Since the earliest days of space flight, wayfarers have sought a way to efficiently and cost effectively conduct commerce across systems and deep space. Not all spacefaring vessels have the ability to enter a planet’s atmosphere and land at spaceports or landing fields to enable goods to be easily loaded and unloaded. What was needed was a spacious platform that could occupy an area close to a planet’s orbit to enable the easy shipment of goods from the planet’s surface to the station, and sufficient docking space for multiple freighters and/or defence vessels to dock at the same time.

The earliest merchant space docks were often simply large empty shells provided with rudimentary station keeping engines, life support for a command centre and a few crew, with a large number of droids to handle loading and unloading of cargo in the airless storage spaces. Advances in miniaturisation, life support technology and particle shielding have allowed modern stations of this type to maintain their cost effective nature while incorporating shielded storage spaces that allow air-breathing workers to conduct operations in safety. Nevertheless, these stations tend to retain their bare-bones nature with exposed docking structures and basic amenities for short term rest and relaxation for the crews of transient ships.

One feature now frequently included in most modern merchant space docks are extensive sensor arrays of greater strength than those found on most major warships. Over the millennia, it has been found that it is critical for the station’s crew to be able to identify incoming ships as far away as possible. In the event of hostile vessels approaching, early detection would allow the crews of docked vessels a precious few additional minutes to evacuate to their ships and undock from the station to flee or for attached defensive fighters to meet the enemy further from the station. Whatever their shape and form, merchant space docks remain a staple of any spacefaring economy and many companies rely on them as their home base all over the galaxy.