Unity Space Station

Built on, and in, an asteroid that was towed from the Asteroid Belt to L1 Earth orbit in the early 22nd century, Unity Space Station is over 5km across at its widest point. Construction on the station was completed in 2140, and it was initially a UEF military base. As time passed, civilian and corporate facilities have slowly but surely established a permanent presence on the station. These are kept a discrete distance from the military base but go a long way to help make a tour on Unity more pleasant and bring in a considerable income. Amongst the jumble of arcologies, geodesic domes and lunar concrete superstructures, there is a large space port, holiday resort, marine barracks and dry dock, as well as many privately owned corporate structures.
Unity Station is set up to have virtually no spin, the same face always faces towards Earth. The Station decks are all stacked one above the other, with 'down' being towards the Earth. Down is maintained by a comprehensive array of grav field generators. Four Shinohara Heavy Industries fusion reactors supply the stations power requirements with additional power coming from solar arrays. The majority of the stations power output is diverted to the high efficiency/low output thrusters located at the station base. These motors are in almost continuous operation in order to maintain Unity in a stable L1 orbit. Technically this makes Unity Station the largest space vessel anywhere in known space!
A number of large military docking stations are tethered above the asteroid by 1m thick carbon nanotube cables, along which freight/passenger cars travel. Docking pits are available to smaller vessels. These pits are all in excess of 100m in diameter and can provide berths for hundreds of small ships in bays in the pit wall. Two full wings of UEAF aerospace fighters are permanently stationed at the station, together with a squadron of dropships. In addition, at least half a dozen military warships of up to cruiser class can always be expected to be found docked here.
As would be expected of Earths prime military base and volume control facility Unity station rigorously controls its surrounding volume. Approach within 100,000km (note that this includes Luna) is limited to a narrow range of approach cones, divergence from these traffic cones is regarded as a very serious infringement and is punished by revocation of the crews flight status and impoundment of the vessel at the very least (destruction without warning is a distinct possibility). Much of Unity's crew are tasked with space control and as such Unity Station has the finest sensor suite in human space. Linked to Unity are a huge constellation of surveillance satellites and ships, all feeding information back to the central monitoring AI and human overseers. Little happens within the entire Sol system that Unity does not detect, whether or not this is noticed is another thing, it will be recorded and may be studied later. Unity is also the command and control centre for the Artemis Net, the array of deep space satellites and monitoring stations orbiting out near the edges of the Sol system yet inside the Heliopause/Termination Shock. The Artemis Net is capable of detecting F-Space activity up to half a light year away from Sol, out beyond the Oort Cloud.
Thousands of travellers pass through Unity every day, either inbound from the colonies or heading out from Earth. Many thousand earn a living by working at Unity, either as part of the Federal workforce, or as one of the many corporate employees who work at both the uptown resorts and private villas, and the downtown clubs and bars. Vacations on Unity are often renowned (or infamous) for their exotic nature. In special large low-G caverns tourists can enjoy the experience of flying under their own power, or can try swimming in the zero-G floating 'pools' (SCUBA required) or more exotic activities.
All ships arriving at Earth must pass through the Orbital Customs & Excise location at Unity Space Station Spaceport. Here they must strip and be decontaminated (same goes for belongings). Transportation of any undeclared organic substance that is alien in origin is illegal. All such items must pass through ITC Quarantine to make sure it is safe and will not contaminate Earth's biosphere.

Demographics

The Station has a permanent crew of 5,127, and is able to house a further 65,000 transients.

Founding Date

2140 CE

Type

Starbase

Population

70,127

Location under

Earth

Owning Organization

United Earth Federation