Why Dara? Why a moon at all?

In the world of Rome's Revolution, why did the Vuduri build a star-base on the moon Dara which was in orbit around the gas giant called Skyler's World? In fact, why was it called Skyler's World for any reason?

The "Skyler's World" appellation was taken from a street in Kankakee, IL called Schulyer's Ave. No particular reason and no particular meaning assigned to the name. But why build a starbase on a moon? Why not build an orbital platform? The reason is so simplistic, it gets lost in the furor which is the rest of the story. The purpose of the star-base was to run missions into space and place equipment in orbit until incomprehensibly large instruments were in place. The interferometer they built had an effective diameter of almost 10 light hours across. But why not build the star-base on Skyler's (or Schuyler's) World?

The answer is very simple. The gravity on Skyler's World was over three times that of Earth. So trying to build a base there was impractical. But building a base in orbit was equally impractical since humans work better with some gravity. While Dara was not ideal, it did have gravity and it did have an atmosphere. The Vuduri did not consider the presence of an atmosphere as a problem. They were so used to aero-braking as a method of atmospheric re-entry that this did not even fit into the equation. The fact that the atmosphere was unbreathable was irrelevant because in orbit there would be no atmosphere anyway.

So it all comes down to gravity. Dara offered some, not too much, and Skyler's World offered excessive gravity, untenable. A moon is a moon. It isn't ideal but it's something. So thank you Dara.

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