The basic “Base Station Zero” hull (BS0) was one of the first enclosed orbital stations equipped with a drive field that the deWulf Corporate Democracy designed. While originally meant as a military platform, it quickly became a profitable design on the civilian market for corporations and other groups that required a small presence in space. When stripped of armour, weapons, and most of its shielding, the station had ample space for research labs, sensor systems, and survey equipment. The military grade main reactor offered an ample power budget, meaning that it could accommodate almost any civilian application.
The biggest restriction that most corporations found with the BS0 was that it was simply too small to accommodate larger assembly arrays or production facilities. Even the smallest usable shipyard or processing plant is over double the size of a BS0, which restricts the kind of work that can be done at a station of this size. Still, their low cost and modular nature has ensured its place as the most common private space station in service.
This private research station was originally designed just on a lark, but as with most things, it’s become a fairly central part of the universe. The deWulf Corporate Democracy is a (fairly) mature spacefaring civilization, and a big part of that is civilian as well as military infrastructure. With over two dozen mapped systems, more than half of those having some kind of inhabitation, that makes for a lot of real estate that needs to be surveyed, mapped, assayed, and managed. Even a small bit of orbital infrastructure makes these tasks substantially easier. And just as critically, cements a claim.
Realistically, this should actually be a BS1, as it’s the same hullform as the Nail-Class BS1. So that’s more of an annotation mistake on this sketch than anything else. But it doesn’t invalidate anything else, as even as BS1 is small enough that it can’t effectively fit an onboard machine shop or medium-sized shipyard.
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 