Chi Zeral III

One of the two rocky barren planets of the Chi Zeral System. Chi Zeral III is a fairly small but fairly cold planet which does not harbor any life other than intelligent species which have colonised it for mining and industrial purposes.

Chi Zeral III has a small amount of valuable metals within its crust, such as gold or platinum. This is the primary source of useful materials present on the planet, so many mining organisations will establish mines on other planets. However, Chi Zeral III is very safe because of the lack of asteroids impacting its surface, and colder planets tend to have less geological activity. It has only formed few volcanoes in history. While earthquakes are more frequent, they are uncommon enough to be easy to rebuild. This is accurate for both the initial saelian, pre-Suon-Saelian War colonies and any colonies established after the war. This makes it a relatively desirable place to establish an industrial complex, but of course factories are made obsolete by replicator technology so in modern times, Chi Zeral III is not worth a lot of resources. Instead, the planet is sometimes mined by Planck-Dismantlement Beams to create antimatter starship fuel which is teleported to the various starships using it, but this is very highly destructive to this planet. The planck-dismantlement operation only began after most of the other planets operations have ended, such as the colony residents moving out and the mines shutting down (only leaving a few mines remaining). Workers are teleported to and from the planet to work on the significant dismantlement project. There is one particularly large mining station which extracts materials from the extremely metal rich core to produce huge amounts of matter plasma which further damages the planet, damaging its gravitational field and making its magnetosphere very weak which makes its atmosphere thin. This way, it is easy to release pollutants into space as a gas. These effects are also studied deeply in order to stabilise core extraction operations on many other planets in a way that does not harm their magnetospheres (often by magnetising the core as it is mined).

Chi Zeral III takes up a mostly grey-brown colour from orbit, a colour that is caused by the several types of rocks of various colours on the surface. In space, it is possible to make out a number of patterns caused by the rock type variations. Also the poles of the planet are not covered in much snow because there is very little water present on the planet, but they are significantly colder.

 The much shorter orbital radii of all planets in the Chi Zeral system makes the distance between each world much shorter, massively reducing logistical costs and times. This does not effect teleporters, but would effect an economy lacking Teleporters (such as the Saelian Coalition before the Suon-Saelian War) and it would make a space battle happen on a much quicker timescale.