• BTW
• Guo's Star

A starsystem containing several nations, some of whom have a troubled history with the Allied Worlds. Comets are unusually abundant in the system, statistically speaking.

Links: Links: Thane I -> Dirac (Guo's Star IV); Guo's Star V -> Cohen 138 III

Iolo, Lord British VII

The "boiling moon," it was given its current form when a large rocky moon collided with a massive comet in geologically recent times. The moon's gravity is too low, and its temperature too high, to indefinitely retain the water and ammonia with which it is now covered. Its on-going evaporation creates the truly spectacular and unusual rings of its host planet, which brought the system a degree of astronomical fame as soon as they were discovered in Imperial times.

The atmosphere is mostly water and ammonia vapor. Note that although the appellation "the boiling moon" is not technically incorrect, the pressures involved are comparatively low, and it is not an especially hot world. It hosts a colony of 1.2 million humans (many in orbit), with mining, spaceship-building and propellant refining industries. It has self-sufficient agriculture but imports elemental phosphorus for fertilizers and high technology. The colony and its orbital facilities export unfinished spaceships for fitting out in Dirac orbit. It has two space elevators and a mass driver.

Dirac

A large terrestrial planet of 1.3 earth masses, a modest amount of liquid water, and a marginally breathable atmosphere of mostly nitrogen. (Not acutely poisonous, but has insufficient oxygen partial pressure to sustain humans.) The oceans are shallow and hypersaline and desert climates predominate. The planet is rather flat and geologically inactive, with rare volcanism and minimal but extant tectonic activity. Erosion of largely ancient terrain is predominantly aeolian in character.

Dirac has three natural moons, all captured silicate asteroids.

Dirac has three major subplanetary states concentrated along coasts, two of which are identically named the Empire of Dirac, and the third of which is the Trans-Morgane Federal Republic. The two Empires are described as the "Northern" and "Southern" Empires, but each accepts the terminology only reluctantly, referring to itself officially only as the Empire of Dirac. All three states are bound to a single planetary supranational union, which is part of the Allied Worlds. Regime change in the Northern Empire having only relatively recently brought an end to a period of isolation and intermittent civil war, international tensions on Dirac remain high as its culture and economy adjust to renewed interstellar trade and various dissident and separatist movements feel their time is ripe.

Tom

A Lagrangian companion (L5) of Kanewell, serving as a mining base for its Trojans. Tom itself is relatively large asteroid and is itself the location of many mines. For the most part, though, it serves as a control center for numerous robotic mining ships, and a repair and construction facility for them. It has a substantial population, some of whom are well-heeled refugees or exiles from the turmoil on Dirac, and who contribute to small but vigorous secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy. It has many mass drivers and orbital facilities.