Europa
From Cowboy Bebop: Space Cowboy
Europa is one of Jupiter's four Galilean Moons. The others are Io, Ganymede, and Callisto. Out of the four, Callisto is the smallest, being only 90% of the size of Earth's moon. It takes approximately three and a half days for Europa to orbit Jupiter once. Europa lies in between Io and Ganymede in its orbital path. Europa's composition is very similar to terrestrial planets. It is primarily made out of silicate rock. The surface is an icy crust covering a salt-water ocean. Europa also has a metallic iron core.
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Terraforming
The effort to terraform and colonize Europa began in 2024 shortly after the Gate Incident. Early terraforming efforts heated the planet up. This melted the ice and exposed the massive salt water ocean covering the surface. Further terraforming added great depressions into the surface forming a few large oceans.
Chemical treatment was employed to rapidly convert the new rocky surface into a usable soil. Nutrients were brought in or extracted and spread around to make the moon fertile. As part of the effort to stabilize the atmosphere and generate an ecosystem, a small fleet of aircraft spread seeds for a robust type of tree across most of the new land surfaces. The new plant life converted most of the carbon dioxide released by the melting of the ice into oxygen. Now, dense forests cover a large portion of the uncultivated landscape.
After some other minor alterations, including the addition of fish and wildlife, Europa finally had a stable ecosystem. Europa's terraforming efforts were very successful, since Europa's climate now resembles Earth.
Population
Europa's colony is fairly small. The entire population of the moon is just over 900,000 people. Most of the population is centralized in Europa's main city, Cadmus. Cadmus is a coastal town spreading out over part of the great Anacronean Plain. The plain was burned clear early in the moon's history for development and colonialism purposes.
Government
The European Government is almost completely controlled the European Syndicate. Their specialty is white-collar crimes; they commit dozens of financial and hacking related crimes every day. The entire syndicate makes up approximately 4% of the population of Europa. The European Syndicate started out as a very violent syndicate. The criminal Udai Taxim was an assassin from the old days of the syndicate. The European Syndicate no longer uses assassination, instead preferring to resort to extortion and bribery.
Religion
Religion on Europa is primarily Muslim. Cult activity has always had a strong presence on the moon as well.
