Lovelace System
The Lovelace system is a unique one within Human Space, being perhaps the most inhospitable system among the 17 to still be classed as inhabited. More dispersed than most, Lovelace is a binary star system home to two red dwarfs, Lovelace 1 and Lovelace 2. Lovelace 1 is approximately 30% more massive than Lovelace 2, and both orbit around a shared center of gravity. The system is located in the Belius galaxy in the same plane as the Milky Way, estimated to be some 790 million light years away.
Lovelace has been exploited for the vast mineral wealth of its planetary rings and asteroids for years before a permanent population was settled on a large moon of the ice giant Lovelace B. With an irregular orbital period, long periods of total darkness as the twin stars of Lovelace are hidden behind the ice giant, and generally frozen conditions, Lovelace BC neverthless has enough of an atmosphere to be human-breathable as well as liquid water (under the frozen surface). Widely considered the worst rock humanity has ever put down roots on, the moon was nevertheless settled as the best option to supply the ever increasing amount of asteroid prospectors in the system.
With a mostly transient population of asteroid miners, the economy of the Lovelace System is dominated by a handful of mining and shipping companies. The orbits of Lovelace B and its moons serve to base Lovelace's section of All-Crossing as well as its shipyards and ore processing centres. Though the system is only home to less than 15,000 people, the Tein Gate connecting it to the Dragonstar system is constantly backed up with the volume of minerals being sold to the rest of Human Space.
Unlike many other inhabited systems in Human Space, Lovelace has not had an independence movement from the UNE Mandate, and continues to be politically subordinate to the nations of Earth. In practice, the mining and shipping companies operating in the system do as they wish, and order in the system is kept by private security firms hired by these companies. Virtually everyone living in the system has a citizenship somewhere else and it is said that nobody goes to Lovelace to retire.
Lovelace BC
With average surface temperatures in the negative celcius, the native life on the moon consists of extremophile bacteria in the oceans below the frozen surface. Human settlement is mostly underground, though the surface is tolerable for limited time periods not during one the weeks long planetary eclipses. Long-term exposure to the surface of Lovelace BC is a radiation hazard. Gravity on the moon is about .45G, and the moon suffers from reqular quakes due to its elliptical orbit around Lovelace B.
Nevertheless, the moon has a permanent population of a few thousand, mostly living in underground arcologies below the space elevator. With the one upside of the moon being that the elevator is generally cheaper to operate than most human colonies, the moon is home to vast underground farms, powered by nuclear plants and heat from undersea vents. Using transplanted Earth crops, the moon's primary purpose is to feed the numerous rock hoppers of the Lovelace system.
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