=Varuna= 
**Station Type:** [[Aerostats|Aerostat]]
**Allegiance:** Independent (Brinker)
**Primary Languages:** Hindi, Punjabi, Wu
**Population:** 1,000
The only large, populated aerostat is Varuna. It’s an independent habitat run by an elected council, operating with a transitional economy, though there is a small mutualist enclave. A few hypercorp reps work here as individual mobile ofﬁces, most of them buying volatiles from the skimmers. A small number of indie scientists have set up shop here too, studying [[Uranus]] and engaging in other work.
One of the most interesting research projects is working on creating a free-floating oxygen-free biome that could colonize the clouds of gas giants. If such an experiment were successful, it would open up huge swaths of territory to transhuman civilization, expanding the livable area of the solar system by several orders of magnitude. The scientists are basing their research on the [[Earth]] species //Spinoloricus cinzia//, a millimeter-long creature found in anoxic regions of the Mediterranean before the Fall. These tiny multicellular creatures’ mitochondria were replaced by organelles that acted as hydrogenosomes—allowing them to live without oxygen. The research is still in its infancy, but there are stories that the project has already built some beautiful open-air garden and larger animal adaptation is on the way.

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