Orbital Station

Most colony worlds in the Universe, apart from the poorest newly-settled worlds, have some sort of orbital station.

This can be anything from 30 or 40 decomissioned Cargo Pods welded together and given spin, right up to the large space habitats found in the richer colonies up to nearly a kilometre long and with populations of up to 50,000.

An orbital stataion is incredibly useful as, in effect, a port of entry to a colony world, providing space traffic control, customs services, and local protection, usually in the form of Pacifiers operating out of the station itself.

Most stations at small or middle-sized colonly worlds are owned, set up and entirely operated by corporations with little or no interference from planetary governments. At larger and richer colony worlds, the number of orbitals is higher and they tend to be large and complex. Often there are attendant orbital factories, repair facilities and so on.

The Orbital will usually operate very large numbers of big surface to orbit shuttles and Cargo Pod tugs which are key in trade operations (as most Merchant Ships would not be able to bring enough shuttles to efficiently unload their cargo on their own.