Whoever builds something here will be rich beyond measure

Since the launch of the first artificial

satellite in 1957, governments,
companies, and research institutions have
been planting flags among the stars. But
while it might seem like there's plenty of
room in this vast expanse, some pieces of
celestial real estate are more valuable
than others. Each of these dots is a
Lagrange point, and as far as human
space exploration is concerned, they may
be the most important places in our solar
system.
Named after the 18th century
mathematician who deduced their
positions, Lagrange points are rare places
of equilibrium in our constantly shifting
universe. All celestial bodies exert a
gravitational force on nearby objects,
pulling them in and out of orbits. And
gravity acts alongside several apparent
forces to determine what those orbits
look like. However, Lagrange points are
places where all these forces balance out.
So if we place a relatively low mass
object here, it will maintain a constant
distance from the massive bodies pulling
on it. Essentially, Lagrange points are
celestial parking spaces— once an object
is there, it requires little to no energy to
stay put. So whenever humans want to
keep an object in one place for a long
time without using tons of fuel, it needs
to be orbiting a Lagrange point.
However, there are only so many of these
parking spots. Pairs of massive bodies in
our solar system generate sets of five
Lagrange points. This means our Sun has
five points with every planet, and our
planets have five points with each of their
moons. Adding these up, there are over
1,000 Lagrange points in our solar system
— but only a few are useful for human
purposes. Many are in locations that are
too difficult to reach or simply not very
useful. And for reasons we'll explain in a
bit, many others are unstable. Currently,
only two of these points are heavily used
by humans. But we’ll likely use many
more in the future— making these
limited points exclusive real estate.
Which begs the question: what exactly
should we park in them?
That answer depends on where each point
is. Consider the five Lagrange points
generated by the Sun and the Earth. L1 is
located inside Earth's orbit, about 1.5
million kilometers away from the planet.
With this panoramic view of the Sun,
unobstructed by Earth’s shadow, L1 is
the perfect place for solar-observing
satellites. L2 is at the same distance from
Earth but outside its orbit and shielded
from the Sun, making it the perfect spot
to observe outer space. In 2022, the
James Webb Space Telescope went
online here, in a spot where the Sun and
Earth only occupy a tiny fraction of the
sky. L3 is in a particularly mysterious
location that can never be directly
observed from Earth’s surface. This has
made L3 a frequent locale in science
fiction, though it hasn’t offered much use
to scientists yet.
L4 and L5, however, are a bit different
from their siblings. In every set of five,
the first three Lagrange points are slightly
unstable. This means objects will slowly
drift away from them, though keeping
what we’ve parked there in place is still
energetically cheap. The stability of L4
and L5, however, varies from set to set. If
the heavier of the two bodies generating
the points has less than 25 times the mass
of the lighter body, these points are too
unstable to park things in. However, if
the heavier body is massive enough—
like it is in Sun-Earth set— then the
relevant forces will always return objects
to these equilibrium points, making them
our most stable parking spots. That’s why
points like these naturally accumulate
space objects, such as the Sun-Jupiter
set’s L4 and L5, which host thousands of
asteroids.
Every Lagrange point in our solar system
has its quirks. Some might be perfect for
scavenging construction materials from
drifting asteroids. Others might make
ideal gas stations for ships headed to deep
space, or even host entire human
colonies. These points are already home
to advanced technological achievements,
but soon, they could become our stepping
stones to the stars.