Outer Planets Alliance 2350

Population: 100e6 (OPA's own estimate). Estimated per-person power: 50,000 W. Belter stations require full life support (air recycling, water recycling, temperature control, spin gravity maintenance, lighting) plus mining and industrial operations. Less energy-intensive than Mars (75,000 W/person) because the Belt has no terraforming project and operates older, less efficient equipment.

Total power: 100e6 x 50,000 = 5e12 W. Per-person: 50,000 W (vs Earth 2023: 2,200 W/person, roughly 23x more). Kardashev: log10(5e12) / 10 - 0.6 = 12.699 / 10 - 0.6 = 0.67.

Below Earth 2023 (K=0.73) because the OPA's total population is tiny despite space-age per-capita energy use.

Min (50M people x 30,000 W): 1.5e12 W, K = 0.62. Max (100M people x 75,000 W): 7.5e12 W, K = 0.69.

The OPA has no central authority. An OPA Council provides collective governance but lacks enforcement power. Multiple competing factions operate semi-independently: Fred Johnson's Tycho faction (moderate, diplomatic), Anderson Dawes's Ceres faction (populist), Black Sky (extremist, drone terrorism), the Voltaire Collective (labor), and dozens of smaller cells. Currency: Ceres New Yen (CNY). Languages: Belter Creole and English.

At the 2350 snapshot (start of Leviathan Wakes), the OPA has no formal navy. Armed forces consist of retrofitted civilian vessels: freighters and mining ships fitted with improvised weapons, plus a handful of captured or stolen military vessels. No purpose-built warships exist yet. The Behemoth (converted Nauvoo) and first custom-built OPA gunships come later.

The OPA is rated Tier 3 on the in-universe military scale, with "thousands of marines" but no dedicated warships. The value of 10 represents armed vessels capable of combat, not the thousands of unarmed civilian ships that Belters operate.

Inner planet census estimates ~50 million Belters. The OPA's own count is ~100 million, likely including uncounted populations on small stations and ships. Using the OPA estimate as the primary value and the inner planet figure as the minimum.

Major stations: Ceres (6M permanent + 1M transient), Eros (~1.5M in books), Saturn system (~20M total across moons), Pallas (hundreds of thousands), Tycho (~15,000), plus hundreds of smaller stations and ship-dwelling Belters.

TL 7 (Fusion): Same Epstein drive technology (deuterium-helium-3 fusion) as the rest of the Sol System. No unique advanced tech, no degradation of core capabilities. The OPA is rated Tier 3 on the in-universe scale of technological sophistication, below Mars (Tier 1) and the UN (Tier 2), but this reflects equipment age and military investment rather than a fundamental technology gap.

Class 7 (Interplanetary): Fusion drives, space habitats, system-wide colonization. The OPA has the same technology base as the rest of the Sol System and maintains a presence across the entire outer solar system from the asteroid belt to Saturn's moons. The weakest Class 7 entity in the system by institutional capability, but their technological reach is unquestionably interplanetary.

The OPA was founded approximately 30 years before the protomolecule discovery (~2320), evolving from loosely affiliated labor unions and activist groups into a political confederation. The exact founding date is not stated in primary canon. At the 2350 snapshot, the alliance is roughly 30 years old.