Origo (L145 141)

You can't reach your goals without occasionally taking some long shots.

Origo reminds me of an empty department store, with many clerks idling in the wait for the rare customers. Everything is ready for the big rush, but it won’t arrive. Slowly the habitat grows emptier and stranger; as the people wait their eccentricities grow. Some of the Atlanteans have taken to elaborate wargames on the outside, shooting lasers at each other. A family from Backup is building an elaborate Zen garden. The air is filled with a relaxed tension: will Origo become the centre, or will everybody be forced to move home again?
- Jonathan Ellis-Khayama, Interstellar Diary

Origo was built by Graunstein Interstellar, a Nova space corporation, in cooperation with Rotha Netsys, an Atlantean trading firm. The idea was simple: put up an outpost that is close to most of the important worlds that can act as a waystation, trading post or meeting place. They hauled a Unity-built habitat to a suitable spot and waited. They are still waiting for profits to roll in.

The location was chosen simply for the closeness to the other systems, as well as the easy availability of ice. All planets in the system are either small iceballs or ordinary gas giants. Origo orbits Picasso, a small iceworld on the outskirts of the system (named for the angular crack patterns on the surface). A catapult on the surface can bring up required amounts of ice to a melter station. The habitat is a standard sphere, one kilometre radius and with normal gravity at the equator. The ecology is a mixture of idealised Mediterranean gardens and Atlantean forests. On the outside there is extensive docking facilities and modules intended for extending the colony.