Eros (named after the real-life 433 Eros) is a wandering asteroid where Command School is situated. It was originally a Formic colony and the International Fleet lost one thousand marines capturing it. Colonel Graff says that they fought for every meter of the place. The capture, however, allows the humans to discover and utilize both artificial gravity and ansible technologies.
Spaceships approaching Eros land on one of three orbital platforms, whereupon passengers are transported to the asteroids in school bus-like spaceships and sucked through tubes in zero gravity to the main colony. Due to the Formics painting it black, its albedo becomes only slightly brighter than a black hole. Humans noted it disappearing from their monitors and sent someone to investigate, which led to a confrontation with the Formics.
In Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin is sent here to attend Command School, where he unknowingly defeats the Formics, believing he is playing a space combat simulation computer game.
A short civil war takes place on Eros after the Formics are defeated, coinciding with a civil war on Earth. Five hundred personnel are lost, and the fighting only ended when the Warsaw Pact troops were ordered to kill Ender, and they promptly refused.
Eros later becomes the staging area for early human colonies being sent out to colonize the vacant bugger colony worlds. Ender Wiggin is seen helping with the refitting a starship docked at a newly constructed space station.
Read more about this topic: List Of Ender's Game Series Planets
Famous quotes containing the word eros:
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“In America the chief accusation seems to be one of “Eroticism.” This is odd, rather puzzling to my mind. Which Eros? Eros of the jaunty “amours,” or Eros of the sacred mysteries? And if the latter, why accuse, why not respect, even venerate?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)