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Home to nearly 5 billion people in the Universal Century, the space surrounding the planet Earth has become known as the Earth Sphere. Spaceborne human beings, known as Spacenoids, live in space colonies, waystations, lunar cities and even large, constantly moving trade freighters. There are many more people in space than there are on Earth. Space colonies are grouped into seven Sides, which orbit Earth at the five Lagrangian points, areas where the difference between the gravitational pulls of the Moon and Earth create a region where you can maintain orbit with little to no fuel used for course corrections. These areas are the most heavily populated by far, but regions of open space still house CMC waystations, which are home to many people. The vast majority of spacenoids live in the points around the moon. Side 3 is the farthest away geographically, beyond the dark side of the moon. However, Side 7 is the farthest away by travel time, the smallest space colony province lying opposite the moons position from Earth. The Earth Federation maintains a ring of asteroid fortresses throughout the Earth Sphere, with Luna II in close orbit of Earth and the rest organizing relief efforts in the badly damaged Sides 1, 2 and 4. Slowly but surely they are repairing serviceable colonies, and moving flotsam from the war to the ever growing shoal zone at Side 5. While many Zeon sympathizers are hiding out on Side 3, Side 6 and the Moon, the only real resistance against the Federation currently resides deep within Side 5, at Delaz's base of operations, the small space station Garden of Thorns. |