The Oort Cloud & The Kuiper Belt
Description
Almost a light year away from the sun, where it dims to become just another star, the final boundary of the solar system is reached, the Oort cloud. This is as far from the sun as you can get before truly reaching interstellar space and it is also the last outpost of humanity, home to a scattered community of corporate and governmental ships, scavenging for suitable comets to send in-system to help the terraforming efforts on Mars and Venus. There is no overriding sense of anything this far out but being on the literal interstellar frontier creates a loose camaraderie and frontier spirit that stays with those who work here even when they transfer back insystem.
Government
The Oort Cloud has no government, every ship is a law unto itself and this far out there isn’t even any UN or naval activity to provide a semblance of law and order. Instead the harsh demands of living this far away from the inner solar system and this far from any help creates a loose and almost anarchic sense of community where all other considerations are secondary to mutual survival and assistance in dealing with the rigours of life out here. The allegiance that this creates between ‘Clouders’ transcends government or company loyalties, at least for those who have spent any reasonable amount of time out in the cloud and who have learned how things work out there. New captains and crew sometimes make faux pas that can anger and alienate the existing community. The only places where a semblance of ‘normal’ order and hierarchy remains is aboard the operational stations that fire magnetic ring ‘cannons’ for the terraforming projects on Mars and Venus. The security of these stations is paramount and so discipline has to be maintained. Even a slight miscalculation could result in terrible damage when they are firing cometary bodies downward into the inner system.
Geography
The Oort Cloud is a dispersed sphere of leftover material from the formation of the solar system with most comets being made up of dust and ice, replete with the chemicals that were necessary for life to come about on the early Earth and thought be many to be a the necessary source of those chemicals. The cloud bulges inward where the orbits of the planets act together upon them, albeit weakly, and there in line with the disc of the solar system the Oort Cloud loosely conjoins with the kuiper belt. The only permanent stations in or near the cloud are the control stations for the enormous magnetic rail ‘cannons’, used to fire prepared comets down into the solar system to impact or orbit Mars and Venus for use in colonisation efforts. Other ships conduct experiments, map the cloud and seek for ways to profitably exploit the materials found there.
Starport quality
E
Size
0
Atmosphere Type
0
Hydrographic Percentage
1
Population
6(?)
Government Type
0
Law Level
0
Tech Level
C
Price Multiplier
3
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