Spaceport 6 is a space station that supports industrial, trade and military concerns. The station itself is a long hollow cylinder. The interior has a breathable atmosphere of air. The station is spun slowly so that it has the equivalent of Earth's gravity.  The station has its own government, since it is mainly a free port--a place for merchants to meet and trade.  However, SP6 is a nominal member of and host facilities of the Confederation of Worlds, including military facilities.
      In addition, SP6 is located close the the border of the confederation with several other interstellar nations. SP6 has been used as a host for diplomatic meetings and has several permanent embassies of foreign interstellar states such as the Triad.
 

      The inside of SP6 is a self-contained city, with several skyscraper-sized buildings and a number of smaller buildings. The city is divided into various districts, including military, commercial, tourist, and station operations, plus large forested areas, parks and sizable farms. One of the most prominent areas in several SP6 storylines is the promenade, a much visited place by tourists, merchants, and military alike.
       There is a band-shaped lake around the middle of the station interior. This lake undergoes evaporation, making a sheath of clouds around the axis of the station. Through the axis of the station is also a long transparent tube through which sunlight is beamed into the interior.
       At either end of the cylinder, the ground slopes up toward the axis of the cylinder.  This section is shaded from the sunlight.  This arrangement means that it frequently rains toward either end, and less frequently at the middle.  Storm drains collect the rain and funnel it into canals, which redistribute the water to hydroponic farms, parks, and the central lake.
 

      SP6 city is a city almost the size of 20th century Seattle.  Accordingly, a gamut of ultramodern businesses and services are available.  Most of these are left undefined (of course), but a few that have been defined in the forum are:
• Stratus- A resort hotel equipped with anti-gravity thrusters.  Stratus, as the name infers,  frequently floats around the axis of SP6.  It occasionally acts as lodging for races that are only comfortable in low gravity, but is more frequently considered a playground for the rich.
• Carnival Galactica- A huge casino and resort hotel.  It is one of the tallest stationary structures in SP 6, being 1750 meters tall (the legal limit for building heights in SP6).  The hotel has flitter ports situated all about it and has a huge holo of a galaxy projected above the hotel.
• High Stakes- A lower class casino on the promenade.  The casino had long been under the control of the SP6 underworld, but after one of the owning mob bosses suffered a major injury there, its status is in doubt.
• The Interstellar Regency- A nice middle to upper class hotel near the outer spacedocks. It is a frequent place for transients visiting SP6 to hang their hats.
• SpacePort 6 Academy of Science - Originally established to train scientists and engineers that performed early development of Gem and the Trigor system, it has since become a full fledged univerity, primarily dedicated to the study of science and technology.

SP6 Dimensions
 

      The cylindrical portion of SP6, on the exterior, is 15 km (9.4 miles) in diameter and 50 km (31.3 miles) long. The walls of the station are 500 meters thick, which provides sufficient support for structures on the interior and protection from cosmic radiation for the inhabitants.
      The city and farm area of SP6 covers an area of about 1700 square kilometers (the circumference inside the cylinder is about 44 km (27.5 miles); the area between the sloped areas/spacedocks is 39 km (27.5 miles) long. It is home to some 500,000 civilians and military personnel and many more transients.  The station has capacity to eventually support about 1.7 million people without importing food from outside sources.
 

      SP6 was originally a nickel-iron asteroid, about 10 km (6.3 miles) in diameter and 20 km (12.5 miles) long. A shaft was bored through the center, filled with canisters of water, and sealed off.  The asteroid was melted with fusion changes and solar mirrors. When the water vaporized in the middle, the asteroid began to inflate. Gravitic repulsion devices shaped the hollow, melted asteroid into a perfect cylinder. The asteroid was the hollowed out, and soil, air, plants, and building materials were imported. Nano-machines (microscopic sized robots) were used to strengthen the hull of the station, and the station set into rotation to provide a simulated one gee on the station floor.
 

      Spaceport 6 is in a star system known as the Trigor star system. It circles the fourth planet of the system, called Gem by the natives. The Trigor system is in a frontier sector, and is part of an interstellar government called the Confederation of Worlds or sometimes the Interstellar Confederation.

      Trigor is in a frontier sector of the Confederation, in a cluster of stars about 20 parsecs thick and 70 parsecs in diameter. The cluster is an undefined distance from Earth (on the order of hundreds of parsecs). Trigor is "galactic north" of the hub of the cluster it is part of. The Confederation only controls part of the cluster.
 

      It is a cold planet when human settlers first came. However, Gem harbors primitive native life. The planet was terraformed to make it warmer and more hospitible to humans. It still has huge ice caps, though.
      Gem has one major continent, and a few large islands. Gem is geologically young compared to Earth, and has 1.5 times the gravity of Earth.  It has an abundance of minerals, most notably deposits of cesium, scandium, rhenium, and actinide series elements (including radioactive elements like uranium and thorium). It may even harbor superheavy elements like ununpentium (also called elerium), which is an essential element in the production of anti-gravity devices.

      Gem is lightly colonized, and its government exercises no direct control on SP6.
 

     Trigor has nine planets, and one asteroid belt (sound familiar?) The basic characteristics of the primary and major planets are as follows:
• Trigor itself is an F5V type star, meaning it is slightly warmer and more massive than Earth's sun. The natives of Gem call the star "Rigle."
• The inner three planets are all larger than Earth, and have thick carbon dioxide atmospheres. The inner 2 are slightly more massive than Earth, being 3.2 and 1.9 Earth masses respectively. Trigor 3 is much larger than Earth at 31 times Earth's mass.
• Trigor 4 and 5 are "failed" gas giants. They have immense, rocky bodies, at 48 and 16 Earth masses respectively, but are too close to the central star, Trigor, to have a thick atmosphere of hydrogen gas.  They have methane atmospheres and have liquid and ice ammonia on their surface.
• Trigor 6 is an icy rockball, at a mere one-eighth earth mass. It has a nitrogen and carbon dioxide atmosphere, and has some CO2 ice on its surface.
• The eighth orbit is an asteroid belt.
• Trigor 9 is the only true gas giant in the Trigor system.
• Trigor 10 is slightly larger than Earth. However, it is so distant from the central star that it only has an extremely thin methane and ammonia atmosphere, and its surface is covered by ices of nitrogen, methane, and ammonia.