Spaceports Spaceports on Mars Situated in a crater on the north side of Mount Elysium, the Rhadamanthys Spaceport provides connections to the Orbiting Spacestation and to the six other Martian spaceports. Each spaceport is located on a high-altitude plateau, cutting down the cost of launching rocket planes into orbit, yet not so high as to lose the benefits of aerobraking in the intervening atmosphere. The Spacestation's orbit takes it over the part of Mars lying between 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south, so that only equatorial and subtropical highland sites are eligible. Each spaceport offers direct connection to the four adjacent spaceports, and indirect connection to the remaining two.
Railway lines radiate outward from the spaceports to the surrounding regions.
Each plane in the bay inside Rhadamanthys Crater has a destination, shown on the sign above the pad. The visitor can warp to another spaceport by clicking on the destination sign above any plane that is ready for boarding. The same is true of the other six spaceports and the orbiting spacestation. The real and virtual spaceport locations are shown in the accompanying table. The policy of projecting the real Mars onto virtual Mars caused some sites of major interest to be destined for areas that were already partly occupied.