Jupiter
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Jupiter is a Class J world, a gas giant and the largest planet in the Sol System. As such, it is uninhabitable, but Starfleet maintains military and support facilities near and around the planet as part of its mission to defend Earth. Three of Jupiter's four largest moons, the so-called Galilean satellites, have also been exploited by human colonists for private commercial purposes.
Climate
Jupiter roils with storms, as heat from its interior circulates through its atmosphere and keeps the thick clouds of gases moving. The Great Red Spot, a massive storm system first observed by Galileo, was still churning around the planet into the 24th century and showed no signs of stopping. As with most Class J planets, of course, the concepts of "atmosphere" and "weather" have nothing to do with supporting advanced forms of life, as they do on Class M worlds. Still, the Great Red Spot remains the most popular sightseeing attraction for visitors to Europa's Club Jove Adventure luxury resort.
The Galilean moons have little or no atmosphere, and therefore no climate. They cannot support life on their surfaces. The human colonies there require biodomes with sophisticated life support systems.
Geography
Jupiter has no solid surface and therefore, no real geography. It has become widely accepted that the planet has a metallic liquid hydrogen core, but it is impossible to talk about the topography or geography of Jupiter.
Jupiter's composition poses a potential danger to starships straying too close. With a total strength approximately 19,000 times Earth's magnetic field, measuring about 15 million km across, and containing radiation belts 10,000 times more intense than Earth's Van Allen belt, the planet's magnetosphere could affect vital instruments. Jupiter also emits radio waves: high-frequency thermal radio waves, high-frequency nonthermal synchrotron emissions generated by electrons in the magnetic field, and intense bursts of decametrica radio waves. Finally, small amounts of sulfur from Io's volcanoes escape the moon's gravity and become part of the magnetosphere; there high temperatures ionize the material, creating the Io torus, a huge, doughnut-shaped ring of plasma. We advise all starships to reduce their speed to impulse power and modulate their shield systems well before they reach Jupiter's orbit.
The four Galilean moons are all made of silicate rock, and three of them (Ganymede, Europa and Callisto) also have significant amounts of water ice. However, it’s hard to speak of any of them having distinctive features, like continents or oceans or vast mountain ranges on Class M worlds. Io is dotted with volcanoes that spew molten rock and sulfur dioxide in spectacular plumes, but none of these really stand out from the others, or even last very long as surface features.
Colonies
Jupiter has no colonial government to speak of. Although all settlements in the Jovian system fall under the political and legal jurisdiction of the Federation, they are also the wholly owned property of the private corporations that set them up. The UFP treats them as private property. They receive military protection and emergency services from Starfleet and the Federation because their owners pay their taxes (so to speak), but otherwise they are pretty much on their own. The Federation maintains no administrative presence on any of the moons of Jupiter. Jupiter Station and the Jupiter Outposts are run directly by Starfleet.
The large ore processing plant on Ganymede is owned and operated by Reykeyser Industrial Metals (RIM), which has been one of the Earth’s leading producers of steel and other industrial metals since the early 22nd Century. All of the mine pits that feed into the plant are wholly or partly owned by RIM; some of their partners have included the Andorian keth Vetra and, more recently, the Klingon Katath family, which has close ties to the Klingon military. The mining colony on Callisto functions in more or less the same way. It is wholly owned by Dennis and Young Amalgamated Industries, a Mars-based concern.
The start-up cost of establishing both colonies was substantial. It included the construction of large airtight domes with powerful artificial gravity and failsafe life support systems. Both have validated their business models, proving over the long term that transporting heavy loads of rock in a low-gravity environment produces cost savings that more than pay back that initial investment.
Europa hosts one of the most interesting and adventurous commercial ventures in the entire Sol system, the Club Jove Adventure resort. The brainchild of audacious Human entrepreneur Richard Nkame Brashear, Club Jove Adventure offers shuttlecraft tours of the Jovian system, submersible cruises through the ocean that lies beneath the moon’s ice crust and a luxury spa resort, hotel and casino.
Given that the Galilean moons of Jupiter are owned and operated by large private corporations, it is no surprise that the Humans who live there lack the feisty independence shown by, say, the Humans who colonized Mars. Political matters hardly count out here; every moon is a company town and the Federation never officially sticks its nose in, except in times of crisis. Permanent populations are also quite small, with workers coming and going in shifts that may last for as little as a few months at a time. Only managers live in these settlements for very long, and so no one feels that the land (or even the buildings on it) belongs to them. It belongs to the company, and the workers just do their jobs and keep their heads down.
History
Jupiter has been part of Human consciousness since time immemorial, when early astronomers saw it as a bright star in Earth’s night sky. In the 17th century, Galileo Galilei became the first Human astronomer to see Jupiter and its four largest moons (known thereafter as the Galilean moons) through a telescope. In the late 20th century, Earth scientists sent unmanned probes to explore the Jovian system. But it wasn’t until the late 22nd century that the technology and the will existed to extend Humans’ physical presence to that part of the Sol system.
As early as 2140 Reykeyser Industrial Metals drafted up plans for setting up a mining colony on Ganymede, the largest satellite in the Sol system. The Earth-Romulan War put a temporary halt to all extraplanetary development, since any Human authorities worried that the Romulans would treat civilians operating anywhere away from Earth as targets of opportunity. When the war ended in 2160 initial surveys of Ganymede had already been completed, and construction began in 2161. The first mining complex began operation the next year. In 2165, the Martian conglomerate Dennis-Young Amalgamated Industries claimed Callisto as their own, opening an iron ore mine on that moon.
To some observers, those early days of Jovian settlement took on the aspect of a frontier land grab. Authorities on Earth had never considered how to handle exploitation of the moons of Jupiter, and when Reykeyser Industrial Metals decided to go ahead with their plan, no ownership rights had been established. The company simply claimed all of Ganymede for themselves because no one was in a position to challenge them. Dennis-Young did them same. As the century drew to a close, however, it became clear that Earth would gradually cede its sovereignty to the new United Federation of Planets, and that access to all the remaining real estate in the Sol system would soon be controlled by the UFP.
Before the Jovian frontier closed forever, the colorful entrepreneur Richard Nkame Brashear staked out Europa for himself with a plan more audacious that either of his predecessors dared. In 2198 he staked a considerable part of his fortune on Jupiter as a high-end tourist destination and opened Club Jove Adventure, a five-star resort hotel and casino, on Europa. As with most of his big bets, Club Jove Adventure paid off handsomely for Brashear. After his death in 2250, his heirs sold it to the Hopkins Interplanetary Hotel chain, and they have operated it at a substantial profit ever since.
By the mid-2100s, Starfleet had finished construction of Jupiter Station in orbit around the planet, and set up the Jupiter Outposts as the first echelon of its defense network for the Sol system. The frontier had indeed closed, as what happened in the Jovian system was now the Federation’s business. However, the Federation has done little to tinker with the laissez-faire arrangement that the Jovian colonies had with Earth authorities. The owners of those colonies still have private property rights, and the Federation leaves any matter that doesn’t involve law enforcement, military action or public health to them. As if in acknowledgement of that arrangement, both the Borg invasion of the Sol system in 2367 and the Jem'Hadar raid on Earth in 2371 bypassed the Jovian colonies without so much as a nod.
It should be noted that being left to their own devices may not always be a blessing to the private corporations that have exploited the Galilean moons. From time to time, rumors surface that the Orion Syndicate — and more lately, Yridian gangsters — infiltrates their thugs into the colonies and runs protection rackets. The stories have them targeting just about anyone — the workers, the merchants who supply them, even the corporations themselves.
Places of Interest
The Jupiter Outposts is a network of unmanned sensor satellites placed just above and below the Plane of the Ecliptic in an orbit synchronous with Jupiter’s orbit around Sol. They serve as an early warning system for Earth, which hosts not only the Federation Council but Starfleet Headquarters.
Jupiter Outpost 92 orbits the planet proper, just beyond the magentosphere, and serves as the hub for the entire outpost network, as well as primary support to Starfleet vessels patrolling the region. Because of its central importance, this Jupiter outpost utilizes a larger, standardized design and is similar to bases like Starbase 173. Jupiter Outpost 92 sounded the first alarm over the Borg invasion of the Sol system in 2367. They did not, however, detect the cloaked Breen warships that raided Earth near the end of the Dominion War in 2371. Starfleet’s official inquiry into that disastrous attack questioned the usefulness of the network, characterizing it as “a relic of outmoded technology” and “feeble.” However, debate within Starfleet High Command over whether to upgrade it or scrap it altogether was tabled as Starfleet scrambled to replace the starships that had been destroyed in the Dominion War.
The Jupiter Outposts network is monitored from Jupiter Station. In addition to serving as a communications and sensor relay sub-station, the station contains ample room for technological research, administrative offices and training facilities. It also rents dock space and shuttlecraft bays to the industrial operations on Ganymede and Callisto and provides a transit depot for the Club Jove Adventure resort. Starfleet is not particularly thrilled about having so many civilians about on one of its research facilities and prefers to keep the station as segregated as possible.
Starfleet Academy cadets who choose to specialize in Engineering or Medicine often spend a semester at Jupiter Station taking advanced classes, some of which involve working as research assistants on cutting-edge experiments and participating in training exercises. Many of these experimental projects involve the Starfleet Holoprogramming Center, the research institute where Dr. Lewis Zimmerman developed the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) and, later, the Long-Term Medical Hologram (LMH). Dr. Zimmerman used himself as the model for the first installed EMH, which was to prove so useful to the Voyager during its epic journey across Delta Quadrant. Dr. Zimmerman also taught classes in advanced medical technology for Starfleet Academy, although most instructors at Jupiter Station are Starfleet officers taking a break from line duty.
By 2370, 20 mine pits dotted Ganymede, all of them owned either wholly or in part by Reykeyser Industrial Metals. Most of these mines produce ironore, although some produce bauxite or copper ore (no precious metals have yet been found on Ganymede). The ore is transported to Reykeyser’s large processing plant, which is located in the bowl of a large crater. A city capable of housing 20,000 workers, eventually named Ganymedeville, has grown around the plant. Ganymedeville is not a colorful place; it combines the grit of an industrial city with the underdeveloped feel of a frontier town—although it could be said that miners coming back into town after their shift inject their own peculiar liveliness. The same can be said of Dennis-Young’s mining settlement on Callisto, which operates six mining pits.
Inspired by the discovery of primitive life forms inhabiting the warm waters that lay beneath Europa’s icy crust, Richard Nkame Brashear conceived of Club Jove Adventure, which quickly became one of the most talked about (and expensive) tourist attractions in the Sol system. Club Jove Adventure offers its guest luxury accommodations, gourmet dining, spa facilities, a casino, and shuttlecraft tours of the Jovian system. But its submersible tours have always been its main draw. Visitors descend a mile through the surface ice to the resort’s submersible-dock, from which they embark on a three-hour tour of Europa’s “ocean,” the layer of relatively warm water that lies between the moon’s icy crust and core. Volcanic vents open up on the seabed, releasing heat from the core into the water, and colonies of primitive aquatic life unlike anything seen on Earth form around them.
Of the Galilean moons, only Io has never been commercially exploited. Club Jove Adventure runs scenic shuttlecraft tours so guests can see Io’s spectacular volcanic eruptions from a safe distance, but that’s about it. Those make it both dangerous and uncomfortable to work on the moon’s surface. There are plenty of other sources of industrial minerals that are far easier to mine. No surveys of Io have turned up any more than trace amounts of traditional precious metals such as gold or latinum, or substances with advanced technology applications, such as titanium or dilithium. Its most easily available resource is sulfur. But as Xerxes Behn, who was CEO of Reykeyser Industrial Metals when they pioneered settlement of Ganymede, told a reporter when asked about the prospects of setting up shop on Io, “No one needs sulfur that badly.”
Reference(s)
- Burns, Eric, Kenneth A. Hite & Doug Sun. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 7: Worlds, Decipher, 2005. ISBN: 1582369097.
- Isaacs, Ross A., et al. A Cadet's Guide to Sector 001, New York: Last Unicorn Games, 1999.