Mercury: The Stepping Stone to Greatness

Mercury, despite being the smallest true planet in our solar system, is perhaps one of the most vital for humanity's plans of the future. After having its rotational speed slowed down to less than 1/3 its original rate, the planet was quickly swarmed by prospecting companies, mining teams, and investment firms; eager for untouched land ripe with mineral resources. These companies were gradually bought out by their most successful peer, eventually becoming the ultra-successful Mercurial Starworks company.

Geography

The planet is covered with harsh terrain consisting of dunes, badlands, mountains, ravines, and city-sized craters. Due to having no atmosphere, the temperature of the planet varies wildly depending on which side you are on. The side facing the sun is scorching hot, nearly 430 degrees Celsius, while the other side is bitterly cold at nearly -185 degrees Celsius. The planet's rotation has artificially been reduced by nearly 10x due to the introduction of artificial moons and strategic bombardment of the surface with asteroids, making a thin "twilight zone" of habitable space -where the light of the sun meets the darkness of space on the other side. This makes a perfect spot for mobile habitats and mass drivers to be situated.

Mining Crags

Across the planet, massive, uniform ravines of slagged regolith are scathed into the surface. Across the horizon as one looks down the length of these crevasses, immense pillars of light soar into the sky, emitted by blindingly bright orbital installations. These formations are referred to by the locals as "Mining Crags," and are the result of massive orbital mirrors burning away the planet's surface in a processes called "Melt-Mining."

These beams of light are directed at areas of the planet's surface that are particularly resource-rich, scathing away immense areas of the surface through the vaporization of unwanted stone. The resulting craters, valleys, and ravines appear as uncanny semi-uniform scars on the planet's surface.

Localized Phenomena

Mercury is the only celestial body in all of Terran space to employ Melt-Mining techniques: a method of mining in which an intense beam of light is projected onto the planet's surface via orbital mirrors, melting the surface to allow for easy strip mining. As one could imagine, this technique is extremely disruptive and inefficient performed on a planet with an atmosphere. As such, it is reserved for use on totally barren worlds.

Natural Resources

The world is rich in many natural resources. Heavy elements such as Ferrous, Non-Ferrous, and Transplutonic ores be found all over the cold side of the planet. In addition to this, vast quantities of stone are constantly gathered from the planet during mining, making Mercury one of the biggest exporters of concrete in the system.

History

Ever since the proposal of creating a Dyson sphere around the sun, Mercury has been a popular candidate for mining materials for this project, as other nearby planets are far larger making supply launches more energy intensive, and asteroids are simply too far away. The only issue was the temperature... The idea of deploying orbital habitats was considered, however fully autonomous mining installations that operated on planets were highly experimental at the time, and were only ever used for mining asteroids. Besides, having to constantly move mass drivers and production facilities was impractical. That is: until the advent of space rending technology. It would be simple to warp asteroids into the orbit of the planet, causing gravitational shifts due to the planet's small size, as well as opening the door for precise bombardment of the planet. Not only did this stabilize the planet's rotation, but it also slowed it down tremendously. The asteroid impacts had the added benefit of displacing billions of tons of material from within the planet's crust: perfect for mining. With a stabilized and slower rotation, the planet was ripe for habitation outpost, orbital refineries, and mobile mass drivers. Mercury now supplies over 90% of all raw materials to the FTS' Dyson sphere.

Alternative Name(s)

Mercury, The Strip

Type

Planet

Location under

Major Planets

Included Organizations

• Mercurial Starworks Inc.

Owner/Ruler

Tomas Berkiel

Ruling/Owning Rank

CEO

Owning Organization

Mercurial Starworks Inc.