The Thresher-Belt
"The only thing in Uphi outside of Parime's orbit is the Thresher-Belt, a ring of asteroids and debris orbiting Uphi itself. Far from the asteroid-belts we're used to, this belt earned its monicker for its density and spacial-anomalies causing an unusual number of collisions between major objects - up to five a decade(!) - that have led to several scuttled ships in the past. It's currently a contested territory between the FUC and Vaduz (though neither side seem to care when Co-Operative ferries trundle through), owing to being the largest repository of mineral resources outside of Falias itself, and despite Union's best interests the belt is still the site of many conflicts between the system's powers."
"Rock-Driving's probably the most dangerous thing to do in Parime that doesn't involve someone actively trying to kill you... mostly. It's a fast, frantic job of fixing thrusters onto a rock and hoping to hell you don't get obliterated in a storm of rock before you can push it into a new orbit, but if you can get away with it, you and your family's living comfy for a generation or two. Find one with ice packed in, you're practically aristocracy. Word from the wise, stranger: Once you leave Parime, the only law around is the one you bring with you in the barrel of a gun."
Geography
The Thresher-Belt is disk of asteroids in orbit aproximately six astronomical-units away from 41-Uphi. The belt is unusually crowded, orders of magnitude more dense than the asteroid-belt in Cradle's system, and due to unknown spacial anomalies (conjectured by Vaduzian researchers to be electromagnetic in nature), the movement of bodies present within the belt are much faster and unpredictable, leading to a very high frequency of collisions scattering extremely high-speed fragments and debrits throughout the belt, giving it its monicker of the Thresher. Due to the presence of many asteroids above 500km in diameter, astrophysicists speculate that either the belt was once the remnants of an unusually large solid planet, or the spacial anomalies only recently started.
Natural Resources
The Thresher-Belt has an abundance of raw minerals, in orders of magnitude greater than what is present on Falias. This makes them a very lucrative target for mining in Parime, but the chaotic and dangerous nature of the belt's frequent collisions makes long-term operations a very dangerous proposition, as trajectory-models can be made obsolete in under a year. These dangers, along with the large distances between Parime and the belt, mean that the largest mining-operations have involved manually removing asteroids from the belt and placing them in a closer, safer orbit.
History
The presence and density of Uphi's belt has been a known factor since its initial discovery in the 2nd Committee's expansion surveys, and was accounted for in the planned route for the Kemys (some even argue that if it weren't for this accountance, the Kemys would have been destroyed completely instead of simply damaged and abandoned), and was considered to be a primary source of minerals for colonisation projects. These plans were naturally thrown into chaos with the tragic loss of the Kemys itself, leaving the belt untouched for many years as the colony focused on more immediate matters.
Though initial surveys were aware of unusual activity within the belt itself, the Founding Colonists underestimated the unpredictability of the belt in its ill-fated first attempt at begining mining-operations in 4606u, the launch of the PLMV Warsaw. As the Warsaw touched down on the surface of its target asteroid, a sudden change of course in two nearby larger bodies within the belt led to a destructive collision, blanketting all nearby asteroids and the Warsaw in a cataclysmic wave of high-speed molten debris, ripping the ship apart and killing all hands on board.
For many years afterwards, the only mining-operations were performed through limited unmanned drones, initiating 'grind and run' operations of quickly mining needed resources off of asteroids deemed mathematically unlikely to be within range of potential sudden course-changes of larg celestial bodies and quickly returning to a midway-station in one of the system's L-points. While this was the safest method of extracting minerals from the Thresher-Belt at a time, the continued losses and expense of each mining-drone meant that it simply wasn't economical enough for the colony to take further interest for a long time.
In 4831u, the Vaduz Orbital Collective took a renewed interest in probing the Thresher-Belt for resources in the midst of growing economic and political tensions with the Democratic Commonwealth of Falias and Parime, seeking to push for independance from Falias' monopoly on water. Achievements in engineering and chemistry since the Warsaw had enabled a new potential strategy to tapping into the belt's wealth: Moving asteroids out of the belt and into an inner-orbit where miners could work safely. In 4835u, the first asteroid selected for this process - 4799-PB-12 - was succesfully pushed out of the Thresher-Belt via solid-fuel thrusters erected on its surface by a team of Vaduzian engineers, and comprehensive mining began in its new orbit.
While the expense and failure-rate still prevented large-scale investment into the 'rock-driving' industry, the abundance of resources (save for water-ice, which still remains uncommon outside of Falias) enabled a large boom in Parime's industries, and Vaduz in particular profited enough from these ventures to begin construction of massive installations and O'Neil Cylinders such as Vaduz Central. As tensions with the Falias United Colonies began to blossom in the 4900s however, Vaduz took a renewed interest in large-scale application of rock-riving, while the FUC and Helium Co-Operatives began undertaking their own operations of similar ends within the Thresher-belt, with the FUC succesfully performing a rock-driving operation of their own in 4983u.
When hostilities between Vaduz and the FUC commenced in full, a number of smaller conflicts began to erupt between ships travelling around and within the Thresher-belt, both in direct relation to the hostilities of the major powers and simple opportunism of smaller groups. Lately, Union forces have responded to reports of these conflicts by begining regular patrols through frequently travelled parts of the Thresher-Belt's space, when resources allow it.
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