Aite

Aite
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Orbital Distance	1.4 AU
Orbital Period	1.7 Earth Years
Radius	5,941 km
Day Length	24.9 Earth Hours
Atm. Pressure	0.8 atm
Surface Temp	20 °C
Surface Gravity	0.88 g
Mass	0.758 Earth Masses
Satellites	2
Capital	Adrasteia (disputed)
Colony Founded	2104 CE
Population	1,540,000

Aite is an Earth-like world with a variety of habitable land ranging from deserts to jungles to tundra. It also possesses faint rings, an unusual feature for a non-giant planet. The rings contain rocks up to a meter in length and a wide dust cloud that stretches nearly 23,000 km from the center of the planet.

This impressive celestial phenomenon, however, is dwarfed by the fact that Aite's largest moon, Litae, is in an unstable orbit and is predicted to impact the planet within the next two centuries. Knowing that any Aitian venture is living on borrowed time, colonial population and investment has been orders of magnitude less than other garden worlds.

Settlements

• Adrasteia (Capital - disputed)
• Derrai
• Freedom Falls
• Linissa

Satellites

• Litae
• Unnamed Moon

Communication

With a sparse population and a ring in synchronous orbit, Aite has everything working against it when it comes to facilitating communication both planet-side and off-world.

Aite's ties to the wider galaxy consists of 20 satellites in polar and inclined orbits that are a remnant from when the world was still under council influence. Off-world corporations have taken ownership of these satellites post-independence and have taken to maintaining them to keep their orbits stable. Others depending on it, mostly colonies' central up-links and companies, end up paying for this maintenance in the end.

It is possible for a vehicle, property or small village to get their own extranet up-link with relatively simple hardware, but they will have to pay to not be last in line -- if they get any access to all without paying.

Point-to-point wireless arrangements are used between colonies that have strong relations and a need for communication. The lack of regulations enable these to operate on multiple frequencies to maximize throughput, though they usually take care to avoid interfering communications between hosts and extranet up-links. Long-range cable installations exists, but they are mostly between wireless antennas and colonies.

Quantum entanglement is a way to conduct secure and consistent communication between colonies. The low bandwidth, high hardware cost, and no on-world manufacturing means there are no known users.

Transport

Aite is a very sparsely populated colony, which incurs challenges when it comes to transport and travel for the average colonist.

Hiring Transport

Those not sent to Aite on behalf of a large off-world corporation with a system set out beforehand is bound to discover the difficulties of traveling around the planet, let alone off world. It's rare to find any centralized infrastructure for customers to find transport companies and vice versa, let alone a timetable.

Traveling between colonies would thus require contacts or knowledge of what channels they use to connect with customers. It's inherently risky to conduct business on Aite, which means that small transport companies rely on their network to connect with new customers are a slow and steady pace.

For longer distances, airborne transports start to become less uncommon. However, the risk of operating makes the contacts harder to find and many refuse passengers outright due to the higher risk of hijacking.

Waterborne vessels exist in coastal colonies, but durable transport vessels capable of traveling quickly or long distances are rare to find expect in colonies. Due to the distances between each colony, transports capable of safely reaching others are very infrequent. Even then, they are likely small crafts with limited capacity for passengers or freight.

Vehicle Ownership

The planet's undeveloped nature is reflected in the vehicles available to the average person living on the planet, namely wheeled vehicles with capabilities to brave the regional terrain. Many of them contain modern technologies that are not difficult to manufacture for a well equipped frontier colony.

Shuttles are much, much rarer. Even a large colony like Freedom Falls has very few of them due to their steep import price. Larger ones, let alone space worthy vehicles are mostly the property of off-world corporations exploiting the planet for its resources.