HUCHONSON

HUCHONSON

3234 Delphi/Breda

B331721-9

Primary: K5 orange dwarf/M1 red dwarf(close binary)

Other Inhabited Worlds: Koi (Belt Asteroid) X000400-9

Huchonson has a surface gravity of .33

Huchonson is very much a Mars-like world and home to about ten million inhabitants.  The one worlds in the system closer to the sun is a lifeless rock similar to Mercury; outward from Huchonson is a small gas giant called Popov (Neptune-like in dimensions) with a dozen moons, and beyond that is a sprawling asteroid zone called the Koi belt.

Huchonson used to be warmer and wetter, and over a billion years ago used to support microbial life.  But chemical alterations and climate shifts made it increasingly hostile to life, and now only primitive microbes survive on the planet's single highlands region.

POPOV (gas giant)

Interestingly, the Neptune-sized gas giant Popov is home to a fairly sprawling hydrogen-breathing extremophile ecology that analysis has shown descended from Huchonson microbes.  It is thought that an asteroid strike a billion years ago flung meteors containing the Huchonson life forms to Popov, where they were somehow able to survive, and eventually thrive.  During the Third Imperium, Popov was a protected world, pretty much a nature reserve so its life forms could be studied, and could only be used by civilians for refueling.

KOI ASTEROID BELT

The Koi belt in the outer system is home to some minor mining operations, and supports a population of barely a thousand, almost all independent miners and their families.  Of all the groups in the system the tech shortage has hit them hardest, but pride themselves on sticking things out for so long and making do with what they have.  One of their main industries is capturing icy bodies in the outer system and sending them back toward Huchunson, where they are sliced up and dumped into the planet's atmosphere in order to slowly increase the planet's very dry hydrographic percentage (less than 1%.)

HUCHONSON

The main world was settled almost 600 years ago by explorers from the original Mars in Earth's system, who were more than happy to settle on a planet very much like their own home.

Huchonson's atmosphere is very thin and is made up mostly of CO2 and nitrogen. There is some oxygen present, but not enough for a human to breathe comfortably (less than 5%).  Excursions on the surface can use compressors instead of full life support systems for breathing, however.  Most settlements are of the domed-and-underground variety, and most are clustered around the equatorial highlands and their glaciers of water ice, the only open source of water on the whole planet.

The capital city and downport is called New Tharsis, and has a population of about 200,000.  Other towns are usually much smaller (about 10 K at most), and arrayed more-or-less in a rough circle a thousand kilometers deep around the highland area.  The Highlands themselves are off limit to everyone except government personnel, to ensure the preservation of the planet's only supply of free ice and to protect Huchonson's few remaining native life forms.

Like the original Martians, the people of Huchonson see themselves as fiercely independent and libertarian.  The government is a particapatory democracy, and does little more than is necessary to keep things running on the world (defense, interstellar relations and trade, environmental concerns, etc.)  With a relatively small and dispersed population (about 10 million) such a system is easily workable for them.

They take pride in personal fire-arms, and see them as a status symbol. The planet has no official armed forces beyond a militia.  Members are almost always expected to provide their own small arms.  The firearm mentality is so ingrained that one of the major punishments for crimes is suspension of the right to carry a weapon; those natives seen without a gun are almost always shunned and treated like second-class citizens. Most will make allowances for off-worlders, but any significant time on the planet would require them to get/carry around guns or else be considered social outcasts.

One activity beyond standard maintenance the government is allowed to participate in is environmental engineering.  Huchonsons eventually want to terraform their planet the way Mars was in the Earth system, and the government is doing what it can with its limited resources to move that forward, albeit very slowly.  For example, they do commission ice rocks form Koi Belt and loose them into the atmosphere to increase the ambient water.

Outside of the settlements, there are over 100,000 'free range' enviro-prospectors, who roam the planet in elaborate rovers and long-endurance vacc suits working the land to make it more amenable to terraforming.  For example, they survey in detail, spread 'seeds' of engineered microbes to slowly alter the soil, and induce the release of more CO2 and Methane in order to build up a friendlier greenhouse effect.