The Cyrranus System from Battlestar Galactica

[Tom Kalbfus]

Mars is a bit of a dead world today, and without the mass to hold in the atmosphere it is indeed slowly losing it. However, if Mars had active vulcanism today (and Olympus Mons was active), it could be adding more gases to the atmosphere. Whether or not it would be sufficient to offset the losses is unknown.

If we moved Jupiter into orbit 4 and made Mars its satellite, then Mars would indeed have volcanism due to tidal heating, we set up some orbital resonnances and Mars would be constantly changing its distance from Jupiter and it would have volcanism like Io, if we give it enough volcanism, it would be belching out gases and recycling its crust the way Earth does. We would have to supply just the right amount of tidal forces to make up for the lack due to insufficient radiactive decay in Mars' crust, we don't want hyper-vulcanism the way Io does.

That's one way to do it I suppose. Though I haven't seen any figures on how long it took it's atmosphere to escape. So a more active volcanic mars might just take longer to lose its atmosphere. However if it was belching out gases and putting a lot of fine particles in the thin atmosphere, that should also affect the planetary temperature somewhat. On Earth vulcanism has caused lower temperatures, so whether or not the effect would be the same in a much thinner atmosphere is the question. But Mars has less clouds too (now at least), so that would need to be factored in.
Hell, it's sci-fi, so GM's perogative! Make it a marginally habitable world if you want!!

You would need to make Mars just as volcanic as Earth, you don't want too much volcanism nor do you want too little. Io has too much. Or you can say some ancient race terraformed Mars long ago, and there hasn't been enough time for Mars to revert back to its natural state, that would be alternate history. S.M. Stirling once wrote a series of novels where Venus and Mars were habitable and had native humans on it, the explanation is that aliens terraformed it during the age of the dinosaurs.
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Lords_of_Creation
Cyrannus is like a giant version of that with more habitable planets, The planets humans live on are Earth-sized more or less, otherwise they would have trouble living on Galactica under the same gravity.

I think I will do Cyrannus just as the map suggests, and I will try to fill in the blanks in a way that makes sense.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Volcanic belching of gases is a quantititative argument that neglects the qualitative argument; are the gasses that come out of volcanoes really the stuff that supports life? While volcanoes are great for soil, they aren’t particularly well known for making atmospheres more breathable.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

It would be just about impossible to move a planet without leaving blatantly noticeable aftereffects. Equipment would be an obvious one, stress fractures throughout the crust would be another. Additionally, if you were going to the effort of creating an artificial star system, you wouldn’t settle for the haphazard arrangement proposed by the modern Battlestar Galactica materials; you’d make all the planets optimal, and give all of them the same optimal co-orbital radius.

If you wanted to be clever, and encourage space travel, you’d make them all co-orbital in orbits similar to a horseshoe orbit, only between the next and previous planet in the same orbital range.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

It would be just about impossible to move a planet without leaving blatantly noticeable aftereffects. Equipment would be an obvious one, stress fractures throughout the crust would be another. Additionally, if you were going to the effort of creating an artificial star system, you wouldn’t settle for the haphazard arrangement proposed by the modern Battlestar Galactica materials; you’d make all the planets optimal, and give all of them the same optimal co-orbital radius.

If you wanted to be clever, and encourage space travel, you’d make them all co-orbital in orbits similar to a horseshoe orbit, only between the next and previous planet in the same orbital range.

You have an average of three planets per star, each star has one gas giant orbiting it. What I'm saying is the system probably started with 4 near garden worlds, the other 8 worlds were probably too close to the star or too far away from it. The means by which you would move these planets is by gravitational tug, you will notice that each star also has one asteroid belt orbiting it. You take several asteroids, attack maneuver drives to them, and you make close passes of the planets who's orbits you need to change. Each planet gravitational deflects each asteroid that I flung towards them, this interaction also slightly changes the orbit of the planet doing the deflecting, eventually after several centuries to a millennium, the planet in question is in the proper orbit. The inner one is probably like Venus, so its going to need imports of hydrogen from the local gas giant, this produces a chemical reaction which ends up turning the carbon-dioxide atmosphere into graphite and water vapor, plant life turns the remaining carbon dioxide into oxygen, the atmosphere like Venus, kept their nitrogen supply so I the end you end up with a planet like Earth. We could do this with Venus if we wanted to, we would have to circularize the orbit of Earth as we did this to make room for Venus to get close, the planet would slowly spiral out of its current orbit. Since Venus and Earth are close to the same orbital period, we would probably need to keep those asteroid ships close to maintain the orbits of those two planets. Venus, for the record is inclined to Earth's orbit by 3.394 degrees, we could probably make that greater with gravitational tugs, lets say we tilted Venus' orbit to 45 degrees, that should be enough to limit the gravitational interaction between the two planets. Changing the orbit of a planet takes a long time.

As for the equipment, there is nothing that says they can't be ditched into the nearest gas giant. My theory is that several of the "Lords of Kobol" rebelled against the rest, and there was a "God's war" between them, humans which lived on that planet with their "Gods" got caught up in the crossfire, and some of them fled for their lives, one of the goddesses, and gods, possibly Athena and Apollo prepared this system in secret while they made preparation for their rebellion against the rest of the Lords of Kobol.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Unfortunately the mass-ratio between a planet and an asteroid means that you won't appreciably affect the orbit of an Earth-sized planet without millions of passes (probably not more than a couple a year due to orbital mechanics) OR you have to use a really large asteroid - basically a small planet (or something like the moon) - If you can put maneuver drives big enough to move the moon, just put them on the planet...

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Unfortunately the mass-ratio between a planet and an asteroid means that you won't appreciably affect the orbit of an Earth-sized planet without millions of passes (probably not more than a couple a year due to orbital mechanics) OR you have to use a really large asteroid - basically a small planet (or something like the moon) - If you can put maneuver drives big enough to move the moon, just put them on the planet...

Its easier to move all solid bodies that don't have atmospheres, Earth sized worlds have liquid cores that tend to slosh around when you push too hard on them. There are tens of thousands of asteroids, each one of them could have an engine, they each make close passes in front of a planet in its orbit, the planet's gravity flings it backward shoving the planet a little forward each time, the maneuver drives on the asteroid then correct the path of the asteroid flung backwards and return it on another path that closely passes in front of the planet to be flung backwards once more. The engines that push the asteroids are complete spaceships, they can separate from the asteroids they are pushing and then skim the atmosphere of the local gas giant, return to the asteroids they were pushing and continue. Now there are thousands of spaceships doing all of this in parallel, and their are a swarm of guided asteroids passing in front of the planet continuously, and it may take up to a thousand years to get this done, but some of the Lords of Kobol are very patient, they might have been planning this rebellion against the others for a long time, and needed a place to send the humans, as Kobol itself was getting over crowded, some of the other Lords may have been planning on eliminating the human race altogether, while other Lords took the side of Humanity, Apollo and Athena would be among them, that is my scenario. they aren't exactly the Greek Deities of Mount Olympus, the names "Apollo" and "Athena" were the names of models of robots, highly intelligent skin job robots, a predecessor to the Cylons, some of them saw themselves as protectors of humanity, others wanted to get rid of them, and thus the so called "Godswar" Started. Athena and Apollo, leaders of their respective models made plans with Gaia and rebelled, the war itself destroyed the civilization on Kobol, Gaia led her people to a colony she called "Earth" while Apollo and Athena led her group of humans to the Twelve Colonies that they had previously arranged to terraform as a future home of mankind. That is the back story that I imagined having occurred.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

1. While it’s not impossible for a machine-based organization like the Cylons to manipulate a star system over the course of several thousands of years in the way you describe, it’s not possible for them to achieve the fundamentally unstable results you’re describing; you’re trying to push a rock up-hill by blowing on it; it’s just not enough to achieve those results from the methods you’re describing, which is just too drastically unbalanced.

Start with the prerequisite that all the worlds you are describing are within the goldilocks zone of the stars, work out a resonance that meets that criteria for all the required planets, and use it. Out-of-plane orbits probably need a Kozai resonance; that’s what Pluto has with Uranus and Neptune; effectively, it keeps Pluto from ever being close to Uranus and Neptune, and getting thrown out of the system.


2. Any orbit change to Venus is going to endanger the orbit of Earth. You would have to maneuver the two planets very precisely for them to either share the same orbit in a non-destructive way, or have different orbits with a viable resonance that is compatible with the rest of the solar system. I think the latter makes more sense.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Alright, well I worked on the Barycentric Caprica and Gemenon Charts, and it turns out the best way to handle this is to make two charts, one for Caprica and one for Gemenon. That is we have a Capirica-centric chart which shows the apparent motions of Gemenon around Caprica as seen by someone on the surface of Caprica, and we have the Gemenon-centric chart which shows the apparent orbit of Caprica around Gemenon as seen by those on Gemenon. The Caprica-centric chart also shows local orbits around Caprica at intervals of 50,000 miles up to one third of the distance to Gemenon, and likewise the Gemenon-centric chart shows the local orbits around Gemenon in intervals of 50,000 miles up to one third the distance to Caprica.
First Caprica:

The pink ring shows the orbit distances around Gemenon as Gemenon apparently orbits around Caprica as seen by people on Caprica, since I can't draw circles around Gemenon, I just leave this pink zone blank. The square grid areas without circles are areas without stable orbits. Spaceships can fly through this area, they just can't settle in a stable orbit here. The stable orbits shown here are the ones around Caprica, and those range out to 150,000 miles which is approximately one third the distance to Gemenon.

Next Gemenon:

This chart shows orbits around Gemenon in the same manner as the previous chart showed orbits around Caprica. Both charts are shown on the same scale and with the same orientation of the planets to each other, it is just that this chart is centered on Gemenon while the previous chart is centered on Caprica and the circles are drawn differently of course.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

1. While it’s not impossible for a machine-based organization like the Cylons to manipulate a star system over the course of several thousands of years in the way you describe, it’s not possible for them to achieve the fundamentally unstable results you’re describing; you’re trying to push a rock up-hill by blowing on it; it’s just not enough to achieve those results from the methods you’re describing, which is just too drastically unbalanced.

So you mean orbital resonances which have the planets lining up successively at different parts of the orbit for instance? For example, lets say we have orbit 1 and orbit 2. Orbit 1 is inside orbit two. We start them out both lined up at 0 degrees of the circle. The planet in orbit 1 orbits faster than the planet in orbit 2, so it pulls away from the planet in orbit.

Planet 1 makes a complete orbit around the Sun, while planet 2 competes 350 degrees of its circle and stands at 350 degrees longitude as planet 1 reaches 0 degrees longitude. Lets assume Planet 2 takes 360 days to complete its orbit, that means the orbital period of planet 1 is 350 days. Planet 1 moves 1.0286 degrees per day, so how many fewer days did it take for planet 1 to catch up with planet 2? If we subtract the angular movement of planet 2 from planet 1 we find the relative movement of planet 1 relative to planet 2 is 0.0286 degrees per day. By dividing 360 degrees by that number we discover that it takes 12587.4125 days for the planets to line up again, this is about 34.965 of planet 2's years! 0.965 times 360 is 347.4 degrees. The next time they line up its at 334.8 degrees and then 322.2, 309.6, 297

Here's the table:
360 347.4 334.8 322.2 309.6 297 284.4 271.8 259.2 246.6
234 221.4 208.8 196.2 183.6 171 158.4 145.8 133.2 120.6
108 95.4 82.8 70.2 57.6 45 32.4 19.8 7.2 365.4
352.8 340.2 327.6 315 302.4 289.8 277.2 264.6 252 239.4
226.8 214.2 201.6 189 176.4 163.8 151.2 138.6 126 113.4
100.8 88.2 75.6 63 50.4 37.8 25.2 12.6 0

Planet 1 over takes planet 2, 59 times over a period of 2121.935 of planet 2's years and then both planets are back at the positions in their orbits at which they started, over a period of 150,000 years this pattern repeats itself 70 times. So exactly 70 times during the 150,000 years both planets are in the same position distorting each other's orbits, this is a long time from a human perspective, perhaps both planets will eventually collide, but not in 150,000 years I think. I have to calculate how close both planets are when they are lined up, assuming the central star has the mass of the Sun. I'll use the period calculator to find out the distances for these orbital periods:
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy/planet_orbit
Planet 2 has an orbit radius of about 92,100,000 miles and
Planet 1 has an orbit radius of about 90,400,000 miles with an orbital radius difference of about 1,700,000 Would this be acceptable? This is 6.8 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. If this occurs 70 times in 150,000 years, would this be too often?

Start with the prerequisite that all the worlds you are describing are within the goldilocks zone of the stars, work out a resonance that meets that criteria for all the required planets, and use it. Out-of-plane orbits probably need a Kozai resonance; that’s what Pluto has with Uranus and Neptune; effectively, it keeps Pluto from ever being close to Uranus and Neptune, and getting thrown out of the system.


2. Any orbit change to Venus is going to endanger the orbit of Earth. You would have to maneuver the two planets very precisely for them to either share the same orbit in a non-destructive way, or have different orbits with a viable resonance that is compatible with the rest of the solar system. I think the latter makes more sense.

As the exercise above shows, the closer the orbits are together, the more rarely such planets line up to interact. So the planets start off distance with negligible gravitational interaction, but lining up rather frequently, as they get closer such lineups are less frequent, but the pull of gravity in those infrequent moments are more significant, this seems to indicate that there is plenty of time to move planets before such line ups occur. Perhaps Earth should be pushed a little further out to make room for Venus.

If Venus had an orbit that was out to 92,100,000 miles, it would be slightly warmer than Earth is today, and have a year that is 360.162 days long, giving months that are 30 days each. If we pushed Earth out to 94,100,000 miles, it would have a year that is 371.957 days long with months that are 31 days long each, and it would be slightly cooler, the separation between both planets during line ups is 2,000,000 miles, about 8 times the distance of the Moon to the Earth. Would this be acceptable?

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Alright, well I worked on the Barycentric Caprica and Gemenon Charts, and it turns out the best way to handle this is to make two charts, one for Caprica and one for Gemenon.

No, no, a barycentric chart is way better. The “barycenter” is the invisible point in space that two objects orbiting one another in some fashion appear to be orbiting around; it never moves, and therefore, is more useful for navigation purposes. So you’d have some non-object point in the center, maybe an X or a cross-hairs or something, marked “barycenter”; then you’d have Caprica and Gemenon orbiting around it at their respective distances, albeit with the same period. It’s like Caprica and Gemenon are orbiting an invisible star in the middle, and magically have the same period in spite of their different orbits. Mark it differently than you would an orbit, though, because it isn’t one in the traditional sense; make the cross-hairs or whatever and the orbit path the same color, so you can associate both paths with the barycenter point.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

1. While it’s not impossible for a machine-based organization like the Cylons to manipulate a star system over the course of several thousands of years in the way you describe, it’s not possible for them to achieve the fundamentally unstable results you’re describing; you’re trying to push a rock up-hill by blowing on it; it’s just not enough to achieve those results from the methods you’re describing, which is just too drastically unbalanced.

So you mean orbital resonances which have the planets lining up successively at different parts of the orbit for instance? For example, lets say we have orbit 1 and orbit 2. Orbit 1 is inside orbit two. We start them out both lined up at 0 degrees of the circle. The planet in orbit 1 orbits faster than the planet in orbit 2, so it pulls away from the planet in orbit.

Once again, you’re barking up the wrong tree, here... start here; you need to look at the picture in the upper right corner, or the bigger version somewhere further down the page.

Stable Orbits for objects very close to each other are actually imperfect... but the orbital resonance corrects for those imperfections. Notice how Io is always being pulled from the outside, and Ganymede is always being pulled from the inside; in order for this to be stable, Io’s orbit has to be a little faster than it otherwise should be, and Ganymede’s orbit has to be a little slower than it otherwise should be. If any of the 3 objects in this system were instantaneously removed, the orbits would collapse; they’re that unstable; in short, they’re only stable together. Also notice how there is never an instance where all 3 are lined up! That sort of thing kills orbits dead.

Kozai resonances are the likely candidate for your high inclination planets. Basically, you need a resonance where any time the orbital path from the inclined planet comes closest to the orbital paths of the adjacent orbits, those planets are very far away when that happens. This is how Pluto doesn’t get kicked out by Neptune.

2. Any orbit change to Venus is going to endanger the orbit of Earth. You would have to maneuver the two planets very precisely for them to either share the same orbit in a non-destructive way, or have different orbits with a viable resonance that is compatible with the rest of the solar system. I think the latter makes more sense.

As the exercise above shows, the closer the orbits are together, the more rarely such planets line up to interact. So the planets start off distance with negligible gravitational interaction, but lining up rather frequently, as they get closer such lineups are less frequent, but the pull of gravity in those infrequent moments are more significant, this seems to indicate that there is plenty of time to move planets before such line ups occur. Perhaps Earth should be pushed a little further out to make room for Venus.

If Venus had an orbit that was out to 92,100,000 miles, it would be slightly warmer than Earth is today, and have a year that is 360.162 days long, giving months that are 30 days each. If we pushed Earth out to 94,100,000 miles, it would have a year that is 371.957 days long with months that are 31 days long each, and it would be slightly cooler, the separation between both planets during line ups is 2,000,000 miles, about 8 times the distance of the Moon to the Earth. Would this be acceptable?

You need to guarantee that all nearby objects are resonating constructively, and not destructively. You need to systematically work out that big conjunctions of planetary bodies never happen, or happen only once. Better to guarantee they just don’t.

In short, if you aren’t making sure your orbits are stable, they aren’t.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

What would you suggest I do? I don't have a Solar System simulator, which measures the gravitational influence of all the planets on each other. Anyway it depends on the masses of the planets, Up till now, I've been using simple Keplerian formulas to determine the orbital period by the planet's distance and the star's mass. I don't think that most players would know a good orbit from a bad one. I haven't listed the planet's masses, I have only listed their sizes. One can infer from their sizes what their masses may be, but planets also vary in density as well.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

If you’re going to pack orbits together so tightly, you’re going to have to justify it through rigor. There’s really no escaping it. By packing orbits together like that, you’re making the extraordinary claim that those orbits work. Better to back that up with something valid than some additionally unrealistic nonsense that would leave inescapably obvious evidence behind.

All you need to know about orbital resonances are 4 things:
First, triple conjunctions of consecutive orbits are forbidden (mathematically); if a body has two consecutive conjunctions too close together, the whole orbital shebang falls apart. For planets that are genuinely close, better to mathematically guarantee that when two bodies are going through a conjunction, the next conjunction for either of them with anything else is a significant angle away (at least 40 degrees or so).
Second, for planets that are genuinely close, you need to guarantee that they’ll always follow the same pattern, so their orbits will be stable.
Third, Kozai resonances are about systematic avoidance, rather than regular encounters; out-of-plane planets only work because they avoid other planets like the plague.
Fourth, because you’re cramming so many planets together into so tight a space, you need ratios of numbers that almost match; maybe even double-digit ones; just remember to keep the angles between consecutive conjunctions high.

Start with some orbital resonances that we know work, and apply them to your systems.
The example of Styx, Nyx, and Hydra are probably more useful to you than the Galilean Moons, since they’re crammed much closer together.
Pluto is the most obvious example of a Kozai resonance. You should probably do some fishing for more useful examples, since you have so many important out-of-plane planets. It wouldn’t hurt to try scaling the orbits of Pluto and Neptune down, to preserve the same resonance, and then to try to find a resonance that works with being inside of the new Neptune, but that also has a Kozai resonance with the new Pluto.

Of course, Horseshoe and Tadpole Orbits are always fair game; no need for orbital resonance there. Synchronous tadpole orbits for Caprica and Gemenon are a much better case, with less ridiculous tidal influence.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here's my presentation, the maps are complete, I'll quibble about the exact orbits later, but in the meantime, these maps will serve as good approximations:

This is an overview of the system, at this level of detail, no planets are visible, instead we have to pairs of stars Helios Alpha and Beta, and Helios Gamma and Delta, only the brightest of each pair is shown on this map.

We zoom in on the Alpha Beta pair, still no planets visible at this level of detail.

We get a little closer.

We zoom in on the outer Alpha system, and we see our first planets and an asteroid belt. UWPs are under the name of each planet on the map in black.

We zoom in on the inner Alpha system.

We zoom in on Gemenon.

We zoom in n Caprica.

This is the map of Caprica, and it is considered the main world of this system because of the presence of a pirate base. The stats are of the past, in the present, all planets have starport X and Populations of 7, government 0, law level 0, and tech level 0. Pirates aren't considered native, so their tech level isn't reflected in the world's stats.

An overview of the 12 colonies system.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Continuing my presentation:

This is the inner Helios Beta system, all the planets fit within.

This is the Helios Gamma Delta pair showing the gas giant Ragnar in orbit around both.

This is the Helios Gamma Delta pair.

This is the Helios Gamma System.

This is the Helios Delta system. There you have it, the complete Cyrannus system, except for the moons.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Tom, Caprica doesn’t orbit around Gemenon, and Gemenon doesn’t orbit around Caprica; they both orbit around their mutual barycenter. Technically, this is true of all bodies, but most bodies have a body they orbit around so large that it has subsumed its barycenter somewhere between the crust and the core, making it look like they orbit around the larger body. In the case of Caprica and Gemenon, that is demonstrably not the case. You need to do something more like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Orbit2.gif

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Tom, Caprica doesn’t orbit around Gemenon, and Gemenon doesn’t orbit around Caprica; they both orbit around their mutual barycenter. Technically, this is true of all bodies, but most bodies have a body they orbit around so large that it has subsumed its barycenter somewhere between the crust and the core, making it look like they orbit around the larger body. In the case of Caprica and Gemenon, that is demonstrably not the case. You need to do something more like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Orbit2.gif

Yes, I realize that, I just don't know how to do a barycenter on paper. You see as the planets move about the barycenter, the close in orbits around each are centerd around them. There are close in orbits around Caprica, places such as where you put the communications satellites and GPS satellites, Caprica has those and so does Gemenon. The only two objects that orbit around the barycenter are Caprica and Gemenon, and its hard to drag all the satellites and spaceships that are oribiting them as they orbit each other, so what the maps are really for is to keep track of everything else, mostly artificial satellites. A communications satellite orbiting Caprica for instance would be in a synchronius orbit within 50,000 miles of Caprica or within the first circle centered around Caprica on that map. I figure there are stable caprice centric orbits out to one third of the distance to Gemenon and that is what these maps are for. Also there is an orbital component to a starport which deals with spaceships that can't land on a planet's surface such as the Battlestar Galactica. Orbital starports are typically in stationary orbit above the surface starport. In the case of Caprica, there is a Starport at Caprica City, which is north of the Equator, the orbital component of this is above the equator but at the same longitude as Caprica city so it stays in continuous line of site communication with it.

As for the orbits I express them as within a tenth of a standard orbit, I assume there is a stable orbit within the range of that for now. the decimal component of s standard orbit is the number of tenths out to the next standard orbit. Orbit 3.4 is about four tenths of the distance between standard orbit 3 and 4.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here are the stats in a standard form:

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

O.K., yeah, in the context of other satellites orbiting their respective planet, a non-barycentric approach can make more sense. Me, I’d just mark out a separate “Sphere of Influence”, and have a separate graph overlay for that body and its corresponding satellites, and have the grid lines of that just fade out as they become irrelevant. But that’s an artistic choice, and as the artist at hand, that’s your prerogative.

As far as major starbases go, though, you might as well put one great big one at the barycenter, and a handful of watch outposts around Caprica and Gemenon. It’s already “half-way to anywhere”, so it makes the most sense.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

O.K., yeah, in the context of other satellites orbiting their respective planet, a non-barycentric approach can make more sense. Me, I’d just mark out a separate “Sphere of Influence”, and have a separate graph overlay for that body and its corresponding satellites, and have the grid lines of that just fade out as they become irrelevant. But that’s an artistic choice, and as the artist at hand, that’s your prerogative.

As far as major starbases go, though, you might as well put one great big one at the barycenter, and a handful of watch outposts around Caprica and Gemenon. It’s already “half-way to anywhere”, so it makes the most sense.

Caprica probably has all kinds of stuff orbiting it. Mostly its ships going from planet to planet, with so many worlds able to support human life, not much thought went into free standing space colonies. Mostly space stations are there to service spaceships without landing capability, and there are also orbital construction yards as well.