Solar system

The original survey designations for the planets in this solar system (long alphanumeric strings from whatever distant catalog first recorded these bodies) were shortened, mispronounced, and eventually replaced by whatever stuck in common usage.

It was not the only one colonized. There are references to others in old records and occasional news items, but it is the only one that matters for this story. The others are not detailed here.

The Sun

The sun in this solar system is a red supergiant with a diameter of 591 million kilometers (Our own Sun is 1.39 millions of kilometers, for a perspective).

Gaspra (formerly BD-66 127 c)

Gaspra is an emerald green gas planet, with a similar size than our solar system’s Saturn (about 120 000 km of diameter). It sits at 311 AU (Astral Units), which is at about 46.6 billions kilometers away from the Sun.

It rapidly got determined that the gas covering this planet could be used as fuel, so the government rapidly set things in motion in order to create an automated base on one of its moon.

Gaspra’s upper atmosphere is therefore filled with artificial satellites that have 3 roles:

• Handle logisitic for automated collectors (build them, refuel them, safely extract the gas they extracted from the atmosphere)
• Liquify / purify the gas in order to make it easier / safer to move around
• Allow automated spaceships to dock on them and refuel them for their travel back to Hope, and fill their tanks with the liquified gas

Then, the automated spaceships will travel back to Hope in order to deliver this fuel. The Government managed to have a chain supply so dense that 20 of those ships land on Hope every day, while the travel takes 3 hours due to impressive science progress in space related technologies.

It takes Gaspra about 1400 Earth years to make a full orbit around the sun.

Hope (formerly OP 220144 b)

The capital world, where the game takes place. Coruscant-dense, fully urbanized, population in the billions. Originally shortened from its catalog designation to simply “OP,” then renamed “Hope” by early colonists in a moment of genuine, unironic optimism.

Hope is the biggest natural satellite of Gaspra, with a diameter of about 6370 km. It has no sismic activities. It takes 308 days to make a full orbit around Gaspra, which is celebrated as a new year by the inhabitants. Currently, Hope has executed 325 orbits around it, which makes it the Year 325, or Y325. In the sky, Gaspra appears slightly bigger (1.01x) bigger than Earth’s moon, and gives a green light when directly hit by the sun.

The irony was not designed into the name. It was discovered by the people living under it. As density grew and conditions worsened, “Hope” curdled into a name everyone uses with a straight face and a half-smile.

Hope initially was built with parts of the ship that crash landed on the planet’s surface, then with the planet’s resources. But when the surface was fully covered with buildings, they had to find other sources of metal, and they found one, in their very solar system.

Hell (formerly HE 217428 l, “HE”)

Our Mars is what approaches the most to what “Hell” is. Same aridity, same unbreathable atmosphere. It sits at 200 AU, which is 30 billions kilometers away from the Sun. Since it has no atmosphere, surface temperatures are plainly unbearable.

The planet being close-ish to Gaspra, people tried to colonize it as well. The “inhabitants” got prefabricated constructions in order to settle there and start extracting resources, but the reality is that the erosion due to constant sand storms destroys everything getting out from the ground. So they dug tunnels to go around important buildings, which are more resistant than where they live and sleep. Still, some settlers managed to find ways to build small villages on the surface by building them in crevices.

The extracted ressources are rich in iron, which is then sent back to Hope (~ 2 weeks trip), where it’s treated into something that a skycrapper can be built with.

In around Y280, the Government decided that Hell wasn’t a suitable place to extand the population, so they decided to send prisoners with the heaviest sentences to serve their sentence as minors there, all while evacuating the settlers. It took about 5 years due to logistic and political reasons.

C894 QN (informally: “Pluto”)

It is said (without much proof) that Pluto holds lots of rare and useful resources on this planet, the problem is that with the current technology, a single trip would take up to 8 years for one go, and nobody wants to take the risk.

The surface is bare and covered in ice. The current government’s reelection platform leans heavily on promises to finally fund access to it. Citizens have heard this before. The news occasionally makes huge headlines such as “The president announced yesterday that funding for C894 QN exploration is nearly complete.” It is always nearly complete, but it never budges.