Corporate History
The debate as to whether Qinlin Mining or Ephemeris started The Contract approaches philosophical. Both companies announced their interest in settlement of the Solar System together, they jointly hosted the Extra-Planet Settlement and Exploration Convention that eventually led to the Contract, and the two companies’ symbiotic relationship make their efforts inexorable. Ephemeris builds the facilities and equipment Qinlin needs to extract natural resources it sells to Ephemeris to build facilities and equipment.
But, unlike Ephemeris, Qinlin’s exists independently of its efforts outside Earth orbit. The company and its predecessors date to the mid-nineteenth century, conducting rural mining. A family owned and operated consortium, its expertise in extracting and refining minerals in remote locations lead to its interests in space. It maintains a heavy terrestrial footprint in Asia and Oceania that interacts little with its planetary pursuits.
Corporate Structure
Unlike the other members of the Contract, Qinlin does not maintain tight control over its facilities from a centralized corporate headquarters. Instead, each location operates nearly independently, reporting to an executive board operating more as a confederacy of interests than a massive corporate structure. This makes its facilities nimble, empowered to make adjustments on their own and overcome their own problems. The philosophy dates to the days when Qinlin mined in the Gobi Desert, far from executive assistance or oversight. As such, Qinlin facilities and operations vary widely depending on the location and mission.
Operations and Resource Extraction
While Qinlin primarily focuses on mineral extraction, its space operations extend to harvesting of any usable resource. By some estimates, Qinlin produces more potable water by volume than all other resources combined. Nearly indestructible machines called Combs sift through the top layers of regolith on moons and planets, extracting useable water from the permafrost, desalination facilities on Europa and Enceladus purify water from the sub-surface oceans, and barges melt frozen asteroids throughout the belt. While water production does not generate a large profit margin, it creates enough revenue that Qinlin changed its logo to a stylized water molecule shortly after ratifying the Contract.
Qinlin also produces food harvested from the sub-surface oceans of Europa and Enceladus. Its subsurface farming of plant-life on Enceladus provides most of the flavors and compounds used for flavored protein rations. Its ranching practices to harvest the deyo fish on Europa, while providing the sole source of animal protein outside of Earth, draws considerable scrutiny. Qinlin’s method of butchering the only macrofauna found anywhere else in the Solar System draws regular protests from both rights groups and governments. Qinlin, however, maintains its position that its mission is to support humanity’s expansion into the Solar System and prioritization of conversation would render this expansion prohibitively complex and expensive.