User:Omicega/Sandbox2
The largest moon in the Jovian System, Ganymede is best known as the foremost breadbasket of the Sol Alliance as a whole, and its government is formally known as the Sovereign Solarian Republic of Ganymede. With the majority of its population squeezed into a space-efficient urban ‘belt’, almost the entirety of the moon’s surface has been given over to agriculture and cultivation. Ganymedian produce is vital to the food security of the Alliance’s largest net consumers, such as New Hai Phong and Callisto, and it works in tandem with its sister moon to export its bounty across the stars. Despite the sheer volume of food that leaves Ganymede, the rigorous agricultural standards and quality controls applied to its exports have allowed Ganymedian products to attain a modest level of prestige and desirability across the Spur. The range of foodstuffs that leaves the moon is as diverse as its size allows; coffee, corn, wheat, rice and more leave its fields in massive quantities. Human habitation is largely limited to a ring of urban conurbations around the moon’s equator, as well as in the polar regions. The moon’s proximity to Callisto ensures that the Alliance’s military can maintain a watchful eye over the heart of the nation’s food system. Ganymede’s residents are referred to as Ganymedians.
History
In contrast to the often haphazard nature of the Solar System’s colonisation efforts, Ganymede’s transformation into an agricultural powerhouse was deliberately orchestrated right from the moment plans were drafted to first make moonfall. Out of the economic and ecological turmoil of the 2120s and 2130s came a renewed effort on Earth governments’ parts to establish an off-world ecology separate from the planet’s own. With Mars and the Moon already long since earmarked for less specific colonisation efforts, the large and relatively accessible rocky body offered by Ganymede became the foremost choice for these initial colonisation and terraforming efforts. By far the most successful of these efforts was that of the Pacific Interstellar Accord -- a shell corporation funded primarily by the Commonwealth of Nations’ Oceanic nations and the Federal Republic of China -- which established several permanent settlements near the moon’s equator in 2136. The Accord itself survived as an entity through the Sol Alliance’s formation in 2140, with Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals even joining as a junior megacorporate partner underneath the Oceanic and Chinese elements.
Terraforming efforts began in earnest in the initial years after moonfall, but rapid progress was not made until after the turn of the 23rd century. Ganymede’s natural magnetic field gave it a natural protection against solar radiation and harmful interstellar particles, removing one major barrier to habitability before the first machinery even landed atop its surface, but the establishment of a layer of viable topsoil and the addition of an atmosphere suitable to sustain a moon-sized ecosystem were challenges that took until the year 2232 to complete. With materiel and colonists in abundant supply thanks to nearby Callisto’s network of warp gates, work began on establishing the first ‘mega-farms’ across the moon’s nascent biosphere.
Over the next two centuries, the size and scale of these mega-farms expanded to cover almost the entire moon, save for the polar regions and the urban areas around the equatorial ‘belt’ set aside for human habitation. The moon’s position in the heart of the Alliance allowed it to weather the nation’s recent turmoil without an undue amount of disruption -- Ganymedian produce continues to be shipped across the stars from Sol itself to markets as far as the deep Frontier.
Environment
Post-terraforming, Ganymede boasts a temperate climate designed specifically to support its intense agricultural focus. Even at the polar regions, the temperature rarely dips below a relatively palatable 10C, with the equatorial regions maintaining a steady average of 20C all year round. With over 90% of the moon’s surface devoted to agriculture of some description, Ganymede has become famous for its picture-postcard appearance when viewed from orbit, with the varied natural tones of its many crops visible on a massive scale around the equatorial urban belt. Genetically modified to not just tolerate but actively thrive in the lower light levels this far from the Sun, the moon’s natural colour profile is only slightly marred by the urban centres at its poles and equatorial region.
While Ganymede boasts the highest raw agricultural output in the Spur, immense effort goes into maintaining its carefully curated environmental conditions in order to support this. The Ganymedian Environmental Regulatory Commission (GERC) is responsible for ensuring the moon’s ecosystem continues to enjoy sustainable growth, and its remarkable success over the past decades and centuries has helped outweigh any criticism of its stringent rules and severe enforcement practices.
The only body of water remaining on the moon’s surface is the Epigean Sea -- a filled-in crater roughly 350km in diameter and seeded with a variety of terrestrial flora and fauna. It sits within the eponymous Epigean National Park, one of the few spaces on Ganymede’s surface given over to ‘natural’ growth and development. At roughly 500,000 square km in size, the National Park features a diverse landscape with an immense level of visual distinctiveness, as well as a wealth of wildlife from Earth and beyond.
For almost the entirety of Ganymede’s citizenry, however, the ‘environment’ they’ve become used to is one of concrete, metal and glass. With so much of the moon’s surface area turned over to agricultural pursuits, Ganymede’s few surface cities sprawl out to a tremendous degree. The population density inside these cities is some of the highest in the Spur, with almost three billion people squeezed inside them. Only a few hundred thousand people live in Ganymede’s endless rural expanse -- mostly agricultural workers with jobs that require them to remain on-site at all times, as well as their families.
Beneath the surface, Ganymede also features a burgeoning underwater community, with some settlements underneath the outer ‘crust’ having been settled throughout the 2300s and beyond. Europan engineers and expertise formed the backbone of these underwater construction efforts, and although none of these subterranean outposts have a population of more than a hundred thousand permanent residents, they have begun to play an increasingly vital role in maintaining the underwater sections of the moon’s infrastructure. As of the 2460s, the vast saltwater ocean beneath the surface remains largely unexplored, although massive quantities of the moon’s water is pumped through gargantuan desalination plants in order to water its crops.
Culture / Daily Life
Haha this is going to be a long section
Major Cities
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Economy
Machinery go in
Food go out
Government
Socialism is when the government does stuff