**Source:** //Main Belt Investment Prospects//, by Solaris Midsystem Investment[[toc]]
Associates
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For investors that wish to diversify their portfolios, we offer myriad opportunities in the developing and dynamic markets of the Main Belt. Investors are warned, however, that [[Solaris]] considers such investments high risk due to the uncertain political situation and the lack of formal stable governance over most of the area. What follows is a brief primer on the Main Belt with an eye towards commodities and habitats that may be promising market opportunities, as well as known and potential risks to investment. As always, Solaris is not accountable for any ﬁnancial or personal loss as a result of investments in high-risk markets.
=The Asteroids: A Ring of Fortune= 
Tens of thousands of asteroids act as a dynamic boundary between the inner and outer system. Commonly referred to as the Main Belt, this ring of asteroids is situated between the orbits of two planetary landmarks in this section of space, [[Jupiter]] and [[Mars]].
The ﬁrst ventures to the Main Belt for mining and habitat development were launched decades before the Fall. In addition to Earth corporations that staked their claims to mineral-rich asteroids, there were also plenty of rugged individualists and wealthy entrepreneurs who supported Earth’s expanding reach deeper into space. The riches lurking within the Belt’s numerous asteroids allowed corporations of all sizes to ﬂourish and build new, more permanent stations. Pre-Fall, the right space body could yield enough precious metals to fund any corporation for an entire quarter. Asteroid mining is a costly endeavor, however, and investing heavily in an incorrect survey or an asteroid already picked clean by independent prospectors could force an unlucky investor into bankruptcy.
Although the majority of the Belt’s original stations were founded by private corporations, vast distances separating asteroids and habitats allowed wildly different settlements to develop and prevented a solid governmental and regulatory regime that could stabilize the formative mining market. As such, the expansive area is the optimal breeding ground for habitats to host diverse—and occasionally dangerous—ideologies, outer system insurrectionists, and ﬁercely independent thrill-seekers. This convergence of beliefs, cultures, and lifestyles has marked the Belt as the perfect gateway between the inner and outer systems in one respect, but also can make ﬁnancial investment highly volatile. In the solar system’s core worlds we tend to regard the Main Belt as the edge of civilized space, the beginning of strange ideas and stranger polities.
The frontier allure of the Main Belt is a magnet for investors searching for a way to better their ﬁnancial situation. On many of these habitats there is tremendous opportunity for commodities speculation or high-yield investments of venture capital for innovative new projects. Rules vary wildly from place to place, and most of the smaller stations have systems of law and organization best described as loosely deﬁned or even non-existent. We encourage potential investors to do their homework in regards to speciﬁc opportunities. The Belt’s heterogeneous nature offers a little something for everyone within this well-defined region of space, and our analysts see fortunes made every day under the careful guidance of Solaris ﬁnancial advisors. Our ﬁnancial forecasts predict an exponentially increasing need for goods and services, providing opportunity after opportunity for those investors brave enough to dive into the Belt’s vast array of markets options.
==Visiting the Belt== 
The motley and experimental nature of the Main Belt encompasses almost every lifestyle, from the mundane to the extreme. Habitats, economics, and politics range from those precious few that follow a charter of laws approved by the [[Planetary Consortium]] to others that are arguably more dangerous than the infamous [[Legba]]. Regardless of how secure you might feel, we advise investors interested in visiting the region to ensure they have the proper licenses and permits for personal security gear or hire a security detachment familiar with the region to ensure their personal safety. Solaris can assist you with these arrangements, offering a wide range of customizable security options in accordance with our contract agreements with several premier security providers.
Investors that believe they may be spending significant time in the Main Belt are advised to invest in some form of personal shuttle. When traveling between asteroids in the same family or region, shuttle trips are often more cost effective and quicker than egocasting. If the cost of a new shuttle seems daunting, it is possible to charter a craft for a short period of time. For larger distances, SMIA customers have been known to hire time on a craft specializing in courier, diplomatic, or manufacturing transport that follow predictable travel routes between populated habitats. Solaris, however, cautions investors against booking passage aboard craft belonging to a criminal element colloquially known as “[[scum]]” that are active in the Main Belt. Booking passage on a Scum craft can result in forfeiture of assets and the cancellation of any Solaris-backed insurance policy.
Transit to and from locations in the Main Belt is considered a low-risk enterprise. Risk assessments compiled with the assistance of [[Direct Action]] show that piracy or catastrophic accidents are quite low. While piracy and hijacking are not unheard of, most incidents involve low-risk targets in regions currently distant from major habitats. Automated cargo ships are common targets for pirates—provided they lack the automated defenses that are standard with a Solaris Commodities Gold Level transportation contract. More than anything else, the threat of piracy is simply a minor cost of business for well-run and defended operations.
This is not to say there are not significant risks to travel and cargo operations in this area. Craft that encounter dangerous situations (regardless of what trouble that might be) often face significant delays in repair and rescue services. Any sort of deep-space travel comes with intrinsic dangers, and Solaris recommends a full casualty insurance program in the event that you experience an unforeseen accident. Clients who are risk adverse are advised to skip space travel altogether and egocast instead.
While Solaris maintains mobile agents on both [[Extropia]] and [[Ceres]], these primarily offer ﬁnancial advice and investment services. We encourage investors to hire local contract labor for most of their needs. A substantial pool of freelancers exists on almost every habitat that can offer a variety of services. Small groups of engineers, mechanics, medics, technicians, and other skilled personnel can all be hired for short- and long-term contracts, and some enterprising individuals will make contact with ships en route to offer their services for a nominal fee, depending upon the circumstance and the ship’s cargo. We discourage investors from engaging in these sorts of in-between port contacts, however, as the quality of the talent is questionable and, in the past, these queries have sometimes been a prelude to hostile action.
Finally, there are a number of locations we advise even the most risk-forward investor from dealing with. For reasons stemming from its unusual economic regulations, [[Nova York]] is simply not a safe place for doing business. Similarly, Legba, with its absolute lawlessness and penchant for harboring a variety of dangerous elements, we recommend avoiding entirely. While these environments may draw tourists from other parts of the system, respectable businesses avoid Legba due to the volatility and hostility of its inhabitants towards the Planetary Consortium, in general, and Solaris in particular.
While it certainly poses significant risks and the opportunity for ﬁnancial ruin for less-savvy investors, for those willing to take a more bullish outlook towards their portfolio, the Main Belt offers significant potential for proﬁt.
==Rocky Illusions== 
So you’ve decided to invest in SMIA’s high-risk portfolio in the Main Belt. Before committing your valuable assets to any of our three dozen recommended projects, please review the following information to better acquaint yourself with asteroids and the area.
At ﬁrst glance, the Main Belt appears to be a dense, rocky barrier protecting the sunward planets from the rest of the solar system. Nothing could be further from the truth. While its diameter is roughly 181 million kilometers, the Belt’s primary building block is empty space. Over ninety percent of asteroids here are ﬁfteen centimeters or smaller. The other ten percent is the Belt’s true prize: a motley mix of mineral-rich asteroids ranging from thirty to one hundred kilometers in diameter. Despite ﬁctional depictions of the Belt as a cluttered mass of tumbling rocks, it is actually sparsely populated with most asteroids orbiting hundreds of kilometers apart. The estimated total mass of the asteroid belt is the equivalent of 1/1000th of Earth’s total mass or 4 percent of Luna. Because of this, the Main Belt can seem like an empty and desolate space. Though it is one of the most heavily trafficked areas of the solar system, resource rich and a crossroads for traffic between the inner and outer system, it is still a huge quadrant of empty void. It is not uncommon to travel through a section of the Main Belt without ever encountering an asteroid or another ship, even in the areas considered more densely inhabited.
By far, the most common space object in the Belt is what’s known as a “micrometeoroid.” These small rocks, about the size and mass of a grain of sand, were once part of a larger asteroid but were abraded off over the eons. While some may be composed of potentially valuable minerals, their size and mass make them cost-prohibitive for both collection and processing. The only real environmental hazard a ship might encounter when passing through the Belt is the occasional micrometeoroid collision, which can abrade even the densest of materials and punch right through ﬂimsier surfaces, or sensor interference from clouds of space dust. Both instances are thankfully rare, but we advise investors who plan on bringing their own craft from further in system to the Main Belt to ensure it is capable of withstanding the effects of micrometeoroid impacts.
Most asteroids circle the sun in a roughly circular orbit, close to the plane of the ecliptic. Each asteroid has its own speed and trajectory, however, meaning that some have highly eccentric elliptical orbits and may travel at an inclination of thirty percent or less from the ecliptic. Approximately one-third of the asteroids in the Main Belt are clustered together into a “family.” Asteroid families are groups—usually remnants of the same millennia-old collisions—that travel on similar orbital paths and often have the same composition. Many family-clustered asteroids will even have the same spin rate and axis of rotation, an artifact of millennia of exposure to the sun and re-radiation of its heat.
When investing Main Belt prospects, it is critical to determine how much risk you wish to take on. Lower-risk enterprises are usually based out of one of the major asteroid families and are multi-party investments, while high-risk enterprises typically seek riches further away from the major families. Given that most Main Belt asteroids move on their own separate orbital paths at their own speed, the major families serve as identifiable “neighborhoods” comprised of asteroids that cluster together with the same orbital characteristics. Many major habitats are situated within an asteroid family, making it easier to reach other asteroids in the cluster. The families also serve as a navigational aid, as ships often orient their position according to the relative placement of nearby family groups.
Asteroids also gyrate, tumble, or spin freely. For asteroids over 100 meters in diameter, the rate of rotation will always be longer than 2.2 hours. Surface temperatures vary drastically, depending on how long a particular side has faced the sun. Some small asteroids will orbit larger ones; many of these are tidally locked. Two asteroids of the same mass sometimes stabilize into a co-orbit around a joint axis of rotation. These are favored by prospectors for easier mining.
===Solarchive Search: Main Belt + Mining=== 
Pre-Fall, the tough job of mining asteroids was left up to entrepreneurs and corporations. With current technology and widespread habitation of the solar system, as well as the blossoming demand for metals and volatiles, mining operations are now undertaken by small groups as well as large mining concerns.
Most asteroids are remnants of planetesimals and protoplanets that failed to form into larger bodies due to the gravitational inﬂuence of Mars and Jupiter, breaking apart over time from violent collisions into smaller chunks. As a result, many of these contain metals and heavier elements that are often difficult to find or mine on larger planets, having sunk over time into the core as the planet differentiated. Many asteroids in fact are simple rubble piles held together loosely by gravity, making them easy to mine. Other asteroids are defunct comets, containing an abundance of water ice and volatiles. Some asteroids can offer little-to-no metals; others are richer with precious minerals but a lot more difficult to mine due to unpredictable, spinning trajectories and varying degrees of surface hardness.
The most typical method of asteroid mining involves docking a ship to the asteroid, extending a hood over the area to be mined, and strip-mining the surface. The regolith crust, left over from billions of years of micrometeorite strikes, is scraped away first. Strip mining typically creates a large debris cloud, but the hood helps trap this material and collect it for processing. Many mining ships are designed to process and reﬁne the material on site, to save on transportation costs. Other mining operations make use of drilled shafts, magnetic rakes, heating volatiles, or simply envelope smaller asteroids in a ship’s hollow cavity, where it is melted or demolished and processed entirely. A large portion of mining operations are undertaken by robots and managed by indentured infomorph overseers. More recently, completely automated and self-replicating
mining stations have been brought into use, with robot ships periodically passing by to pick up the output.
Many mining concerns deploy automated survey systems, staking a claim to an asteroid with a beacon system (and sometimes armed drones). These loose claims are often declared publicly on the mesh and then followed up by a well-planned excursion. Savvy futures traders often speculate on the prices of rare or volatile elements based upon stake ﬁlings. Most polities, however, back the notion that any asteroid that is not actively occupied is unclaimed, regardless of beacons. Due to the loose nature of governmental authority throughout the Belt, these claims are often disputed, occasionally violently. Many security outﬁts specialize in providing automated security for claims.
===Sidebar: Major Asteroid Types=== 
====**C-Type Asteroids**==== 
Dominating the outer edge of the Belt, carbonaceous asteroids are clumps of simple carbon rocks, silicates, clay, icy sludge, and some metals. Approximately seventy-five percent of the Main Belt’s visible asteroids are carbon-based. C-Types are darker, charcoal-colored, and harder to visually detect. Though less rich, they contain substantial amounts of metals, particularly iron and nickel. They are also notable for deposits of frozen volatile and water, useful for reaction mass.
====**S-Type Asteroids**==== 
These stony iron- and magnesium-silicate asteroids make up about thirteen percent of the population. They are primarily found in the middle of the Belt. They are the remnants of the outer crust of early protoplanets. Since their surfaces tend to be shiny and reﬂective, S-Types are easily confused with metal-rich asteroids and experienced prospectors often call these “Scam Type” asteroids. Nevertheless, they contain wealthy amounts of metals: iron, nickel, platinum, gold, etc. These metals are undifferentiated and mixed with rock, however, so mining them is as easy as stripping them away and processing the rubble and dust.
====**M-Type Asteroids**==== 
Only ten percent of all asteroids within the Main Belt are of this type. Most are found on the Belt’s inner side, near the orbit of Mars. They are formed from the broken-apart metallic cores of early protoplanets. These asteroids are rich in iron and nickel and are the most desirable asteroid type due to their mineral wealth. Other common ores include platinum, gold, iridium, and uranium. Exploitation of an untapped M-type asteroid can be worth billions, or in some cases, trillions of credits
====**Other Asteroids**==== 
Others include basaltic rock V-types (splintered off from Vesta or ancient protoplanets), former comets (often rich in volatiles), and types that are less common, mixed, or otherwise unusual.
===Sidebar: V-Type Mystery=== 
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One of the enduring mysteries regarding the Main Belt is the suspicious lack of basaltic rock asteroids similar to Vesta. It was originally thought that all V-types were chipped off from Vesta at some point, thus their nomenclature. Analysis over the decades, however, showed that only a small fraction of V-types originated from Vesta, with the rest coming from unknown sources. The leading theory was that the other V-types are simply the remnants of protoplanets that were absorbed into other moons or planets during the formation of the solar system.
Well, if the explanation is that simple, can you explain why one of the earlier Factor missions was eager to trade their goods for, among other things, a data dump of all information transhumanity had on V-type asteroids? Are they looking for something? Or are they concerned about how far we’ve gotten towards ﬁguring something out?
===Sidebar: Major Asteroid Families=== 
There are approximately thirty families and many similar but smaller clusters and groups. Notable families include:
||~ Family ||~ Core Group ||~ Primary Type ||~ Major Asteroid ||
||= Eos ||= 500+ ||= S and C ||= 221 Eos ||
||= Eunomia ||= 400+ ||= S ||= 15 Eunomia ||
||= Flora ||= 600+ ||= S ||= 8 Flora ||
||= Hygiea ||= 100+ ||= C ||= 10 Hygiea ||
||= Koronis ||= 300+ ||= S ||= 158 Koronis ||
||= Maria ||= 100+ ||= S ||= 170 Maria ||
||= Nysa ||= 400+ ||= S and C ||= 44 Nysa (Extropia) ||
||= Themis ||= 500+ ||= C ||= 24 Themis ||
||= Vesta ||= 300+ ||= V ||= 4 Vesta ||
=Notable Habitats= 
As a high-risk, highly valued investor, one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make is which main habitat will serve as your base of operations in the Belt. There are unique risks and opportunities for the savvy investor which we outline belo—
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OK, OK, that’s about all of that I can take. I’ll grant you that Solaris’s SMIA division can give you a good view from a distance, and we certainly appreciate all of the capital they bring to the Main Belt. But asking them for an accurate picture of how we live in the Main Belt would be as absurd as asking an anarchist to talk about our economic system. Point is, neither one really understands what it’s like to live in the Belt, and both tend to see us as lapsed fellow travelers, rather than our own unique thing decidedly different from each of them.
So instead, you’ll get me. You can call me Anna Ng, I’m a current resident of Extropia and past resident of both Ceres and Legba who will give you what the people who actually live here think about living here. There’s one thing to grasp right off the bat: the Belt is where the cultures of sunward and rimward sides of the solar system meet, cross-over, clash, and mix. It is common, shared ground, where you will often ﬁnd hypercapitalist enclaves right next door to anarchist outposts. Though the Extropians are strong here, you will ﬁnd every other subdivision, faction, and clade here somewhere, from bioconservatives to brinkers. It’s a far-ﬂung melting pot, meaning that it is full of surprises and you can never know quite what to expect.
* [[Aspis]]
* [[Atlantica]]
* [[Ceres]] (1 Ceres)
* [[Extropia]] (44 Nysa)
* [[Legba]]
* [[Nova York]] (9 Metis)
* [[Pallas]] (2 Pallas)
* [[Starwell]]
* [[Vesta]] (4 Vesta)
* [[Zombieland]] (349 Dembowska)
===Sidebar: Fuel Depots=== 
One of the prominent features of the Main Belt are the numerous fuel depots scattered throughout its orbital range. These stopovers feature reﬁneries for manufacturing reaction mass from volatiles mined from the asteroids on which they are stationed. Freighters and other long-range ships, particularly those traversing between the inner and outer systems, rely on these depots to acquire fuel, water, and other much-needed supplies. They are also frequent stopover points for brinkers and others living in out-of-the-way areas of the Belt.

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