HOME | DD

Description
Humanity spread across the void, finding new resources and new challenges with every new body. It was the age of settlement, the golden age.

Mercury
The surface of the Luna-sized innermost planet had little to offer as a place to live. However, the intense sun light and abundant raw materials offered the chance to build a huge solar collector. The planet's economy was based largely on beaming solar power to the rest of the Cisbelt via laser. The largest colonizer was Korea, followed closely England, both small, densely populated, isolationist states in need of off-world resources.

Venus
The high winds of Venus rendered the planet unsuitable for space elevators, so off-planet commerce was handled by skyhooks, long rotating cables that dipped into the upper atmosphere twice per rotation to hook cargo and fling it up into orbit. These skyhooks required more maintenance than space elevators to keep them working and in stable orbits. Most of Venus's orbital population was employed in the cytherium export industry.

Earth
Despite the explosion of settlement accompanying the invention of MET drive, no one would contest that Earth is still the center of the human universe. 99.9% of humanity still called the mother planet home, and just the cylinder cities and zero-g manufacturies had a population greater than every other body in the solar system combined.
Luna
Despite fresh competition from Mercury, Earth's moon remained at the top of Sol's power industry. Despite the fact that the rivalry between NASA and Selecorp had grown into a full blown cold war, the population and industrial capacity of Luna had continued to grow over the decades, exporting not only the crucial helium-3, but also raw materials to locations across the Cisbelt and to Titan. And as of 2081, only 3.7% of the Helium-3 reserves had been exhausted.

Mars
A distant and dusty backwater built on the debt of the great powers of Earth. The orbital stations were being gradually abandoned as their population migrated to the surface or elsewhere in the system as foreign aid to Mars continued to be cut and the last shreds of the farcical Martian export industry failed.

Vesta
Vesta was colonized by a host of Eastern European Cossacks who lobbied unsuccessfully for a country of their own after the collapse of the Russian Federation. Aside from the O'Neil cones and MET ships over thatched huts and steppe ponies, the Vesti Cossacks live much as their ancestors did: small democratic marshal communities on the fringe of civilization.

Pallas
Torre de Christo was a community of Latin American Catholics who decided that everywhere on Earth was too sinful and decadent to host a community of true God-fearing men. Extremely poor and extremely isolationist.

Ceres
As the most populous body in the belt, Ceres was home to an Arab League community, a Moroccan community, a Viet community, a community of exiled Kosovo Serbs, and a enclave of militant Sikhs.

Herculina
Much of the belt served as a place for minor states to have their token colonies or for ethnic or ideological minorities to have a safe homeland. Herculina served this purpose for the states of Albania and Armenia, as well as the scattered Assyrians, a ethnic tracing their lineage back to the empire of Assur and Nineveh 4500 years hence.

Interamnia
The home to two small stations belonging to New Zealand and Mongolia, as well as a colony of Croats.

Hygiea
Hygiea was the most remote inhabited body outside of distant Titan. It was home to two small colonies, one belonging to Mongolia and one belonging to Africa.

Other Belt Objects
Over half of the Belt's population lived on minor objects, mostly dwelling in O'Neil cylinders dug into the astroids from which they were made. If counted as a single planet, the Belt would be the most diverse in the system after Earth itself, home to dozens of cultures and ways of life, thinly spread over the vast band between Mars and Jupiter.

Description
Humanity spread across the void, finding new resources and new challenges with every new body. It was the age of settlement, the golden age.

Mercury
The surface of the Luna-sized innermost planet had little to offer as a place to live. However, the intense sun light and abundant raw materials offered the chance to build a huge solar collector. The planet's economy was based largely on beaming solar power to the rest of the Cisbelt via laser. The largest colonizer was Korea, followed closely England, both small, densely populated, isolationist states in need of off-world resources.

Venus
The high winds of Venus rendered the planet unsuitable for space elevators, so off-planet commerce was handled by skyhooks, long rotating cables that dipped into the upper atmosphere twice per rotation to hook cargo and fling it up into orbit. These skyhooks required more maintenance than space elevators to keep them working and in stable orbits. Most of Venus's orbital population was employed in the cytherium export industry.

Earth
Despite the explosion of settlement accompanying the invention of MET drive, no one would contest that Earth is still the center of the human universe. 99.9% of humanity still called the mother planet home, and just the cylinder cities and zero-g manufacturies had a population greater than every other body in the solar system combined.
Luna
Despite fresh competition from Mercury, Earth's moon remained at the top of Sol's power industry. Despite the fact that the rivalry between NASA and Selecorp had grown into a full blown cold war, the population and industrial capacity of Luna had continued to grow over the decades, exporting not only the crucial helium-3, but also raw materials to locations across the Cisbelt and to Titan. And as of 2081, only 3.7% of the Helium-3 reserves had been exhausted.

Mars
A distant and dusty backwater built on the debt of the great powers of Earth. The orbital stations were being gradually abandoned as their population migrated to the surface or elsewhere in the system as foreign aid to Mars continued to be cut and the last shreds of the farcical Martian export industry failed.

Vesta
Vesta was colonized by a host of Eastern European Cossacks who lobbied unsuccessfully for a country of their own after the collapse of the Russian Federation. Aside from the O'Neil cones and MET ships over thatched huts and steppe ponies, the Vesti Cossacks live much as their ancestors did: small democratic marshal communities on the fringe of civilization.

Pallas
Torre de Christo was a community of Latin American Catholics who decided that everywhere on Earth was too sinful and decadent to host a community of true God-fearing men. Extremely poor and extremely isolationist.

Ceres
As the most populous body in the belt, Ceres was home to an Arab League community, a Moroccan community, a Viet community, a community of exiled Kosovo Serbs, and a enclave of militant Sikhs.

Herculina
Much of the belt served as a place for minor states to have their token colonies or for ethnic or ideological minorities to have a safe homeland. Herculina served this purpose for the states of Albania and Armenia, as well as the scattered Assyrians, a ethnic tracing their lineage back to the empire of Assur and Nineveh 4500 years hence.

Interamnia
The home to two small stations belonging to New Zealand and Mongolia, as well as a colony of Croats.

Hygiea
Hygiea was the most remote inhabited body outside of distant Titan. It was home to two small colonies, one belonging to Mongolia and one belonging to Africa.

Other Belt Objects
Over half of the Belt's population lived on minor objects, mostly dwelling in O'Neil cylinders dug into the astroids from which they were made. If counted as a single planet, the Belt would be the most diverse in the system after Earth itself, home to dozens of cultures and ways of life, thinly spread over the vast band between Mars and Jupiter.