Tycho Station is the largest mobile construction platform in the Solar system, and the Belt headquarters of Tycho Manufacturing and Engineering Concern and, covertly, the Fred Johnston's Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) faction. It is a home, and a work place to over 15,000 people.
Tycho Station is a massive ring station built around a sphere half a kilometer across, with more than sixty-five million cubic meters of manufacturing and storage space inside. The two counter-rotating habitation rings that circled the sphere had enough space for fifteen thousand workers, and their families. The top of the manufacturing sphere was festooned with half a dozen massive construction waldoes that looked like they could rip a heavy freighter in half. The bottom of the sphere had a bulbous projection fifty meters across, which housed a capital-ship-class fusion reactor and drive system, making Tycho Station the largest mobile construction platform in the solar system. Each compartment within the massive rings was built on a swivel system. This allowed the chambers to reorient and to thrust gravity when the rings stopped spinning. The station then flew to its next work location.
Tycho makes regular campaign contributions to Earth and Mars politicians. If anyone were to attack the station, half of the United Nations General Assembly and all the Martian Congress would be declaring the destruction of whoever attacked the station, easily making Tycho Station the safest place in the Belt. An artificial ring station 700(+) meters in diameter built around a micro-gravity sphere half a kilometer across with more than sixty-five million cubic meters of space inside, Tycho Station is the only shipyard in the Sol System that has the facilities and capacity to build larger vessels than the Bush Shipyards at Luna. Fifteen thousand workers and their families live on the station-a center of Belter culture run by the OPA’s Fred Johnson-with more OPA sympathizers arriving by the day. The manufacturing dome’s massive construction waldos can secure and move up to Titanic-sized ships and are capable of building structures larger than even the generation ship, the Nauvoo, or Tycho Station itself.
The station’s engineering and auxiliary engineering decks are located in the manufacturing dome. A fusion reactor and drive system equal to that of a third-generation dreadnought essentially makes Tycho Station a massive ship and the largest mobile construction platform ever built, more than able to move at high speeds if necessary. Most of the Belt-native fleet construction and maintenance-as much as it can be called that-happens at Tycho Station. A vast number of Belter ships are prospectors, searching for the mineral or gas vein that will finally make them rich. Along with those thousands of rockhoppers, transports, haulers, and some private cruisers and escort ships make up what could be generously called the OPA fleet. Ships working for the OPA can usually expect at least a discount on repairs and maintenance, especially if the damage was taken in service of the Belt.
Once ships are in Belter hands, they often bear little resemblance to what they once were-either brand-new or in a previous life. While Earthers and Martians may have a home on a planet somewhere, many Belters’ only home is their ship, and they renovate and decorate according to a life lived on the float. Even so, their aesthetic could be best described as ‘shoestring.’ Belters make do for too long with barely enough, though Belter ships’ environmental systems are perhaps more meticulously maintained and monitored than even those on MCRN (Martian Congressional Republic Navy) ships.