Spaceport Nauru - The Eggplant Rises

A great plasma cloud, the eggplant, signals the ascent of a cargo pod from the Pacific Union Spaceport Nauru.

The Pacific Union maintained its aversion to nuclear technology in all forms well into the second half of the 21st century, far longer than any other nation.  As a result, the PU started to fall behind other space-faring nations as space infrastructure developed beyond the point where chemical rockets were viable. The PU was faced with two choices: Get help from another nation that already has extensive surface-to-orbit (STO) infrastructure (leaving the PU dependent on said nation) or develop a new method for surface-to-orbit transport.

The PU's involvement in West Papua's war for independence left a sour stain on PU-SEAC relations, throttling current PU use of SEAC's space elevator and producing further incentive to develop independent STO infrastructure.

One solution to boost cargo into orbit was to use mass drivers. Construction soon began on a mass driver tunnel by drilling through Nauru's sea mount base. Burying the 2km mass driver underground prevents the rails from splitting apart under intense magnetic forces. Nauru's proximity to the equator also makes launching into orbit easier. Before long, the entire island became one large spaceport, informally called Spaceport Nauru.

The PU's success with Spaceport Nauru lead the PU to further develop it's mass driver and railgun technology. This eventually lead to the construction of a larger mass driver launching system in Australia. To this day, the PU continues to maintain some of the most advanced mass driver systems both on the ground and in space.

This is a bit of a follow on from fave.me/d83utqe I quite like how the ground turned out.
The color for the plasma cloud comes from powerlabs.org. The idea of nicknaming it the eggplant comes from my wife.