.

Pluto, the primary body, is around 70% rock, surrounded by a crust of water ice and a surface primarily consisting of Nitrogen ice, with trace amounts of Methane and Carbon Dioxide. During the times near perihelion, some of it’s surface ices sublimate to generate a thin atmosphere, which collapses back into frost once sunlight diminishes. It’s geography includes large Nitrogen glaciers, mountains of water ice, mounds, plains, active cryovolcanoes and canyons. Soil in some of it’s regions is covered in tholins, leading to plains of bright, fresh ice and hills covered in dark organic-compound dust.

Charon, the secondary body, is 55% rock, with the remaining 45% largely composed of water ice, which forms it’s crust and surface. Unlike Pluto, only a small patch of tholins can be found at each of it’s poles, with the moon’s surface otherwise covered in old and cratered ice. Large canyons stretch over the surface, including the near 9km deep Argo Chasma.

Both objects are colonized, with subsurface cities which tunnel beneath their icy surfaces, some within Charon’s canyons or Pluto’s mountains. Charon’s primary resources are minerals, more easily accessed from it’s rocky core due to the moon’s smaller size, while Pluto has larger amounts of Nitrogen and Methane, in addition to both bodies’ presence of water ice. Each object’s largest settlement is on the side facing the other orbiting body, as between the two of them a mutual space elevator spans from one surface to another, connecting the two cities for easy rail travel and trade.

Few space stations and other parts of space infrastructure orbit the binary pair, most often built within one of their smaller moons, or directly attached to the space elevator. Though technically two separate bodies, the direct connection between it’s cities and overlapping orbital infrastructure leads most to consider them as two parts to the same whole, a view strongly supported with by most pluto-charonians.

Pluto:
Radius: 1188.3 km
Surface Gravity: 0.620 m/s2
Sidereal Day Length: 153 hours 18 minutes

Charon:
Radius: 606 km
Surface Gravity: 0.288 m/s2
Sidereal Day Length: 153 hours 18 minutes

Approx. Population: 74 Million
Avg. Distance Between Objects: 19,640 km
Avg. Distance from Sol: 39 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Eris
Dwarf-planet


Home to the outermost significant colonies of the Sol system, Eris is a dwarf-planet orbiting at the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt. It’s orbit is inclined 44 degrees to the ecliptic, with a perihelion of 38 AU and aphelion of 98 AU. It is primarily composed of rock and metals, with only a thin crust of water ice and a surface of solid Nitrogen and Methane. Eris’ distance from Sol allows Methane to condense onto it’s surface down to the equator, covering it in white frost. Not nearly as geologically active as Pluto, it’s surface is dotted with craters and cracks.

Eridian settlements often occupy the lowermost region of it’s ice crust, separating themselves well from the surface to occupy the transition between the ice layer and the rocky mantle, but remain linked to it by large elevators, and at times rail, for transport of people and goods to it’s surface-side spaceports. Given it’s large share of rocky materials in the otherwise icy outer regions of the Scattered Disk, Eris is the main manufacturing center for the few scattered colonies in that region, providing them with Nitrogen, raw materials and finished products. It’s also used as a common stopping point for any ships traveling to Oort Cloud regions beyond itself.

It’s small moon, Dysnomia, houses mainly shipyards, producing many kinds of space infrastructure for the outer regions of the Sol System, such as the Oort Cloud’s communication relays, in addition to assorted vessels. With most activity around the moon, Eris’ orbit is otherwise quiet, holding only the sparse communications satellite.

Radius: 1163 km
Surface Gravity: 0.82 m/s2
Synodic Day Length: 25 hours 54 minutes
Approx. Population: 26 Million
Avg. Distance from Sol: 68 AU
Faction: Orion Confederation



Oort Cloud
Astronomical Feature


The Oort Cloud is a spherical region of space surrounding the Sol System located beyond the Heliosphere, placing it in interstellar space despite being gravitationally bound. It contains trillions of icy bodies and comets.

Due to it’s extreme distance and largely empty volume, no known colonies exist in this region of space, with only rare scientific expeditions venturing to it for study. The only notable structures in the Oort Cloud are interstellar communications arrays, relaying traditional laser and Bluespace transmissions to other star systems.

Inner Radius: 2,000 AU
Outer Radius: 50,000 AU
Approx. Population: 0
Faction: Orion Confederacy
Last edited by AlphaMach on Tue Oct 18, 2022 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

LordME
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Posts: 12
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Re: [RP] Codex Entries for the Sol System

Post by LordME »

4. As you mention heavier colonisation would be the case. I personally would say its not even a possibility but a fact, as every resource close to the only industrial powerhouse would be utilised during initial void expansion. I am not sure about our timeline regarding FTL tech, but depending on how long humanity has had it, the entire sol system migth be colonised and industrialised.

5. I wanted to write some lore on luna, but was asked not to, my take at luna is that its covered in domes, both for cities and for artificial nature reserves.

10.
- Population growth would have stayed almost steady at the begin of space expansion as earth was still the only major population center, but with some time the first colonies would have grown to easily provide population growth, which would likely be even greater as earth, at least the average fertility per capita. even the 12 Trillion are probably an underestimation of the population potential.
- I agree with your war statement, and you should consider immigration from the already existing colonies.
- Emigration, I am not in agreement here, while I may be wrong, i would like to assume that emigation had a larger effect on population than it had during the rush for the americas, because earth had better infrastructure in general, and more information, plus likely colonisation programms that directly advertised to the population. Still probably in the one digit percentage.
- Surface area, as I mentioned seasteading which could probably get us another 10 to 20 % of surface area for habitation, additional there would be thousands of inhabitated stations in earths orbit, which would be definitly under earths juristiction, and count to earths inhabitants. Those stations are hard to estimate in population because I am not sure how common O'Neil Cylinders or other superstructures are, but would probably range in 0.1 to 10 Billion people on their own. In addition to that, over 500 years, many of these stations would pop up all around the solar system, in particular in the main astroid belt.
- Narrative I totally agree again, humanity might not need to be the largest player, but definitly among the top players


Sol
- Bold to assume there isnt a station of madlads that are in a low orbit around the sun.
- A bit out of curiosity: How is the power transmitted from the collectors orbiting?
- What about solar/star mining?

Mercury
- Once again, you can bet your ass that by 2500 some madlads decided that colonising mercury was a good idea. even if its just a bunch of miners not wanting to bother with a space habitat.

Venus
- The surface is alot more hostile than you might think, tethering is going to be problematic, atleast until the newest and fancies metamaterials appear.
-- Just think of it as, there is so much material easily accessable, why waste a lot of resources on building tethers and heavy proteted gear/robots. I dont wanna categoricly deny it, but it seems uneconomical.
- Madlads living in a bunker.
- Upper atmosphere would likely be coloniesed tho, with floating cities and the like. the two main products of the planet would probably be gases and tourism.


Not feeling like reading the rest right now just have one last:

Oort Cloud:
- have your obligatory Madlad
- Some isolist fractions might enjoy it out there.
- Plus, it might be a good idea to have some maintenance technician somewhat nearby to fix things the automated system doesnt know to handle.
- Given it enormous size id say up to 50 Million people could live out here, more or less isolated.

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AlphaMach
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Re: [RP] Codex Entries for the Sol System

Post by AlphaMach »

LordME wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:55 am
4. As you mention heavier colonisation would be the case. I personally would say its not even a possibility but a fact, as every resource close to the only industrial powerhouse would be utilised during initial void expansion. I am not sure about our timeline regarding FTL tech, but depending on how long humanity has had it, the entire sol system migth be colonised and industrialised.
There doesn't seem too be any mention of when FTL is discovered, so that is possible.
LordME wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:55 am
10.
- Population growth would have stayed almost steady at the begin of space expansion as earth was still the only major population center, but with some time the first colonies would have grown to easily provide population growth, which would likely be even greater as earth, at least the average fertility per capita. even the 12 Trillion are probably an underestimation of the population potential.
- I agree with your war statement, and you should consider immigration from the already existing colonies.
- Emigration, I am not in agreement here, while I may be wrong, i would like to assume that emigation had a larger effect on population than it had during the rush for the americas, because earth had better infrastructure in general, and more information, plus likely colonisation programms that directly advertised to the population. Still probably in the one digit percentage.
- Surface area, as I mentioned seasteading which could probably get us another 10 to 20 % of surface area for habitation, additional there would be thousands of inhabitated stations in earths orbit, which would be definitly under earths juristiction, and count to earths inhabitants. Those stations are hard to estimate in population because I am not sure how common O'Neil Cylinders or other superstructures are, but would probably range in 0.1 to 10 Billion people on their own. In addition to that, over 500 years, many of these stations would pop up all around the solar system, in particular in the main astroid belt.
- Narrative I totally agree again, humanity might not need to be the largest player, but definitly among the top players
Specific emigration numbers weren't given much thought as it's not actually part of the entries, but the general idea is as you said, not going to be too significant.
There's certainly some stations kind of everywhere, most settled bodies have stations unless otherwise specified, I think most mention this?
However I don't actually expect many O'Neil Cylinders because of artificial gravity letting stations be more like buildings instead of having to hug the inside surface of a tube.
But yes, the surface stuff + all the stations also leads me to think that pop. could be a lot higher.
LordME wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:55 am
Sol
- Bold to assume there isnt a station of madlads that are in a low orbit around the sun.
- A bit out of curiosity: How is the power transmitted from the collectors orbiting?
- What about solar/star mining?
- If anyone has a good suggestion for a viable reason people would go live super close to the sun, I encourage writing it. I just didn't have any, and there's much better places still left to settle so I didn't see a reason why anyone would bother.
- Probably microwaves, unless we have better bluespace power transmission tech.
- I considered it, but starlifting's a good bit of work to pull off, and again, there's other places still to mine.
LordME wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:55 am
Mercury
- Once again, you can bet your ass that by 2500 some madlads decided that colonising mercury was a good idea. even if its just a bunch of miners not wanting to bother with a space habitat.
I think I mentioned this only in the notes for first draft of the entries, but mercury's poles are pretty colonizable, the assumption is just that again people wouldn't want to bother with it yet since there's so much better places still to settle, but that's a fairly simple addition that I don't feel too strongly about one way or the other.
LordME wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:55 am
Venus
- The surface is alot more hostile than you might think, tethering is going to be problematic, atleast until the newest and fancies metamaterials appear.
-- Just think of it as, there is so much material easily accessable, why waste a lot of resources on building tethers and heavy proteted gear/robots. I dont wanna categoricly deny it, but it seems uneconomical.
- Madlads living in a bunker.
- Upper atmosphere would likely be coloniesed tho, with floating cities and the like. the two main products of the planet would probably be gases and tourism.
(If there WERE any secret bunkers isolated under venus' surface, they might not be in the codex ;p)
- I suspected so with the tethers, but in general I'm assuming metamaterials good enough for it at least in recent-ish history
- The economic aspect is in an absolute, whole-system, sense kind of uneconomical, but here the consideration is that, same as Terra is actually a bunch of different countries and stuff, other planets probably have their own governments, countries, etc. that, naturally, often prefer to source their own resources if they can rather than import all of it.
- The upper atmospheric colony I considered, since it's such a staple for Venus, including other servers' lores, but honestly I couldn't see one reason why you'd want a whole city on a balloon deeper into the gravity well of the planet with all the sulfuric acid that you couldn't accomplish in space instead, and just have some floating infrastructure (This also kinds of makes Venus a "Spacer Planet" which I thought was a nice break from the usual tropes). Tourism is one of those things that's more or less a thing anywhere in Sol, but in my eyes Venus doesn't have a strong case for it being a main activity, especially compared to very notable Saturn or very strategically positioned Ceres. Again, other servers have done it, but it came across kind of weak in my opinion. (What it does have is lots of solar energy, easily exploited if you're in space and good for industry, which is why the Mars entry says Venus has good primary production [gases + refined materials, mainly] compared to their population, even if it's beat in absolute terms by Mars' manufacturing abilities [still lots of local raw materials, but more goods too]).

(These things and the mining thing were actually also mentioned in early notes that aren't included anymore: These places aren't meant to be ultra-specialized 4x-game planets, the idea trying to get across is that almost everywhere would have their own farms/mining/education/industry/service/etc... but inevitably do a bit better at a some things and a bit worse at others.)
LordME wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:55 am
Not feeling like reading the rest right now just have one last:

Oort Cloud:
- have your obligatory Madlad
- Some isolist fractions might enjoy it out there.
- Plus, it might be a good idea to have some maintenance technician somewhat nearby to fix things the automated system doesnt know to handle.
- Given it enormous size id say up to 50 Million people could live out here, more or less isolated.
- Again, possible people live there, if anyone wants to write colonies in the Oort cloud there's not necessarily a reason against it, it's just far and boring and sparse compared to better and bigger places still very settle-able closer in.
- The technician thing could work, but actually it's not too necessary since FTL works inside the system, technically everywhere is at most "minutes" of travel away, so really the reasons why some places get more or less people doesn't have much to do with travel times as it does interests/resources/politics/history/etc.
- Given it's volume probably a lot more, just depends on how fast sol's pop grows and how many people would want to live there.

Silicons
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Re: [RP] Codex Entries for the Sol System

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