The Terminals Construction Site is the focal point of UIPS operations. The Construction Site's mission is to research, design, fabricate, test, assemble and, ultimately, launch, position at destinations and operate, monitor and maintain the Slingshot Extractor and Collector terminals en route and at their destinations.
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The planning did not anticipate the dissolution of the United Planetary System, the creation of independent and estranged Regions in their place, and a hostile government on Pluto.
Military forces had been non-existent for more than fifteen hundred years when the colonies of the Outer Region seceded from the United Planetary System. Weapons of mass destruction had had no purpose since the birth of the first World Federation in the fourth century of the Interplanetary Era.
In place of an organized military, the succeeding World Federation had created an Interplanetary Constabulary to protect lives and property, investigate crimes, control traffic, and maintain general order. Their charter extended to all planets, satellites, colonies, outposts, stations, and all places throughout the void into which humankind had ventured.
The mission of the Constabulary remained unchanged during political reorganizations within the first World Federation and its successors. Its agents ranged the Solar System, and performed their duties quietly and efficiently. Few dared challenge their authority. When challenges did occur, they were not for long.
War, and the effects of war on people and things were forgotten.
It was inconceivable, in those times, that the region beyond the Asteroids would become politically and culturally alienated from the unified community that humankind had created to guide them into the future. History, the citizens of the world concluded, had demonstrated the impotence of the ancient, long-discarded array of adversarial nation-states and come-by-chance leaders to govern an intellectually advanced species.
No one expected a return to the old, long-discarded ways.
When separation of the Inner and Outer Regions became inevitable, scholars in both Regions explored the possible and the probable relationships that might develop under the new order. The studies predicted that politically independent nation-states would create multilateral alignments and conflicting societies, lifestyles and philosophies.