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Sol Asteroid Belt
Galactography > Regions of Space > Inner Sphere
Galactography > Places and Locales
Galactography > Other Major Polities, Empires, and Meta-Empires > Solsys Organisation
Galactography > Places and Locales
Galactography > Other Major Polities, Empires, and Meta-Empires > Solsys Organisation
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| The orbits of several hundred larger Solsys asteroids and their associated colonies are shown in this image | |
Population: ~160 billion sophonts (47% low gravity and micro-gravity Tweaks, 15% Uploads, 15% Vecs, 10% Provolves, 5% Cyborgs, 5% Nearbaseline humans, 1% Baseline humans, 1% Splices, 1% Rianths)
Government: The Asteroid Belt is home to literally thousands of different governments, ranging in size from single habitat city-states, to nations or alliances encompassing hundreds or thousands of habs, asteroids, and computronium nodes. While all nominally independent entities, in practice millennia of long association and interaction have evolved a low key, but surprisingly effective federal structure in which local matters are handled by the various local governments while system or Belt spanning issues are the purview of the Solsys Organization and its hyperturings.
Belt Space: While the largest dozen or so Belt asteroids have been honeycombed, converted to micro-gravity shellworlds, worldhoused, or some combination of these, the vast majority of Belt development has seen the various asteroids used mainly as resource nodes rather than habitats. Individual asteroids or small clusters of different types of asteroids have been fitted with thrusters, shifted into stable, organized orbits, and equipped with automated resource extraction systems. Materials from these are transported to nearby clusters of small to medium size habitats, some spun for gravity, many operating in low gravity or freefall conditions. Most are situated in the shadow of their home asteroid to provide additional protection from solar flares and radiation, although with modern shielding and medical systems such positioning has been reduced to a matter of cultural tradition, with little practical basis.
Low thrust shuttles and ferries ply between nearby rocks, while constant acceleration liners and the occasional boostbeam cross longer distances. The Transys is ever present, but less widely used due to a local preference for 'homegrown' systems.
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Updated 7 November 2021 by Orion's Arm Editors
Initially published on 02 August 2002.
Updated 7 November 2021 by Orion's Arm Editors
Initially published on 02 August 2002.
