 | ||
| Saturn | ||
|---|---|---|
| System | Sol | |
| Type | Gas Giant (Sudarsky I) | |
| Astronomical Classification Index | FHJOV-mJ | |
| Affiliation | Colonial Administration Assembly | |
| Location | Sol System | |
| Natural Satellites | Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, Mimas (+139 others) | |
| Artificial Satellites | 9 | |
| Population | 2,952 | |
| Equatorial Radius | 60,268 km (37,449 mi) / 9.449 R🜨 | |
| Gravity | 1.065g | |
| Atmosphere | H, He | |
| Rotational Period | 10 h 32 m 36 s | |
| Axial Tilt | 27.63° | |
| Mass | 0.29941 M♃ | |
| Orbital Period | 29.4571 yr | |
| Orbital Radius | 149,598,023 km (92,955,902 mi) | |
| Orbital Eccentricity | 0.0167086 | |
| Inclination | 7.155° | |
Saturn, or Sol VI, is the sixth planet from Sol (the Sun) and the second-largest planet in the system, after Jupiter. An archetypal ringed Sudarsky I gas giant, Saturn is mainly composed of hydrogen and helium, in gaseous, liquid, and metallic layers surrounding a rocky core. A mostly transient population of around 3 thousand is engaged in research, tourist, and military activities in and around the Saturnian system.
Today, Saturn remains the outer limit of civilian travel in Sol, hosting a transient population of some thousand tourists at any given time, in addition to a vast quantity of Sol Defence Corps personnel.
Saturn's isolation and large reserves of lunar resources allows the gas giant to host the home basings and fleet yards of the 4th and 6th Fleets of the Sol Defence Corps Navy.
Unlike the much more populous Jupiter, Saturn has no Colonial Administration of its own, and is directly administered by the United Nations' Colonial Administration Assembly through the ad hoc Saturn Colonial Affairs Office (SCAO), located on Earth with satellite branches across the Saturnian system. The current Director of the SCAO is Theio MacHallan.
Residents of the Saturnian system are referred to as Saturnians, or more rarely as Kronians.
History
First orbited by the United Nations Ringwatcher I Expedition on 20 August 2078, repeated Ringwatcher expeditions sent by the UN Colonial Development Office (CDO) throughout the 2080s established permanent infrastructure in Saturnian orbit, as well as on the moons of Titan, Enceladus, Iapetus, and Mimas.
Prior to the development of modern fusion propulsion and warp drives, Saturn expeditions required multi-year interplanetary transfers for each journey, preventing long-term human habitation in the Saturnian system until the 2090s.
Economy
Saturn's economy is based on two sectors — interplanetary tourism, and the military activities of the Sol Defence Corps.
The SDCN quickly reserved large portions of Saturnian orbital space and lunar surface for military use after initial exploration, keen on developing the gas giant and its moons into a base for outer-system patrol and anti-piracy operations. SDC installations in the Saturnian system include SDCSS Temperance, SDCI Collins and SDCI San Martín, all sprawling naval dockyards in low orbit of Titan; SDCI Hatta, a research and development facility on the surface of Enceladus; and SDB Titan, a large multipurpose military base on Titan's surface. Both fleets are officially based at SDCSS Temperance, though the scattered, long-haul missions of both the 4th and 6th Fleets allow for a much smaller portion of vessels docked at homeport at any given time compared to the rest of the SDCN.
Saturn's ring systems and massive quantity of moons are frequent tourist destinations for the rich and super-rich, who can afford the expensive fusion liner journey outbound to Saturn and back. Enceladus offers a more remote and exclusive undersea ocean experience than Europa, while Titan's methane lakes and human-powered flight pull travelers from across the Sol system.
Culture
Home to the most remote civilian population in the Sol system, Saturn's culture is marked by its isolation, even more so than even some extrasolar colonies — transport links to Saturn are still primarily serviced by slower-than-light fusion liners sailing months-long interplanetary transfers from Earth, Mars, or Jupiter, with warp vessels under construction prioritized for the Final Frontier Project and SDCN. Tourist seasons in the Saturnian system are years apart, defined by low delta-V transfer windows between Saturn and Earth.
Art and architecture
Broadcast
Sports
Wing-racing
Titan's dense nitrogen-methane atmosphere allows for most human visitors to fly using extremely light polymer wingsuits on their own muscle-power; in less than three years since the initial establishment of Titan's Huygens Complex, an informal flight racing league and betting system had been established among the Saturnian system's first long-term researchers. This unregulated competition lead to three fatalities in Huygens Complex before the competition was brought under Affairs Office regulation and officialized in 2088 as the Titan Flying League (TFL).
Storm-racing
Though a distinct sport, Titanean atmospheric races are often treated by more adventurous tourists as an introductory experience to the Saturnian system's true thrill — equatorial Saturnian cloud bands can reach regular wind speeds of 1,700 kilometres per hour, or 472 meters per second. These clouds play host to SOAR, the Saturn Outer Atmosphere Race — a heavily commercialized league of elite 'storm-racer' teams piloting atmospheric endurance racecraft (called 'storm-racecraft') through Saturn's upper ammonia clouds at incredible speeds, competing to find the fastest possible route through a number of frequently updated temporary circuits alongside the standardized Equatorial Loop SOAR.
SOAR competitions are often described as the most elite racing event in the system, requiring skills in astrodynamics, navigation, atmospherics, aeronautics, and mechanical engineering, along with heavy corporate sponsorship funding and an abundance of sheer physical endurance. Teams of storm-racers usually consist of three crew, though two are occasionally allowed for half-equator races and four are required for double-equator or longer races; these crew must be professionally certified in all required safety aspects of storm-racing, and undergo training regimens more akin to military orbital insertion drills than racing practice before each SOAR race. SOAR tourist companies also offer guest spots on storm-racecraft, starting in the ₵30,000 range, for tourists to safely experience storm-racing inside Saturn with a professional crew.
The first Saturnian storm-racecraft were spare atmospheric shuttlecraft extensively modified by long-term researchers on Titan to withstand ice ablation and extreme pressure variations at the expense of utility, utilizing open-source online designs and experience gained by similar atmospheric thrillseekers on Venus. The first storm-racer, Dr. Omari Kahinu FRS, was a plasma dynamics researcher and four-year resident of Cixin Liu Station above Titan; Kahinu piloted their personal utility shuttle, Firedrunken, to low Saturn orbit through a series of low-visibility drive burns while on personal leave in 2091. After diving into Saturn's upper atmosphere, Firedrunken's transponder signal was lost (now known to be the result of a random electrical malfunction) and Kahinu was presumed dead. 36 hours later, the Firedrunken reemerged from Saturn's atmosphere, moderately damaged but able to return under its own power to London Station, over Enceladus.
After serving a half-year prison sentence, Kahinu's recorded experiences within Saturn's clouds became famous, and they became a sponsored holovid celebrity. Desperate to prevent a repeat of the early wing-racing fatalities on Titan and pressured by Earth advertising companies, the SCAO formalized SOAR within a year, incorporating Kahinu and a number of their fellow researchers.
Moons
Saturn's major moons number 7 — Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, and Mimas. Of these, Titan, Enceladus, and Iapetus are inhabited; Titan, Saturn's largest and most massive moon, also by far the most populated, hosting a population of approximately 2 thousand on the Titanean surface and in its orbital sphere.
Titan
Titan (Saturn VI) is the only moon in the Sol system with a dense atmosphere, composed of nitrogen, methane, and hydrogen. Scattered methane lakes and liquid features across Titan combine with methane rain and cloud formations to form a methane cycle and seasonal weather system, one of very few in the Sol system; Titan is the only body in the system, other than Earth, to possess formations of surface liquids.
Civilian and scientific activity on Titan is concentrated at Huygens Complex, informally nicknamed 'Krakentown', a sprawling city of tourism properties and research stations on the eastern coast of Kraken Mare. Daily tourist flights from Huygens Complex tour notable Titanean surface features, including Sotra Patera, Kraken Mare, and Xanadu, though the moon's most popular attractions are human-powered flights offered from the large expedition balloons that regularly fly between the Complex and smaller research outposts dotted across Titan. Regularly orbiting above Huygens Complex is Cixin Liu Station, assembled by the Ringwatcher III Expedition in 2081, which serves as Titan's main civilian dockyard, and is the most populous civilian space station in the Saturnian system.
Enceladus
Enceladus (Saturn II), like Jupiter's more famous moon Europa (Jupiter II), possesses an expansive undersea liquid water ocean — as archetypal examples of such under-ice oceans heated through planetary tidal forces, oceans like Enceladus' are now classified as the Europan/Enceladean type. Less surveyed than Europa, expeditions in the 2100s to Enceladus' ocean has produced samples of simple microbial life in hydrothermal vent environments like those that support Europa's more complex biosphere, mostly in the form of chemosynthetic bacteria-analogue mats situated in areas of the south polar seafloor, deepest and closest to the Enceladean silicate mantle.
Civilian and scientific activity on Enceladus is centered in Hatta City, an underground settlement bored into the warm, cryovolcanically active ice surrounding the underground SDCN science facility SDCI Hatta. These two settlements, situated nearby Enceladus' south pole, share the use of the Kusanagi-built Enceladean Surface Traverse (EST), a kilometers-long borehole elevator-tunnel through Enceladus' icy crust and terminating at a submarine dockyard, offering rapid access to the Enceladean undersea ocean for the moon's large population of scientific researchers and tourists. Enceladus' only major orbital station is London Station, a prefabricated communications relay and port of entry assembled by the Ringwatcher III Expedition in 2082.
Iapetus
Iapetus (Saturn VII) is