'I've been tethered to the side of a spaceship, nothing but a thin layer of carbon fabric between my nuts and the vacc, and I've looked up from the panel or whatever is broken and seen all those stars. It use to make me feel small, but not anymore. Cause after a few runs between those stars, it changes. It will change for you. You will realize that the closer you get to those stars the smaller everything gets. You know what I saying? Ain't that many goldilocks worlds, but there are tons of little rocks circling fainter stars. And almost every little rock has a little petty king scraping out a living and fighting with another little king.'

- Buck Leftyork, FTO Mission Engineer

Interstellar warfare is logarithmic. The plan for the attack begins by considering questions of hundreds of billions of kilometers. How will we get people and equipment from all over the galaxy to orbit the star of the planet we intend to take? Those logistical threads can get tied into knots that are literally light years long. Then once we have our force in star system it becomes a question of millions of kilometers. How do we get to this planet safely and quietly? Then we have to make the landing, thousands of kilometers. Next there is a question of defending the LZ: hundred of kilometers. Once the air support is dealt with and the artillery is neutralized, we've got to reach the objective. Then finally there is the soldiers' combat. That is when the scale collapses quickly. A fight we started light years away can end because we had to cross two meters of open field or because a piece of shrapnel was a millimeter too close.

-Awl-70000891, Captain, Dynastic Army

'I keep my sanity tied to my hip with very thin thread. Somedays when I am pushing through the throngs of people all staring at tiny screens in their heads or in their hands I start feel that thread slipping. On those days I know that my only salvation is docked at the spaceport. My savior is not some luxury liner or high speed transport filled with perfectly balanced environments and a history of 'punctuality'. This man's spaceport messiah is more often than not a century old craft whose airlock is caked with the mud of a hundred worlds, with a computer programed in a dead language and a captain that makes his living looking for the slimmest trade margins in the most distant stars. When I sign on to the crew of such a craft I feel my thread of sanity tighten. I know that when we break through that blue ceiling we will be passing the soul crushing civilized worlds and heading for the fainter stars.'

-J. Mitchell Overnantuck, Unlicensed Jump Drive Navigator

Places to go in the Cosmic Era solar system

Observation and scanning technologies for the Cosmic Era

The United States Space Ship Ticonderoga is the largest space vessel ever built. Constructed over 500 years ago, it now orbits earth, most systems shut down - It is a treasure ridden derelict juggernaught.

A leftover relic of the ancients.

Or so would seem.

A Federation black budget research and development center, and one of the most advanced shipwrights in the Solar System

At the height of the Imbrian Culture, they colonized almost the entire Solar System, and Lunaformed many of the planets.

An exhaustive list of the Realms, as well as a short description and how they fit in relation to each other.
Fundamentally connected to my primary submission, Primal Essence, Primals, and the Creation of the Realms as well as several others linked to from there. I'll provide a link at the top of this article, though I'd recommend at least reading the main one before this.

The octahedral space stations designed and built by the Atlantic Federation

Sometimes Utopias should stay as mere legends.

The primary spaceport of the South African United Republics and the largest space port in Africa

One of the largest objects in Low Earth Orbit

'We came expecting a broken moon or wayward asteroids, but this... I don't think anyone's seen anything of its like. There's an astounding amount of material here. We're looking in the records, trying to match some of the artifacts, but there's nothing like it. I don't know what most of this does, but my God is it complex. We're looking at, at least, what, two decades of potential salvage, maybe more, then the cartography of the local moon for more. We're definitely here to stay.'

- Phaeton Venator, recovered personal log

Dead Space idea

A collection of space habitats, space stations, space colonies, and anything else artificial that serves as a home to humans in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

It was never really that nice of a place, but the orbital bombardment, viral bombing, and nuclear war didnt help anything.

'Captain's log, date unknown. We have been exploring a region of dead space, wandering between the dull cinders of dying suns, looking for an explanation to what happened in this sector of space. Our charts show that this sector should be bursting with life - young stars and verdant worlds - but all we have seen is a stellar wasteland.' -Log entry recovered from a derelict exploratory vessel on the fringe of the Miros Waste

The Interstellar Highway of the Galaxy

The hallmark of a new Alliance; a safe place for the men of words to meet.