Apophis
99942 Apophis
Apophis (minor planet designation 99942 Apophis) is a medium-sized stony-metallic asteroid of the inner Sol system that has since been extensively reshaped to create a hollow, sealed, and pressurized interior suitable for habitation –a type of object called a "worldshell." It is home to over twenty-five thousand humans, and serves as the capital city-state of the Free Democracy of Ma'at.
Geography
Location
An Aten-group object, Apophis' orbit is nearly circular and crosses that of Earth at two points. This made it an easy target for early asteroid exploration missions during its close passes in the 21st century CE. It also crosses the orbit of Venus at perihelion, allowing for extensive trade with the inner system worlds.Structure
As a natural object, Apophis was an irregular ellipsoid about 370 by 170 meters, composed entirely of chondritic rock with trace metals. Over the span of thirty years, a suite of advanced, autonomous construction robots reshaped the asteroid completely, doubling its dimensions by rendering it hollow. The resulting structure of the object is that of a worldshell: a class of artificial space habitats which enclose a large volume of air and rotate to provide "gravity" on the interior surface. Apophis was the first worldshell built by humanity. The shell itself is forty meters of chondrite-based concrete, reinforced with steel and carbon nanotubes and covered on the outside with solar panels and radiators. This thick concrete shell contains eight levels of chambers and passageways embedded within it, connecting the exterior and interior of Apophis and functioning as the actual city. The interior surface is covered in deep soil (partially imported from Earth) and a carefully-managed watershed to allow a self-sustaining ecosystem to thrive. Running the length of the rotation axis is the "sunline": a tube of extremely powerful halogen lights half a kilometer long that provides light to the interior ecosystem. Apophis rotates along its major axis once every forty-two seconds, providing centrifugal "gravity" of about 0.6 G on the interior surface and up to 0.8 G on the outermost/lowest shell level.Asteropolitics
The population of Apophis is organized under a city-state which nominally governs itself through democracy, facilitated by the local digital network. This scales up to the Free Democracy of Ma'at as a whole, with the Apophians providing weighted input on policy decisions that affect all of the member city-states.History
In 2029, a robotic expedition called APEP was launched to Apophis as it passed extremely close to the Earth. The survey studied the surface, composition, and orbital space of the object in order to create a better understanding of Apophis for the Aaru Project: an ambitious attempt to autonomously turn the asteroid into a self-contained space habitat. The project, funded by private donors and orchestrated by the start-up company Duat Orbital Enterprises, was sent to Apophis during its next close pass seven years later, and quietly toiled away until the habitat’s completion in the late 2060s. When the asteroid made its next close approach to Earth in 2068, an ark-ship called Duat Alpha was sent to fill the hollow object with air, water, soil, and terragenid life. On April 12th, 2068, two thousand human colonists became the first inhabitants of Apophis. Two years later, the burgeoning settlement finalized their articles of governance and founded the Free Democracy of Ma’at: a digitally-facilitated Athenian eudemocracy. On January 3rd, 2070, Apophis declared political independence from the nations of Earth, and petitioned the UN for recognition of sovereignty. The UN signed, but did not take the fledgling nation very seriously. This would change by the next decade. The first order of business for the newly-minted Free Democracy of Ma'at was to organize a project that would force the nations of Earth to acknowledge them as equals. United in purpose, the Apophians set to work on a project even more ambitious than the colonization of Apophis itself: sending a crewed mission to Venus. Dubbed the Hathor program, word of this project spread through freighter crews to UNAC who immediately set to work on their own Venus program: Aphrodite. Thus began the new Space Race. It was close, but in late 2075 Ma’at won: Hathor I beat Aphrodite I to Venus orbit by three months, and completed a flyby of Mercury on their return to Apophis. This accomplishment cemented Ma'at's place as a sovereign space nation.Archive Data
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