Tech Level 8 Solar System

[fusor]

How do you know? Have you ever been to the Near Future? Do you think the Near Future is at all capable of surprising you? I think Artificial Intelligence is in the Near Future, even though Traveller presents it as Tech Level 17! I don't think the development of a machine that can think is nearly as hard as going faster than the speed of light. I think building large scale structures requires greatly expanding the work force, whether that is a work force of humans of machines does not matter. The key enabling technology is probably Artificial Intelligence, once we have that we can build as many as we want and artificial intelligence can build as many artificial intelligences as they want. Program one machine to build another and then program them all to build a planetary Solar Shield, it is really a simply principle, you place a solid object inbetween the Sun and a planet, it is just very large, and it requires a large work force to construct, probably many more than their are humans on Earth today, but with AI, we can build as many as we want, so long as there is material to make them from.

Thank you for proving all of my points with your response (and now you're babbling on about AI. Did I ask you about AI? I don't think I did).

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

I figure that an antimatter propelled slower than light rocket is a lower tech level than a Faster than light Spaceship such as one using the fictional technology the Jump Drive...

The nonsensically low TL of a Jump Drive or gravitics is no justification for your nonsensically low TL fusion speculations. For TL8, learn your Technology Readiness Levels, and stick to stuff that has successfully reached “TRL6”. Please stop going off the deep-end.

 

[fusor]

No one is shipping matter from Earth’s Moon to Venus just to make antimatter. They’d find a way to make it on the moon, if they could get the most appropriate precursors there. Which you have not yet stated a proper case for.

Or they'd just, y'know, mine Venus. There's plenty of baryons to scoop up in that atmosphere as well! Maybe Tom can transform all that carbon dioxide into nanotubes to make a solar shade.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

I think Artificial Intelligence is in the Near Future, even though Traveller presents it as Tech Level 17!

All modern-day computer systems are built as deterministic systems. If you feed it a fixed input, regardless of how detailed, it will produce a fixed output. This is necessary so that computations will always be correct. For a modern computer, the reliability of correct computation is paramount.

However, free will, by definition, is non-deterministic. You feed an “AI” a bunch of data, and it makes a decision; one which cannot be predicted based on its software. You haven’t achieved free will until the “AI” “wills” its own answer: “Chef-bot, should I have Blueberry Strudel for breakfast, or Belgian Waffles with Strawberries and Whipped cream?” “Definitely the waffles, sir; this morning, the sun’s rays will make them glisten ever so nicely.”

The problem is, a deterministic system flat out cannot fully simulate a non-deterministic one. It all goes back to Aristotle, who proved it quite thoroughly. Modern technologists are going to have to suck on that for a while, unfortunately.

What this means is, no commercial off-the-shelf system can ever achieve AI sentience. They might pass a few Turing tests against some gullible humans, though, so don’t be fooled.

The circuits required to build a non-deterministic system capable of making a decision have not even been concieved, much less implemented. Which means, inescapably, that, free will AI isn’t even at TRL1.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

How do you know? Have you ever been to the Near Future? Do you think the Near Future is at all capable of surprising you? I think Artificial Intelligence is in the Near Future, even though Traveller presents it as Tech Level 17! I don't think the development of a machine that can think is nearly as hard as going faster than the speed of light. I think building large scale structures requires greatly expanding the work force, whether that is a work force of humans of machines does not matter. The key enabling technology is probably Artificial Intelligence, once we have that we can build as many as we want and artificial intelligence can build as many artificial intelligences as they want. Program one machine to build another and then program them all to build a planetary Solar Shield, it is really a simply principle, you place a solid object inbetween the Sun and a planet, it is just very large, and it requires a large work force to construct, probably many more than their are humans on Earth today, but with AI, we can build as many as we want, so long as there is material to make them from.

Thank you for proving all of my points with your response (and now you're babbling on about AI. Did I ask you about AI? I don't think I did).

Its a game, not a scientific paper for you to refute! You seem to have a psychological need to prove me wrong at something, instead of having a nice discussion and accepting that we may disagree from time to time! As for the future, nobody knows for certain until it becomes the present, all there are is two opinions of it. I'm sorry you feel the need to have an intellectual rivalry with me instead of a friendly discussion. You see the need to say to the world, "Hey Tom is stupid!" Why don't you go bother somebody else! If you don't like my posts, don't read them and take your nastiness elsewhere! You are preceding from the assumption that I am wrong, and then constructing your arguments to prove it, that is your psychological need! Are you an artificial intelligence expert? Are you working right now on state of the art AI systems? If so they why are you wasting your time playing role playing games? The human mind is possible, so it seems likely in the next century that we may duplicate it, but that would make me right wouldn't it, so you just can accept it, so I must be wrong! The only way for you to prove me wrong is for you to live an extra 100 years and for me to live an extra 100 years and then you can say, "Your wrong Tom!" but not right now. As for tech level, that is an artificial construct for the game, there is no right and wrong, my interpretation is that tech level 9 and above requires new physics, everything else that we know is physically possible, but which we don't know how to do yet, goes into tech level 8. Making a lot of antimatter is hard, we know its possible because black holes do it all the time, when matter falls into it, the accretion disk around it gets so hot that it creates antimatter, and the magnetic field jets it out in the form of charged particles. It principle, if we can make a little antimatter, we can make a lot of antimatter, we just need to work out the technical details of how to accomplish that task, I don't need to because what I am working on is fiction, I just need to know what category to put in in, and I decide to put in in Tech Level 8, don't like it? Tough!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I figure that an antimatter propelled slower than light rocket is a lower tech level than a Faster than light Spaceship such as one using the fictional technology the Jump Drive...

The nonsensically low TL of a Jump Drive or gravitics is no justification for your nonsensically low TL fusion speculations. For TL8, learn your Technology Readiness Levels, and stick to stuff that has successfully reached “TRL6”. Please stop going off the deep-end.

The Tech Level is an artificial construct for the game, not a scientific principle. The only tech levels we can be sure about, are the tech levels lower than our own. I define our tech level as 7, 8 is the future, we can project a number of technologies that we can be sure about based on our current understanding of science, beyond that we know nothing, tech level 9+ is a series of arbitrary decisions on what level to put each bit of science fiction technology on, such as faster than light drives, teleportation, etc. There are no right or wrong answers, because no one really knows, it is a matter of personal preference really. As for artificial intelligence, who knows, are you an artificial intelligence expert? I think even if you were, you wouldn't know the stuff you haven't figured out yet. I don't really think you can precisely map out all the stuff you are capable of doing over the next one hundred years, nobody really knows.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I think Artificial Intelligence is in the Near Future, even though Traveller presents it as Tech Level 17!

All modern-day computer systems are built as deterministic systems. If you feed it a fixed input, regardless of how detailed, it will produce a fixed output. This is necessary so that computations will always be correct. For a modern computer, the reliability of correct computation is paramount.

You know the dice you roll when you play this game are a deterministic system, if you know precisely the rotation rates and orientation of the dice you roll as you roll them, you can predict the outcome of every dice you roll all the time, but in practice you can't, to us the numbers rolled seem random. I have no problem with the pseudorandom numbers generated by a computer, I use my computer to roll random numbers for me all the time, and to me, I can' see the difference between pseudorandom numbers and real random numbers. In theory, you can roll your dice a certain way and predetermine the outcome, but in practice, unless you are using loaded dice, you can't predict what number you are going to roll next, nor can you try to roll a particular number, it is not a skill.

However, free will, by definition, is non-deterministic. You feed an “AI” a bunch of data, and it makes a decision; one which cannot be predicted based on its software. You haven’t achieved free will until the “AI” “wills” its own answer: “Chef-bot, should I have Blueberry Strudel for breakfast, or Belgian Waffles with Strawberries and Whipped cream?” “Definitely the waffles, sir; this morning, the sun’s rays will make them glisten ever so nicely.”

How do you know we are nondeterministic, it could simply be that our deterministic system is so complex that you can't predict it, and if that's the case, there is no difference between what we have and free will.

The problem is, a deterministic system flat out cannot fully simulate a non-deterministic one. It all goes back to Aristotle, who proved it quite thoroughly. Modern technologists are going to have to suck on that for a while, unfortunately.

What this means is, no commercial off-the-shelf system can ever achieve AI sentience. They might pass a few Turing tests against some gullible humans, though, so don’t be fooled.

If it can fool you, it has done its job, that is what the Turing test is, and if a machine can do any job you are capable of doing, it doesn't matter whether its decision making process is deterministic or nondeterministic, I we can't predict what its going to do, then for us it is nondeterministic.

The circuits required to build a non-deterministic system capable of making a decision have not even been concieved, much less implemented. Which means, inescapably, that, free will AI isn’t even at TRL1.

You see this picture? It is a picture of Manhattan before and after a city was built on it, you know a computer algorithm called fractals designed the trees and branches of the forest in the before picture. It was a deterministic system which made this image, to us they look like trees, there are certain fractal patterns that trees have when they grow their branches and leaves, which can be modeled by a computer.

 

[fusor]

The Tech Level is an artificial construct for the game, not a scientific principle. The only tech levels we can be sure about, are the tech levels lower than our own. I define our tech level as 7, 8 is the future, we can project a number of technologies that we can be sure about based on our current understanding of science, beyond that we know nothing, tech level 9+ is a series of arbitrary decisions on what level to put each bit of science fiction technology on, such as faster than light drives, teleportation, etc. There are no right or wrong answers, because no one really knows, it is a matter of personal preference really. As for artificial intelligence, who knows, are you an artificial intelligence expert? I think even if you were, you wouldn't know the stuff you haven't figured out yet. I don't really think you can precisely map out all the stuff you are capable of doing over the next one hundred years, nobody really knows.

So you're just ignoring the game's definition of tech levels as well? Then all of this really does have nothing to do with Traveller at all.

All your responses amount to "so? how do you know?" or "nobody knows, so i can say what I want" or "don't like it? Tough!". You claim you want to discuss things but that's clearly a lie - you just want to post whatever nonsense you like and ignore what everyone says. As long as you think something should happen, you'll put it in and to hell with reality or anyone's comments or criticisms (because apparently you're the expert on the subject and nobody else could possibly know more than you about it).

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The Tech Level is an artificial construct for the game, not a scientific principle. The only tech levels we can be sure about, are the tech levels lower than our own. I define our tech level as 7, 8 is the future, we can project a number of technologies that we can be sure about based on our current understanding of science, beyond that we know nothing, tech level 9+ is a series of arbitrary decisions on what level to put each bit of science fiction technology on, such as faster than light drives, teleportation, etc. There are no right or wrong answers, because no one really knows, it is a matter of personal preference really. As for artificial intelligence, who knows, are you an artificial intelligence expert? I think even if you were, you wouldn't know the stuff you haven't figured out yet. I don't really think you can precisely map out all the stuff you are capable of doing over the next one hundred years, nobody really knows.

So you're just ignoring the game's definition of tech levels as well? Then all of this really does have nothing to do with Traveller at all.

I like to mix and match whatever makes the most sense for me. I think Antimatter shouldn't be a tech level, it just starts out very expensive at lower tech levels and gets cheaper as you go higher, the main difficulty is in its manufacture, and the fact that it explodes when something goes wrong! I think initially antimatter would be used mostly by governments at tech level 8, sort of the interstellar equivalent to the Apollo program. PCs would fly a government owned spaceship much as astronauts do today.

All your responses amount to "so? how do you know?" or "nobody knows, so i can say what I want" or "don't like it? Tough!". You claim you want to discuss things but that's clearly a lie - you just want to post whatever nonsense you like and ignore what everyone says. As long as you think something should happen, you'll put it in and to hell with reality or anyone's comments or criticisms (because apparently you're the expert on the subject and nobody else could possibly know more than you about it).

I wish you wouldn't try to make it personal between you and me, we are only talking about a game after all, If you want to get into this petty interpersonal stuff, I suggest you do it with someone else. This is not a contest between you and me! And I am not interested in your stupid interpersonal rivalry, that you keep on trying to gin up here! I don't care who you are, I don't want to know you or meet you in person, I don't want to be your friend or your enemy, I just want to discuss ideas, that's all! If you like them, fine, if you don't, you can tell me why you don't like them, and maybe you can convince me, but please don't make this personal, okay?

 

[fusor]

I like to mix and match whatever makes the most sense for me. I think Antimatter shouldn't be a tech level, it just starts out very expensive at lower tech levels and gets cheaper as you go higher, the main difficulty is in its manufacture, and the fact that it explodes when something goes wrong! I think initially antimatter would be used mostly by governments at tech level 8, sort of the interstellar equivalent to the Apollo program. PCs would fly a government owned spaceship much as astronauts do today.

So what does this have to do with Traveller? You change the tech assumptions, you change the setting, so where's the connection with Traveller? Why is this relevant? This isn't a "post your generic scifi settings" board.

I just want to discuss ideas, that's all!

Then discuss them. Just stop bombarding us with more and more of them. But you don't (and apparently don't know how) to discuss anything though, you just say "this is what I've decided" and that's it. When I pointed out that making antimatter elements at TL8 was far beyond that tech level, you just said that you had your own ideas about tech level and that changed the definition of how that worked (same with AI). Well, great, but you've shifted the goalposts there when the common ground that people have on this board is Traveller and how that defines things - if you just want to change everything in Traveller to suit your ideas whenever you please, then how can anyone discuss anything about it with you and how is this relevant to anyone who comes to this board expecting to see and talk about Traveller?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I like to mix and match whatever makes the most sense for me. I think Antimatter shouldn't be a tech level, it just starts out very expensive at lower tech levels and gets cheaper as you go higher, the main difficulty is in its manufacture, and the fact that it explodes when something goes wrong! I think initially antimatter would be used mostly by governments at tech level 8, sort of the interstellar equivalent to the Apollo program. PCs would fly a government owned spaceship much as astronauts do today.

So what does this have to do with Traveller? You change the tech assumptions, you change the setting, so where's the connection with Traveller? Why is this relevant? This isn't a "post your generic scifi settings" board.

The Charts are still useful to any setting with the Solar System in it, you could use it with the OTU setting if you want

I just want to discuss ideas, that's all!

Then discuss them. Just stop bombarding us with more and more of them. But you don't (and apparently don't know how) to discuss anything though, you just say "this is what I've decided" and that's it. When I pointed out that making antimatter elements at TL8 was far beyond that tech level, you just said that you had your own ideas about tech level and that changed the definition of how that worked (same with AI). Well, great, but you've shifted the goalposts there when the common ground that people have on this board is Traveller and how that defines things - if you just want to change everything in Traveller to suit your ideas whenever you please, then how can anyone discuss anything about it with you and how is this relevant to anyone who comes to this board expecting to see and talk about Traveller?

I haven't included any setting specific material yet, I just made some suggestions to test your reactions, so I can decide what to do. When doing a map of the Solar System, especially with a lot of O'Neill colonies in it, I need a chart of various orbits, then I can place the specific dots on this map, an the orbits will give me the paths they follow and what distance they are from the gravitational object, then I'll make a table. These charts are only the first step. You can use them to make up your own kind of Solar System.

By the way, this is the Earth H chart:

Here is the Orbit H chart for Luna:

And Here is Mars, completing the Inner System:

 

[fusor]

The Charts are still useful to any setting with the Solar System in it, you could use it with the OTU setting if you want

They're not though. They tell you absolutely nothing that a few numbers in a table can't tell you.

I haven't included any setting specific material yet

So what's the point? Are we supposed to endure 5 pages of charts before you get around to even telling us about your setting (that we didn't ask for anyway)?

I just made some suggestions to test your reactions, so I can decide what to do. When doing a map of the Solar System, especially with a lot of O'Neill colonies in it, I need a chart of various orbits, then I can place the specific dots on this map, an the orbits will give me the paths they follow and what distance they are from the gravitational object, then I'll make a table. These charts are only the first step. You can use them to make up your own kind of Solar System.

The charts are totally unnecessary. I mean good grief, do you expect people to be making these charts for every world in a system? Why would anyone do that? They don't tell you a single thing that you wouldn't get from a few numbers in a table, or even a formula.

If you want to plot out every damn satellite and station then use a program - Kerbal Space Program, Celestia, Orbiter, Space Engine, or something like that. Trying to figure it all out on paper is just ridiculous.

By the way, this is the Earth H chart:

Which, again, I didn't ask to see.

All you've done is drawn a circle in a bullseye on a square grid - whoopee. The diameter number tells you the diameter of the Earth, nobody needs to see a circle with half that radius on a square grid to understand that. You've drawn a load of circles that correspond to squares when we already know that 1 square is 5000 miles. You've already stated the "geosynchronious" (sic) orbit, we don't need to see a circle to understand that. It's a huge waste of space, time, and effort.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

So what's the point? Are we supposed to endure 5 pages of charts before you get around to even telling us about your setting (that we didn't ask for anyway)?

People can use the generic charts I have drawn for their own setting, rather than having to disregard my own specifics I put there.

The charts are totally unnecessary. I mean good grief, do you expect people to be making these charts for every world in a system? Why would anyone do that? They don't tell you a single thing that you wouldn't get from a few numbers in a table, or even a formula.

No. for this system. In a setting without FTL, the Solar System charts substitutes of the OTU charts, space colonies substitute for Worlds, Each space colony will have their own social codes: Population, Government, Law Level, and Tech Level, although the tech level is usually 8, can't get much lower than that in an artificial space colony. Size will use a roman numeral which is the diameter in miles, the roman numeral is to distinguish it from natural worlds which are measured in thousands of miles. I will also use the High Guard code for configuration, usually used in spaceships, but in this case used for space colonies. The config codes usually used are 3 Cylinder, 5 Sphere, 6 Flattened Sphere for Wheel, 7 Dispersed Structure for something else that rotates, and there is 8 Planetoid, and 9 Buffered Planetoid. Cylinders have a second statistic giving length in proportion to diameter, either, 1, 3, or 5 typically thus if a cylinder is 4 miles wide, a 1 means 4 miles long, a 5 means 20 miles long for instance.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The nonsensically low TL of a Jump Drive or gravitics is no justification for your nonsensically low TL fusion speculations. For TL8, learn your Technology Readiness Levels, and stick to stuff that has successfully reached “TRL6”. Please stop going off the deep-end.

The Tech Level is an artificial construct for the game, not a scientific principle. The only tech levels we can be sure about, are the tech levels lower than our own. I define our tech level as 7, 8 is the future, we can project a number of technologies that we can be sure about based on our current understanding of science, beyond that we know nothing, tech level 9+ is a series of arbitrary decisions on what level to put each bit of science fiction technology on, such as faster than light drives, teleportation, etc. There are no right or wrong answers, because no one really knows, it is a matter of personal preference really. As for artificial intelligence, who knows, are you an artificial intelligence expert? I think even if you were, you wouldn't know the stuff you haven't figured out yet. I don't really think you can precisely map out all the stuff you are capable of doing over the next one hundred years, nobody really knows.

Technology Readiness Levels are not fiction. They are an ascertation of technology by Governmental Organizations such as NASA and the Military for determining whether a technology has undergone sufficient engineering and testing. If you stick to technologies currently at about TRL6, you will have a much more reasonable idea about what is going to happen in the next Traveller TL or 2. Lower TRLs are much harder to predict about how soon they can be rolled out in a productive fashion. So you should really avoid that sort of technology like the plague.

 

[fusor]

No. for this system. In a setting without FTL, the Solar System charts substitutes of the OTU charts, space colonies substitute for Worlds, Each space colony will have their own social codes: Population, Government, Law Level, and Tech Level, although the tech level is usually 8, can't get much lower than that in an artificial space colony. Size will use a roman numeral which is the diameter in miles, the roman numeral is to distinguish it from natural worlds which are measured in thousands of miles. I will also use the High Guard code for configuration, usually used in spaceships, but in this case used for space colonies. The config codes usually used are 3 Cylinder, 5 Sphere, 6 Flattened Sphere for Wheel, 7 Dispersed Structure for something else that rotates, and there is 8 Planetoid, and 9 Buffered Planetoid. Cylinders have a second statistic giving length in proportion to diameter, either, 1, 3, or 5 typically thus if a cylinder is 4 miles wide, a 1 means 4 miles long, a 5 means 20 miles long for instance.

Yet another thing that nothing to do with what I was talking about. And that doesn't even follow from what I was saying (or even make any sense, for that matter). Are you seeing the pattern here yet?

Just answer the question. Don't try to distract with whatever other random thing just popped into your mind.

I mean, heck, if you think these charts are useful then demonstrate how they are useful. Put a bunch of satellites and colonies around Earth on the Earth chart and explain how you think these charts are going to be able to tell you anything, show your calculations, and show us what table you expect to be able to get out of it.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

How do you know we are nondeterministic, it could simply be that our deterministic system is so complex that you can't predict it, and if that's the case, there is no difference between what we have and free will.

Read your Aristotle.

If it can fool you, it has done its job, that is what the Turing test is, and if a machine can do any job you are capable of doing, it doesn't matter whether its decision making process is deterministic or nondeterministic, I we can't predict what its going to do, then for us it is nondeterministic.

If its job is to fool people for a while, then it will succeed. But it will fall apart under hard analysis, which will reveal key weaknesses that will be easily exploited. It genuinely won’t be the same as engaging with an actual person.

The circuits required to build a non-deterministic system capable of making a decision have not even been concieved, much less implemented. Which means, inescapably, that, free will AI isn’t even at TRL1.

You see this picture? It is a picture of Manhattan before and after a city was built on it, you know a computer algorithm called fractals designed the trees and branches of the forest in the before picture. It was a deterministic system which made this image, to us they look like trees, there are certain fractal patterns that trees have when they grow their branches and leaves, which can be modeled by a computer.

They look like trees at the presented scale. At a much more detailed scale, they’ll look predictable.

If a computer system is behaving predictably, it isn’t deciding things; just concluding them. That’s the difference between Sapeint AI and fixed algorithms.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The nonsensically low TL of a Jump Drive or gravitics is no justification for your nonsensically low TL fusion speculations. For TL8, learn your Technology Readiness Levels, and stick to stuff that has successfully reached “TRL6”. Please stop going off the deep-end.

The Tech Level is an artificial construct for the game, not a scientific principle. The only tech levels we can be sure about, are the tech levels lower than our own. I define our tech level as 7, 8 is the future, we can project a number of technologies that we can be sure about based on our current understanding of science, beyond that we know nothing, tech level 9+ is a series of arbitrary decisions on what level to put each bit of science fiction technology on, such as faster than light drives, teleportation, etc. There are no right or wrong answers, because no one really knows, it is a matter of personal preference really. As for artificial intelligence, who knows, are you an artificial intelligence expert? I think even if you were, you wouldn't know the stuff you haven't figured out yet. I don't really think you can precisely map out all the stuff you are capable of doing over the next one hundred years, nobody really knows.

Technology Readiness Levels are not fiction. They are an ascertation of technology by Governmental Organizations such as NASA and the Military for determining whether a technology has undergone sufficient engineering and testing. If you stick to technologies currently at about TRL6, you will have a much more reasonable idea about what is going to happen in the next Traveller TL or 2. Lower TRLs are much harder to predict about how soon they can be rolled out in a productive fashion. So you should really avoid that sort of technology like the plague.

Oh that would be the second edition, I am still working from the 12st edition with just technology levels, and I am using classic traveler the Scout Book for the Spaceports. So I guess a space colony will each have
Spaceport: (Spaceports are F, G, H, J, and Y I believe: There really aren't any starports in this system at Tech Level 8, since there is no Jump Drive)
Size: In roman numerals
Configuration Code:
Length:
Population:
Government:
Law Level:
-
Tech Level: (Or technological Readiness Level if you prefer)
The planets are much as they are today, except some of them are populated, notably Mercury, Venus, Earth, Luna, and Mars. No Terraforming has yet taken place, people are still just colonizing space and the worlds for the most part. Probably the most populous worlds are Earth, Luna, and Mars in that order. Robots are ubiquitous, they are used in a lot of construction projects doing repetitive tasks, allowing for the construction of space colonies that are miles wide, they don't make good soldiers though, they lack good judgment on who to shoot for example, but for space based construction projects, they are a labor force multiplier.

 

[fusor]

Technology Readiness Levels are not fiction. They are an ascertation of technology by Governmental Organizations such as NASA and the Military for determining whether a technology has undergone sufficient engineering and testing. If you stick to technologies currently at about TRL6, you will have a much more reasonable idea about what is going to happen in the next Traveller TL or 2. Lower TRLs are much harder to predict about how soon they can be rolled out in a productive fashion. So you should really avoid that sort of technology like the plague.

Oh that would be the second edition, I am still working from the 12st edition with just technology levels, and I am using classic traveler the Scout Book for the Spaceports. So I guess a space colony will each have
Spaceport: (Spaceports are F, G, H, J, and Y I believe: There really aren't any starports in this system at Tech Level 8, since there is no Jump Drive)
Size: In roman numerals
Configuration Code:
Length:
Population:
Government:
Law Level:
-
Tech Level: (Or technological Readiness Level if you prefer)
The planets are much as they are today, except some of them are populated, notably Mercury, Venus, Earth, Luna, and Mars. No Terraforming has yet taken place, people are still just colonizing space and the worlds for the most part. Probably the most populous worlds are Earth, Luna, and Mars in that order. Robots are ubiquitous, they are used in a lot of construction projects doing repetitive tasks, allowing for the construction of space colonies that are miles wide, they don't make good soldiers though, they lack good judgment on who to shoot for example, but for space based construction projects, they are a labor force multiplier.

Do you have reading comprehension issues, Tom? Or difficulties understanding people? T-T was talking about your lack of understanding of what TRLs are - why do you then respond with a load of waffle about spaceports that doesn't even follow on from what he was saying at all? What does anything you say here have to do with what he was talking about? Do you not see what you're doing here? Are you just deliberately ignoring everything that everyone says?

If you are just going to ignore what everyone says and asks, and just post your own stuff regardless then what the hell is the point of all this?

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Oh that would be the second edition...

No, it is not “Second Edition”! Click the damn link!

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/technology/txt_accordion1.html

To be fair, links are hard to see on this forum...

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Technology Readiness Levels are not fiction. They are an ascertation of technology by Governmental Organizations such as NASA and the Military for determining whether a technology has undergone sufficient engineering and testing. If you stick to technologies currently at about TRL6, you will have a much more reasonable idea about what is going to happen in the next Traveller TL or 2. Lower TRLs are much harder to predict about how soon they can be rolled out in a productive fashion. So you should really avoid that sort of technology like the plague.

Oh that would be the second edition, I am still working from the 12st edition with just technology levels, and I am using classic traveler the Scout Book for the Spaceports. So I guess a space colony will each have
Spaceport: (Spaceports are F, G, H, J, and Y I believe: There really aren't any starports in this system at Tech Level 8, since there is no Jump Drive)
Size: In roman numerals
Configuration Code:
Length:
Population:
Government:
Law Level:
-
Tech Level: (Or technological Readiness Level if you prefer)
The planets are much as they are today, except some of them are populated, notably Mercury, Venus, Earth, Luna, and Mars. No Terraforming has yet taken place, people are still just colonizing space and the worlds for the most part. Probably the most populous worlds are Earth, Luna, and Mars in that order. Robots are ubiquitous, they are used in a lot of construction projects doing repetitive tasks, allowing for the construction of space colonies that are miles wide, they don't make good soldiers though, they lack good judgment on who to shoot for example, but for space based construction projects, they are a labor force multiplier.

Do you have reading comprehension issues, Tom? Or difficulties understanding people? T-T was talking about your lack of understanding of what TRLs are - why do you then respond with a load of waffle about spaceports that doesn't even follow on from what he was saying at all? What does anything you say here have to do with what he was talking about? Do you not see what you're doing here? Are you just deliberately ignoring everything that everyone says?

If you are just going to ignore what everyone says and asks, and just post your own stuff regardless then what the hell is the point of all this?

I'm busy working on the setting, and have lots or work to do, I don't have time to be distracted with social niceties, I'm sorry you don't think I'm suave or charismatic enough, but I'm trying to produce a detailed setting. I'm trying to do two things at once, prepare this setting, provide it for your review, and then answer your questions about it, but I never had the gift of gab, I am sort of geekish, and have a bit of Asperger's to deal with, so I'm sorry I am not "the Fonz" and am not cool. I am not here to socialize and to small talk. Social interactions have always been a mystery, I have never been good at it, and I am 48 years old, and this is not a skill which can be learned easily. I tend to be single-minded with the subjects I am interested in, but I think I have some useful things to contribute, so please bear with me.

Basically what I am doing is creating a bunch of charts, so I have places to put my colonies, I would welcome some help on this if you'd care to contribute. the hardest part for me would be coming up with some names for all these colonies. The main colonizing countries are the United States of America, Canada, Mexico, the Republic of China (Taiwan and Mainland China are the same country), Australia, The United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Singapore, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Cuba, France, Spain, Greece, Kenya, Nigeria, Indonesia, Iran, Arabia, Romania, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Italy, Russia, Japan, Israel, Egypt, Columbia, South Africa, Turkey, India, Korea (both north and south, they are one country at this time).
I have G charts (500 miles per square) and am going to get H charts (5000 miles per square) of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Luna, Mars, Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Saturn, Prometheus, Rhea, Titan, Iapetus, Uranus, Titania, Oberon, Neptune, Triton, Pluto with Charon.
Later on I will make I-charts (50,000 miles per square) of Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. If I have to, I may need to make a J-Chart of Jupiter and Saturn (at 500,000 miles per square) and then I'm done with the charts, I just have to figure out the space colonies and what names I should give them.