On Moving Planets and other Impossible Projects

[rust]

To turn from the well kicked tires of economics for a moment, are there any thoughts on possible 'Engineering' deal killers?

I would see several of them within real world physics, but none of them
within the physics behind the Third Imperium technology (e.g. reaction-
less drives).

As for terraforming, I would expect the creation of entire ecosystems and
biospheres "from scratch", including the use of genetically engineered spe-
cies designed for specific purposes, to become possible around late TL 9 /
early TL 10.

 

[GypsyComet]

There are OTU references to terraforming projects, and genegeneering by the Imperium up to and including humaniti variants (The Jonkereen).

 

[Tobias]

A thrust unit powerful enough to move the planet would blast a column of air above it into space, eventualy depleting the atmosphere to a near vacuum.

Even assuming very low energy leakage and no chemical pollutants, the waste heat from the power supply and drive units would cause massive heat pollution that would devastate the ecosystem.

Well, compared to the difficulty of moving a planet in the first place, removing the atmosphere, hydrosphere and possible ecosphere and building new ones from scratch in the desired location are trivial problems. 8)

 

[rust]

Thinking about it, I am not sure that a deformation of the planet by the
thrust of the drives would have to occur.

Third Imperium gravitics technology is quite capable of eliminating the
effects of thrust on starships and their crews, so the same technology
- grav compensators - should make it possible to move a planet with-
out serious problems caused by the thrust, I think.

 

[Tobias]

... And what about Terraforming?
Obviously some Terraforming is possible, we can already drain swamps, dig lakes and terrace mountains and have done all three since at least TL 2.

So what can be done at TL 9? At TL 15?

Well, there are few hints in canon. The Tech Level tables from the MT Ref's Companion put "major terraforming involving thousands of square kilometers" at TL 12, "complex terraforming involving an entire hemisphere" at TL 15 and "global terraforming" at TL 16.
Not that this makes much sense to me. If you terraform one hemisphere, what's gonna stop you from terraforming the other hemisphere? In any case, the evidence supports the idea that large-scale terraforming is possible at the Imperium's TL.
The MgT core book indicates that terraforming is a normal part of Imperial colonization efforts. However, it is more difficult to speculate upon because it's not a matter of hard, comparably simple number-crunching.

 

[Tobias]

More anti-common sense. We still managed to land on the Moon without eliminating adult illiteracy in the US. Economically impractical does not appear to mean impossible. (besides, his other points had merit.)

Of course, inequality can still exist in even a faboulously rich society. But the wealth has to end up somewhere. And in a society as rich as the one which could move a planet, you have a lot of wealth to distribute. Consider that if you want to do it in a sensible timeframe (a few decades), the average person has to be an income millionaire. Even if you still have an underclass, for the non-underclass starships would be as normal as motorcars are today.

 

[atpollard]

Even if you still have an underclass, for the non-underclass starships would be as normal as motorcars are today.

Every adventurer I ever met either had one or had access to one. :wink:

 

[atpollard]

Thinking about it, I am not sure that a deformation of the planet by the
thrust of the drives would have to occur.

Third Imperium gravitics technology is quite capable of eliminating the
effects of thrust on starships and their crews, so the same technology
- grav compensators - should make it possible to move a planet with-
out serious problems caused by the thrust, I think.

:shock: I just had this mental image of a giant ship that opens it's cargo bay, slowly engulfs the world, closes the bay, transports it to the desired location and releases it on the correct course and speed. Then heads off to grab another. :shock:

 

[GypsyComet]

Thinking about it, I am not sure that a deformation of the planet by the
thrust of the drives would have to occur.

Third Imperium gravitics technology is quite capable of eliminating the
effects of thrust on starships and their crews, so the same technology
- grav compensators - should make it possible to move a planet with-
out serious problems caused by the thrust, I think.

:shock: I just had this mental image of a giant ship that opens it's cargo bay, slowly engulfs the world, closes the bay, transports it to the desired location and releases it on the correct course and speed. Then heads off to grab another. :shock:

"Marrow" by Robert Reed.

 

[rust]

:shock: I just had this mental image of a giant ship that opens it's cargo bay, slowly engulfs the world, closes the bay, transports it to the desired location and releases it on the correct course and speed. Then heads off to grab another. :shock:

If I had to design the transport of a planet in my setting (done by some
extremely advanced alien civilization), this would probably indeed be my
concept:
A huge open frame around the planet, complete with bridge, drives, gra-
vitic compensators, etc., built over a couple of decades, and then a nice
celebration before the "spaceship planet" begins to accelerate for the long
journey to its new orbit ... :lol:

 

[Shiloh]

To turn from the well kicked tires of economics for a moment, are there any thoughts on possible 'Engineering' deal killers?

Any suggestions that "even if affordable, it can't be done because ..."

The forces you'd have to apply would interfere with magma flows in the core causing the crust to become unstable. You'd probably get a wobble effect through the planet, at best a kind of standing wave deforming the planet's geometry whiel under thrust.

A thrust unit powerful enough to move the planet would blast a column of air above it into space, eventualy depleting the atmosphere to a near vacuum.

Even assuming very low energy leakage and no chemical pollutants, the waste heat from the power supply and drive units would cause massive heat pollution that would devastate the ecosystem.

The thrust would cause semi-permanent tides that would cause massive ecological damage. This would also lead to a massive tide reversal when the drives are switched off. The wobble effect mentioned previously would also of course have an effect on tides.


Simon Hibbs

Given that you'd be moving an uninhabitable planet into the Life Zone, these don't seem particularly unacceptable side effects. You're going to have to terraform the lifeless rock anyway, so what's the issue with boiling off the (probably trace or noxious) atmosphere. Oceanic washover from acceleration effects would probably be very useful in kickstarting your first layer of rock-eating-gas-making microbes...

There will be other effects too: moving a Jovian moon or Mars into a 1AU orbit will cause any frozen deposits to boil up. Moving Venus out a step would cool it down: what sort of rain would that make?

 

[EDG]

There will be other effects too: moving a Jovian moon or Mars into a 1AU orbit will cause any frozen deposits to boil up. Moving Venus out a step would cool it down: what sort of rain would that make?

As the ice melts/boils, it'd be lost to space. Small worlds won't be able to hold their atmospheres in the habitable zone because it's warmer (move Titan to the Earth's orbit, and it'd lose all its atmosphere pretty quickly).

Moving Venus out to Earth orbit probably wouldn't do much. Almost all its atmosphere is CO2, so you'd need to get that either blown away or locked up in rocks before it'd cool down.

My main issue with terraforming, moving planets, or whatever is that it's simply unnecessary. It's always easier to build an artificial habitat or space station to house people than to move planets - any terraforming or other "impossible project" would only serve as a gigantic engineering folly.

 

[atpollard]

My main issue with terraforming, moving planets, or whatever is that it's simply unnecessary. It's always easier to build an artificial habitat or space station to house people than to move planets - any terraforming or other "impossible project" would only serve as a gigantic engineering folly.

The problem with pursuing this line of reasoning is that although it is logical, it is not particularly fun. By way of explanation, let us pursue that argument to it's conclusions ...

... There is nothing in another solar system needed for Human Life that is not more easily obtained in THIS solar system (and probably most easily obtained on Earth). So we have no need for Interstellar Travel except as a possible scientific curiosity. Say 10 scout ships total.

Humans are best adapted for our planetary environment and sun. The same can be assumed of each other species. There is, therefore, no reason for them to attempt to adapt to an alien sun or biosphere parsecs from 'home' when an orbital habitat would provide the same resources sharing the orbit of their homeworld.

The Traveller Universe should, therefore, consist of a collection of orbital habitats around the home world of each major species, plus a few outposts within the same system to obtain resources, plus a few scientific outposts on nearby star systems ... and vast empty systems between each enclave.

Only when the population of the Earth System resulted in a virtual 'Dyson Sphere' of habitats surrounding the Sun, would there be pressure to settle 'another star'.

That is 'logical', but not really Traveller.

 

[Gaidheal]

Umm... planetary disaster (meteor, etc).

 

[EDG]

The Traveller Universe should, therefore, consist of a collection of orbital habitats around the home world of each major species, plus a few outposts within the same system to obtain resources, plus a few scientific outposts on nearby star systems ... and vast empty systems between each enclave.

And why shouldn't that be "fun"? Babylon 5 was set in just such an outpost, and had a hell of a lot going on in it. Even if a handful of vessels explore, there's still plenty of scope for adventure and interesting stories on there.

IIRC the current OTU has two terraformed worlds - Hephaistos in the SR, and one other somewhere else. Both were pretty major projects (as they should be. Terraforming ain't easy). But given the abundance of habitable planets in the OTU, there arguably isn't any point in terraforming inhospitable ones - just go one or two systems away and you'll find one.

That is 'logical', but not really Traveller.

It's not the OTU, because that was designed on whims, by piecemeal, and without any deep thought or coherency or logic. But it could still be Traveller.

 

[Gaidheal]

A lot of the old favourite settings were designed with pure 'flavour' in mind and no real thought given to internal consistency, for example:

BattleTech - "Hey! Wouldn't it be cool to have a game based around giant fighting robots, like those on Macross and other Japanese animation? Imagine if it was a world where they'd replaced tanks because they had fusion plants to power them... but what about if the people who made them are all dead now and the technology is being lost so that the victor has to scavenge from the battlefield?"

"Cool! I think we should have galactic empires based on earth nations, too, you know, like a Japanese one, a democratic one and so on..."

:¬)

 

[lucasdigital]

These thought experiments are great to read through. There's no argument that much of the basic science is correct, and some of the ideas are pretty cool too. However, it's not part of the established canon. The imperium doesn't move planets around. There might be some TL16+ stuff going on in the fringes, but we don't see any systems that have all the worlds nudged into the goldilocks zone.

I'm not critising the idea of moving planets, by all means propose some cool 'My Traveller Universe' ideas, but there's no point in trying persuade people that, because your ideas make sense it should be adopted as part of the canon.

 

[Tobias]

Only when the population of the Earth System resulted in a virtual 'Dyson Sphere' of habitats surrounding the Sun, would there be pressure to settle 'another star'.

Actually, gotta disagree. Interstellar and inteplanetary travel are so easy using Traveller technology that settling other planets is more feasible than building lots of orbital habitats either. Such habitats are only for those who don't wanna move outsystem.

 

[simonh]

Only when the population of the Earth System resulted in a virtual 'Dyson Sphere' of habitats surrounding the Sun, would there be pressure to settle 'another star'.

Actually, gotta disagree. Interstellar and inteplanetary travel are so easy using Traveller technology that settling other planets is more feasible than building lots of orbital habitats either. Such habitats are only for those who don't wanna move outsystem.

I quite agree, In Traveller it's actually quicker to travel to the main world of a neighbouring system using a Jump Drive than it is to travel to much of the local system using manoeuvre drives.

Also if you're at all interested in novel biological products, then you're going to be very interested in interstellar trade.

Simon Hibbs

 

[EDG]

I quite agree, In Traveller it's actually quicker to travel to the main world of a neighbouring system using a Jump Drive than it is to travel to much of the local system using manoeuvre drives.

Not necessarily true.

At 1G acceleration/deceleration (using standard accel-turnaround-decel) you can travel up to a maximum distance of 6.1 AU in seven days. In our system, that'd get you at least from Earth to Jupiter, and encompasses a huge volume of space in which you can build sun-orbiting habitats, or planet-orbiting habitats (or build them on the ground).

With jump, you're spending at least seven days in jumpspace, plus the time you have to reach 100D to jump out from, and the time to get from 100D to your destination. So really, in the same time as you'd take to Jump from A to B, you could actually go further than 6.1 AU in-system at 1G (and obviously if you accelerate at 2G you can go twice the distance).

Also if you're at all interested in novel biological products, then you're going to be very interested in interstellar trade.

To discover them, perhaps. But at sufficiently high TL in biochemical science, a society could easily artificially duplicate those materials once they're known.