Viracocha's intense heat and radiation defines life on Palenque, native life has yet to be discovered and even humanity and its alien allies have yet to construct permanent installations on it's surface. Habitat stations and mining equipment remain in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, staying in the shade of the small planet and constantly avoiding Viracocha's hot glare. Everything on the planet is done by "Badger" class excavator spaceships (to be detailed later), these ships are slow, but highly shielded against heat and radiation, they are equipped with a large neutronite reservoir at it's base, these reservoirs have an opening that collects Palenque's molten surface metals, by use of gravity generators embedded in the neutronite around the opening, effectively "sucking" the molten matter into the reservoir, where it is maintained in fusion for the short trip back to the facilities, in orbit around the planet. The refinement stations are roughly cone shaped, with the widest part at the top. This large section is the landing deck, which has specialised docking rings that are fitted for mining craft. These docking rings are a direct access into the ore deposit area, which makes the drop-off process safe and effective. Once on board, the ore is separated into it's respective components by the refinement area, to be smelted and exported at a later date. Research into mining procedures and design of the mining spacecraft were funded by IVD's R&D division, hence, IVD will maintain control of the mine and it's installations until the year 2530, when it will revert to "Viracocha Mining Co.", the other main contributor in the project. Most of the profits are generated by the fact that the planet's mineral resources are of very high grade (almost 90% of the ore is refined into a number of useful products) and not because of the presence of high priced metals, such as rhodium and tungsten. The area's main exports are: iron, silver, nickel, gold and copper, with lead and other heavy metals as secondary production. This area is lightly defended by a squadron of 4 "Marauder" class escort vessels, making it impregnable by pirates, but easy prey to larger warships, static defences are limited to a small fleet of 8 defence satellites scattered in orbit, the installation of ground based defence batteries is impossible, due to the unstable, molten surface of the planet.