Kepler-22b/Ballad

View Kepler-22b at Wikipedia.

The oceanic habitable planet of Kepler-22b, better known as Ballad, was discovered, surveyed and mapped by the LCR-70 Eunomia of the Final Frontier Project between January 10th, 2114 and January 28th, 2114. It is the fifth habitable body discovered by the FFP, presenting extremely rare and generally favorable conditions for human habitability though extremely far from Sol, with the fastest possible travel time of 2.5 years isolating the colony from the rest of humanity.

Ballad possesses an Earthlike and easily breathable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and is mostly covered in a deep saltwater ocean, with the exception of a moderate number of low-lying island chains and one small “continent”, dubbed Hyperborea, for its location to the subarctic equivalent latitudes of Ballad. Hyperborea currently hosts the two major human settlements on the planet, Unity, and Nytthjem, with a combined population of 1,020. The planet’s average temperature is 22 degrees celsius, and it has a radius of 2.4 Earth radii or 15,490 kilometers.

A symbol of hope for the dying people of Earth (and by extension, the Sol system that depends on its mother world), colony ships have already begun to organize and depart for Ballad and its four sister colonial worlds; however, Ballad, like its siblings, remains under SDC military/scientific blockade and SDC military governance, and its current residents are limited to SDC personnel and civilian contractors while they study and catalog the planet’s native phenomena and largely undeveloped microbial life forms (mostly aquatic, who inhabit the planet-spanning sea).

The planet possesses no natural satellites, and hosts two artificial ones- Amundsen Station serves as the planet’s orbital communication relay, cargo terminal, and point of transit for arriving/departing SDC traffic, while Kurma Observatory is a scientific base and astronomical center, currently cataloging in great detail the rest of the Kepler-22 system, the star at its center colloquially dubbed “Hearth” by the colonists of Ballad.

The planet, with a minimum travel time of two and a half years for any vessels to Sol, the beating heart of human civilization, is highly isolated and self-dependent, with four civilian vessels, the bulk ice/water hauler Zanderloft, the bulk mineral hauler Leonard Nimoy, the SDCN Auxiliary mobile refinery ship SDCA Raymond Banks and the mobile gas siphon Fuchou under years-long contract to be based at Amundsen Station, forming a small supply flotilla for the burgeoning colony. Additionally, the SDT-04 Sun Tzu, a scout destroyer of the SDCN, is stationed from Amundsen Station indefinitely. These five ships, along with Amundsen Station and Kurma Observatory, increase the total population of the Kepler-22/”Hearth” system to 1,317. While not completely in isolation, due to its instant quantum ansible connection to Sol, sociologists at home have already started to examine Ballad as a case study for an advanced human population (and developing culture) so physically isolated from whence they came.

This page was contributed by user HikariGlace.