Ah, Sol. The centre of human space, and the ancestral homeland of every human throughout the galaxy today. As is probably expected from the centre of a galactic empire, the Sol System is densely populated (mostly in the central band), heavily industrialised, and full of opportunity. In addition, it's easily the safest human territory one could choose to live in, as any attackers (or pirates) will rapidly find themselves under the guns of half the TerraGov fleet stationed above the Moon.
- As one of humanity's first settlements, Luna was originally settled prior to the foundation of TerraGov, instead being handled entirely by corporate entities from various nations on Earth. This created some friction at the outset of TerraGov's existence, which (after some debate) lead to the establishment of the Lunar Free Territory- the territory was incorporated into TerraGov's jurisdiction, but with significant economic freedom when compared with other federal regions. This loosening of red tape has allowed the Moon to flourish into an industrial heartland for humanity, with colossal shipyards and massive manufacturing plants.
- Part of the agreement in founding the LFT was in allowing some legal autonomy to the governing corporations. Major laws passed down by TerraGov are still enforced on the planet, but most of the day-to-day legal system is handled instead under the jurisdiction of the Free Territory Committee, a board made up from representatives of the 12 Lunar corporations (and a 13th vote given to TerraGov to prevent deadlock, ostensibly due to their "continued cooperation in the success of the Lunar Free Territory"), and by the megacorps who run each region themselves.
- As might be expected, the voting on the FTC can turn violent if it goes against some corporations interests- however, care is taken by all parties to minimise the collateral and keep their conflict on the down low, such that they can avoid attracting the wandering gaze of the slumbering giant of TerraGov.
- The largest of the Moon's cities is Capra City, operated by the Italian fuel giant APdS S.p.A. and originally founded as a centre for helium harvesting and processing. While not the official capital, it is the first city that most people think of when picturing the Moon, and it pioneered the stack city concept that the rest of the Moon's urban centres would copy.
The Moon: ever a focus of Humanity's gaze. A muse for artists and romantics; an object of study and lofty goal for science, the first step into the final frontier. With all this in mind, it is perhaps no surprise that the Moon was one of the earliest bodies beyond Earth to be colonised as part of the Sol Rush. So early, in fact, that it was done prior to the "unification" of Earth under TerraGov. A number of independent moon colonies were founded during this period, under a total of 12 different corporations from various nations. Thanks to their efforts, Luna was heavily industrialised, taking advantage of the thin atmosphere, low gravity, and large swathes of virgin land to build massive shipyards and factories.
When TerraGov did come into being, however, this created a problem. The nominally-independent Moon had relied for centuries on its status as an economic and industrial free zone, but humanity's centralised government claimed natural dominion over the Lunar body. This dispute escalated through the senate's halls, and then into the legal system, until the work of Chancellor Christian Ebert (and the resulting Lunar Free Zone Act) brought about the establishment of the Lunar Free Territory- an economic free area, under nominal TerraGov jurisdiction but with significant economic, industrial and legal liberties afforded to a newly-founded committee of the 12 ruling corporations. This deal allowed the Moon to remain an important hub for industry, while also giving TerraGov the ability to maintain important legal stability and territorial integrity in the Sol System.
Life on the Moon today is characterised by stratification. The dominant form of Lunar architecture, and the perfect example of this phenomenon, is the stack city- so named as it is tunneled into the surface, with wealthier citizens living on or near the surface underneath great domes, while beneath lie the poorer districts where the workers live.
- The capital city of Mars is New Osaka, in the Arabia Sector. Originally founded as Oda Colony, the city has expanded to have a population of 10 million and hosts most of the planet's administrative and governmental functions. It is also known as the Red City, due to its red rock buildings constructed from local materials... and due to the frequent sandstorms that roll through its streets. It's not uncommon for entire weeks to be characterised by dust hanging heavy in the air.
- The planet has a population of 850 million, spread mostly across the northern hemisphere where the flatter land permits more extensive construction.
- Much of the planet's wealth comes from its plasma mines (of which 65% are in the Amenthes sector), although other minerals are also in relative abundance. Other major sectors include manufacturing, spacecraft construction, chemical production, and financial services. Tourism, funnily enough, does not rank amongst the top sectors, quite possibly because nobody wants to stare at endless dust.
- Mars is the subject of ongoing terraforming attempts: a stable atmosphere has been introduced alongside enough vegetative life to sustain it, as well as a substantial amount of water, but much of the planet is still arid, useless dust. Future efforts are intended to focus on increasing soil fertility and planting a number of forests which are intended to act as the planet's lungs, similarly to the Amazon on Earth.
- The planet's moons, Phobos and Deimos, are home only to small research outposts and mining operations, and host a population of around 1000 between them.
As the closest planet to Earth, Mars has always captured Humanity's interest as a potential future expansion route off of our home planet. And in the late 21st Century, this goal would first be realised, with the foundation of a series of small scientific outposts. It would not be until the mid-22nd Century that the true value of Mars would be realised with the discovery of plasma in the Amenthes sector. Acting as the key to FTL flight and being used in more and more manufacturing processes, the mining operations on the planet would expand rapidly, and this necessarily drew more settlers to work the mines. Soon, a network of new, organised colonies would be set up by the companies with stakes in the mining operation.
Alongside the foundation of these colonies, a major terraforming campaign was started with the aim of making the planet liveable, and this would proceed throughout the following centuries, with water being sourced from Neptune to create artificial water bodies, and large artificial atmospherics machines being constructed to provide a thick enough atmosphere to allow for plant life to survive. This atmosphere would become self-sufficient in the course of around a century, allowing the people of Mars to discard their helmets and bulky space suits while living on the planet- and further facilitating expansion of the colonies there.
Now, Mars stands as a symbol of Humanity's ability to overcome harsh conditions, even if the planet is not Humanity's largest nor most prosperous colony.
- Colonisation of Venus has been amongst Humanity's greatest challenges. Terraforming seems impossible: the solution instead has been to construct domed colonies for housing workers, maintained by a complex system of shielding and corrosion resistant coatings.
- Living on the surface of Venus is generally not something done for long periods of time: workers are generally rotated in and out on a fixed schedule while working for the mining corporations, although how long those rotations are varies.
- Sulfur is the lifeblood of the planet's economy. Nearly everyone who lives and works on Venus is involved in sulfur extraction, of which two main forms exist: mining for solid elemental sulfur and metal sulfides, and extraction of liquid sulfuric acid via drilling and fracking. The remainder are scientific expeditions and researchers.
- The planet boasts an overall population, between the surface and orbital platforms, of around 20,000.
Sulfur. Ever an important chemical in industrial processes throughout history, this yellow element took on a new lease of life with the discovery of plasma. A new industrial process for the harvesting of plasma from amenthite, and other associated low purity ores, taken from Mars' vast plasma mines was developed, known as the Altmeyer process. A key reagent of the Altmeyer process is sulfuric acid, used to create a slurry which is then subjected to further purification- and this demanded high quantities of sulfur. With extraction on Earth essentially drying up as the supplies of oil did, the chemical corporations of the Sol System turned elsewhere: to the surface of Venus.
Venus was well explored by humanity prior to its colonisation, but never had any landings of this scale been undertaken. Beforehand, the peak surface population at any point was 15 people, living on a single Terragov-funded research outpost. After the first landings by Exagon Extractions, the population jumped to 1,200. And more companies followed, as time went on: including a few big names: Cybersun Industries maintains a large share of sulfur mining on the planet, as does Nanotrasen- and the two are presently posturing to take over the smaller corporations to secure a larger piece of the pie.
- Gas Skimmers dot the upper atmosphere of Saturn, harvesting the valuable gases it contains. These Skimmers are maintained in a tight orbit, acting similarly to gliders, and contain machinery which collects, traps, cools and compresses, and finally stores the harvested gases.
- The vast majority of the population on Saturn is (perhaps obviously) on orbital platforms: the Gas Skimmers maintain a skeleton crew who are tasked with keeping the machinery in working order and doing tasks that are unsuited to robots. The life of a Gasjack, as they are called, is rough and unpleasant, as they live and work in tight confines aboard the Gas Skimmers, and to venture outside they must wear pressure suits that are even more cumbersome than spacesuits. Their pay is excellent, however- which may ease the stress somewhat.
- Orbital shipyards and industrial stations make up a vast network above Saturn, utilising resources harvested from the planet and its moons.
- Much of the initial prospecting and early Gas Skimming of Saturn was handled by Havelka Gas Enterprises, a Czech gas extraction concern who designed and perfected the initial Gas Skimmer designs. The company would eventually be snapped up by Cybersun Industries, as part of their growing industrial empire in the Sol System- but not before the designs for the skimmers were copied by numerous other corporations.
As one of the Sol system's primary sources of hydrogen and helium, Saturn is today considered critical to industrial manufacturing of sublight fuel, as well as providing fusionable material for large-scale power generation. In order to harvest these important gases, the atmosphere of Saturn must be tapped- and to accomplish this, the Gas Skimmer was born. A small, lightly manned vessel, gas skimmers maintain a tight orbit within the upper limits of the planet's atmosphere in order to capture and store gases which are then sent to orbital stations for separation, purification, and eventual sale/further manufacturing. The scale of this operation cannot be understated: to fuel humanity's advance to the stars, thousands of skimmers must be active at any given time. When one eventually outlives its usefulness, it is evacuated and allowed to drop into the crushing depths of Saturn's deep atmosphere, never to be seen again.
The overall population on Saturn is estimated in the 10,000 range- of which around 3-4,000 are Gasjacks aboard the skimmers, and a further 7,000 sit in orbit.
- Titan is of particular interest to humanity as a source of organic chemical material- useful building blocks for things like plastics, pharmaceuticals, food additives, and really anything that's important in the modern day. Given the depletion of oil reserves on Earth, the chemicals produced on Titan are critical for maintaining humanity's manufacturing capabilities.
- The atmosphere of Titan is thick with methane, and is therefore toxic to human life. Colonies on the surface are domed and gastight.
- Titan, as a moon of Saturn, also takes advantage of the planet's orbital network of manufacturing plants and shipyards.
- Titan has spawned its own megacorporation, the Canada-based Howard Organics. They control a commanding share of operations on the moon, which has made them wealthy enough to compete with the big boys.
As any organic chemist will tell you, organic chemistry is key to the modern world. Almost every product that is available in modern society has, at some point, been passed through the hands of an organic chemist, be that for the production of plastics, or formation of medicinal products, or any number of critical steps in producing useful things. To that end, supplies of useful organic material are critical to humanity. As it presently is, our main source is oil, which will not last forever.
In the 2200s, following attempts at conservation throughout the 21st and 22nd centuries, humanity's worst fear was realised, as the oil reserves on the planet finally dried up. A scramble to find a new source of organic material was initiated, as the planet began rationing remaining supplies and instituting extensive recycling programs. A brief dark age would emerge for the following few decades, known today to historians as the Transitory Period. Fortunately, salvation would be at hand in the form of Titan- the moon had long been known for its methane reserves, but with little reason to exploit them there had been little more than minor expeditions and small scale operations on the planet. This would change with the arrival of Trent Howard, a Canadian industrialist and organic chemist, who had discovered a new method of methane extraction, purification, and functionalisation, on the scene. Howard's process would revolutionise methane extraction on Titan, and almost single-handedly end the Transitory Period, as well as earn Howard his place in the sun with his new company, Howard Organics.
Now, Titan is inhabited by an estimated 8,000 people, spread across hundreds of extraction plants on the planet's surface- most of which are owned by Howard Organics.
- Jump Zero was, until the first trip to Alpha Centauri, the furthest humans had ever managed to travel, being weeks from Earth. Now, it's less than a half hour's FTL cruise from Earth. How far we've come.
- These days, it's pretty much an unimportant backwater, maintaining relevance only as a military installation and for minor historical tourism.
- Last chance for gas: next service 4.367 LY.
Jump Zero, or to use its "official" title, Padmanabhan Station, was the historical furthest frontier of human expansion until the advent of "just-sublight" engines that made the trip to Alpha Centauri possible. Placed in orbit around Eris, the station marked an important milestone at the time, being around 3 weeks from Earth with the sublight tech available at the time. The United Nations Joint Military Command (of the time) spearheaded the creation of the station as a joint project with the Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology (SAST) to serve as both a scientific research outpost for nearby celestial bodies and a military outpost to serve as an effective testing ground for new warship technologies and as a deep-space training site.
Many important technologies were pioneered at the Padmanabhan Proving Grounds, including the subspace broadcaster (finally giving Jump Zero a direct line to Earth), several new developments in ship design, and most importantly, humanity's first viable "just-sublight" engine. This final discovery would take most of the purpose out of Jump Zero's existence, shortening the time needed to reach it to about 13 and a half hours, and allowing humanity to branch out beyond Sol to Alpha Centauri.
These days, Jump Zero's scientific purposes are all but depleted, as is much of its tactical reasoning to exist. It is maintained by the TerraGov navy as a secondary basing point, and as a deep-space zero-G training site for marines, mostly for sentimental purposes.
Of course, there's more behind the scenes, specifically on Eris...
- Taking advantage of the military presence permitted by Jump Zero, TerraGov made the entirety of Eris a restricted area, only for the use of the military. This has resulted in a lot of military infrastructure being set up across the planet- training grounds, production facilities (for approved corporations only), proving grounds, and monitoring equipment.
- Eris is also home to the elusive "Sector Zero"- a not-so-secret top secret TerraGov facility under some of the tightest restrictions in human space. Nobody's quite sure what goes on there except the highest echelons of TerraGov, and they're not keen to share.
- In terms of civilian population, Eris has a small number of settlements that are pretty much entirely for people working at the military institutions, be those soldiers or civilian staff. These are also under restriction, with visitors requiring extensive permits to even set foot on the planet. This understandably makes Eris quite an isolating post for a soldier.
Under Jump Zero is the dwarf planet, Eris. This unassuming rock took on remarkable potential after the construction of the station above, giving TerraGov extensive land far from prying eyes to adapt to new purposes, and so they would set about turning Eris into an extensive military complex, originally designed to complement Jump Zero's facilities, and then eventually to replace most of them as Jump Zero became more and more obsolete. TerraGov now handles a range of specialised trainings on Eris' surface, including low-atmos warfare, low-gravity warfare, and helljumper certification, amongst many others.
No shadowy military installation is complete without secrets, either, and Eris has many, mostly within the boundaries of "Sector Zero": a deeply classified military R&D facility located at Eris' equator under heavy guard, 24/7. This has become one of mankind's worst kept secrets, as everyone knows exactly where Sector Zero is- not that it helps them with getting in.