The solar system of the UKSDC universe is bustling with life: from subterranean stations on Mercury, to the surface of Venus, and the shadows of the asteroid belt, humans have made their homes. A significant number of these are private developments focused on making use of the unique environments possible in space such as, bioprinting services making use of microgravity, or refineries using the linear variation in gravity to separate materials more effectively.
Amongst these are several prestige settlements, commissioned, run, and owned by The Foundation Society. These settlements typically host a larger population and operate more like a city than a science station or industrial estate. They aim to enable independent developers to make use of proximity to suppliers, a free workforce/consumer-base, and any advantages of their location. This stimulates economic growth in the location of the solar system, and often leads to payback times on the order of 60 to 100 years, despite the terrific cost of such settlements.
The Foundation Society uses a naming convention for its settlements: the first letter indicating the order of Foundation Society settlements, and the suffix indicating both relative location and absolute location within the solar system. E.g.: Alexandriat was the first (‘A’) Foundation Society settlement in orbit (‘-a-‘ => at a body, i.e. in orbit) around Earth (‘-t’ => Terra). Balderol was the second (‘B’) Foundation Society settlement on (‘-o-‘ => on the surface of) the Moon (‘-l’ => Luna).
The only other significant location not covered by this convention is low-Earth-orbit, which is refered to as LEO.