Tycho Station

Tycho Station is the headquarters of Tycho Manufacturing and Engineering Concern, 

TMEC was founded by Malthus Tycho in 2211.  Tycho engineers were the first to capture a small comet and place it in stable orbit as a water resupply for the Belt.  They thus preceeded the ice-hauling activites of rival companies such as the Pur'N'Kleen Water Company by decades.

In a decade-long endeavour, Tycho Engineering also built the reaction drives that were placed on the Belt asteroids Ceres and Eros, inducing the spin-gravity which allowed them to be mass-colonised.

Tycho have been approached for such extravagant projects as floating cities above Venus, and space elevators for both Earth and Mars.  Their technical genius has no apparent limits, and one of its physical manifestations is Tycho Station, the largest mobile construction platform in the Solar System.   Tycho Engineering were obvious candidates for the building of the Nauvoo, a gigantic generational vessel in which the Mormons of Earth intended to leave what they considered to be a dying planet, and in a century-long voyage, colonise another star system, that of Tau Ceti.  Tycho Station moved into orbit around Uranus and began work on the Nauvoo in 2334.

Tycho Engineering is still run by Malthus' grandson Bredon, and remains one of the few corporations able to rival MKM.  To do so, however, they have left Tycho Station in the hands of ex-UNMC Colonel Frederikus Johnson, who has always been openly supportive of the OPA.

 

Tycho Station is built around a sphere half a kilometer across, and supports two counter-rotating habitation rings which can house fifteen thousand workers and their families.  The space station is a hive of activity and at any one point in time, at least a hundred thousand people can be found living in it or passing through.

The station houses a capital ship class fusion reactor, meaning it can rapidly travel across the solar system to its next work location.  It has not moved, however, since the 2340-41 war, remaining in orbit around Uranus.

The Nauvoo played a pivotal role in trying to avert the consequences of the Eros experiment, after which it was brought back to Tycho Station by Camina Drummer and renamed the Behemoth.

Two kilometers long and half a kilometer wide, the Behemoth could fit four MCRN Donnager class battleships in its belly; it is by far the largest spacecraft ever built.  During the decade following the 2340-41 war, it has been fitted with heavy armement, ensuring high security for Tycho Station.  It is however more than just a warship.  It was crewed, after its recovery, by a mix of Fred Johnson's and Anderson Dawes OPA factions, and this tradition has been continued.  Despite its physical proximity to Tycho Station - which it can theoretically leave at any time, should its ruling council so decide - the Behemoth is a meeting and trading point for all OPA, retaining its neutrality under Drummer's command.  In this capacity, it is known as Medina Station.