Tycho Station

Tycho station is the largest mobile construction platform in the Sol system, and The Belt headquarters of Tycho Manufacturing and Engineering Concern and, covertly, The Outer Planets Alliance. It is home to a population of over 15,000 workers and their families and is a center of Belter culture run by the OPA's Fred Johnson, with more OPA sympathizers arriving by the day.
Tycho Station is the only shipyard in the Sol System that has the facilities and capacity to build larger vessels than the Bush Shipyards at Luna. A ring station built around a sphere half a kilometer across with more than sixty-five million cubic meters of manufacturing and storage space inside, Tycho Station boasts two counter-rotating habitation rings circling the sphere that provide the same standard microgravity as the rest of the Belt. The top of the manufacturing sphere features massive construction waldos capable of grasping a heavy freighter or securing singularly large ships. A capital-ship-class fusion reactor and drive system projecting out of an elongated nozzle make Tycho the largest mobile construction platform ever created, capable of relocating itself around the Belt for differing work needs and locales. Each compartment within the titanic rings was built on a swivel system that allows the chambers to reorient to thrust gravity, orienting around an internal modular construction. Currently, Tycho Station is building the LDSS Nauvoo, a massive, generational colony ship commissioned by the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Tycho makes regular campaign contributions to Earth and Mars politicians, ensuring protection by the Earth-Mars Coalition Navy—and even if they didn’t, Tycho is more than capable of fleeing at high speeds.

Manufacturing in The Belt

Most of the Belt-native fleet construction and maintenance—as much as it can be called that—happens at Tycho Station. A vast number of Belter ships are prospectors, searching for the mineral or gas vein that will finally make them rich. Along with those thousands of Rock hoppers, transports, haulers, and some private cruisers and escort ships make up what could be generously called the OPA fleet. Ships working for the OPA can usually expect at least a discount on repairs and maintenance, especially if the damage was taken in service of the Belt.
Once ships are in Belter hands, they often bear little resemblance to what they once were—either brand-new or in a previous life. While Earther  and Martian citizens may have a home on a planet somewhere, many Belters’ only home is their ship, and they renovate and decorate according to a life lived on the float. Even so, their aesthetic could be best described as ‘shoestring.’ Belters make do for too long with barely enough, though Belter ships’ environmental systems are perhaps more meticulously maintained and monitored than even those on MCRN ships.

Tycho Station constructing the LDSS Nauvoo

Founding Date

2252

Type

Orbital, Station

Population

15,000 workers and their families, Approximately 10,000 tourists and travelers

Location under

The Belt

Owner/Ruler

Fred Johnson

Owning Organization

Tycho Manufacturing and Engineering Concern

Characters in Location

• Fred Johnson