Space Stations

Types

Different types of space stations.

• Way stations offer travel support. Such a station, depending on its size, could have a fuel depot, a repair dock, shops for trading (possibly black market), medical facilities, creature comforts, transits between long- and short-range ships, etc.
• Resource gathering and refinement. For example asteroid mineral or ice mining, plasma trawling, solar cells, etc.
• Energy (re)transmitter. Energy can be converted to microwaves or laser beams and transmitted wirelessly.
• Toxic waste disposal. One such station shoots the garbage into a nearby sun.
• Network relay station. Long range communication relies on “the network”, a set of nodes spread throughout space that relay data to each other. Similar to our internet routers. The bigger nodes are actual space stations with crew.
• Border control stations. They inspect cargo and manifest.