Planet Ceres

Isn't Ceres a giant asteroid? At best it is considered a "minor planet" like Pluto, right?

Not after 2030.

The information below is all spoilers for the setting. If you'd rather read it in bits across the novels, this is your stop. Time to pop out and we'll see you later.

The Tarsis family has undertaken the two most ambitious charity projects in the history of Mankind: the preservation of Mankind and of the Earth. The Xardyons helped save Earth from the Insectoid infestation, and helped rescue as many as possible from the ensuing Ice Age started early by the nuclear winter of WWIII.

Building Arcologies as fast as possible, the Xardyon technology was able to rescue 300 ships with almost 300 million people of Earth. Since no humans remain on our home planet, the Galactic Confederation met in Congress and voted to adopt the new name for our species: Solman. This recognizes we are Mankind from Sol system.

The whole point of the Modern Exodus was to move sufficient masses of humans away from Sol system to save the species from extinction. As Steven Hawking famously wrote in the early 21st century, we need to get some humans off of Earth as a backup plan to avert disaster. One asteroid or one supervolcano eruption would be sufficient to wipe out our modern lifestyles and a high percentage of humans with it.

As nuclear weapons were employed versus the Insectoids swarming out of Earth's desert regions, the Tarsis elders realized they needed to expand their plans from their claim to asteroid Ceres. They asked the Xardyons to assist them in an ambitious and multi-pronged plan: the backup of Earth itself.

The Xardyons moved asteroid Ceres to Earth's L4 point, preceding Earth around its orbit at 1 AU from the sun. With it's shell of domes, Ceres was the first resource mine for building the first Arcologies. The Xardyons had built a large wormhole station sufficient to move Ceres. They later popped in many asteroids and Oort cloud objects to build out the fleet of Arcs.

Eventually they built a backup to Ceres itself. We will focus on that below, but first, an important point to understand the gravity dynamics effecting the Earth-ceres system.

The Xardyons brought in a backup for Earth. This is a long-term project expected to take over 1000 years. So far it's right on track.

The Xardyons popper station, initially big enough to move asteroid Ceres from the belt down to 1 AU, was added and expanded until it was large enough to move a true planet.

Venus was slowed and moved out to 1AU. Opposite Earth 1.0, is planet Venus, Earth's twin, now referred to as Earth 2.0 by some in the Tarsis bloodline. We are almost 500 years into the terraforming project of cooling Venus' atmo and transforming it from toxic acid into breathable, growable air, soil, and seas. This is the largest and longest running chemistry lab experiment in the history of the galaxy.

Placing a full planet opposite Earth 1.0, provides a gravity balance for objects placed at 60 degrees around Earth's orbit, with the, now four, Lagrange 4 and 5 points being mirrored. Besides the original asteroid Ceres, three other versions of "planet Ceres" make up a 4 part system of artificial planets.

Two are shell worlds with a strong floor layer, an "ocean" of varying depths, atmo above that, and a roof layer providing containment for the atmo and shielding from the Solar radiation. One of them replicates the Pacific and southern Indian oceans. The other, the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. They are filled with all the species of earth that could possibly be captured before the oceans themselves froze over in the modern global Ice Age.

Two are networks of cylindars providing artificial gravity. The various biomes of Earth are all represented.

More to come when I can return to the proiject.