As I consider the "Ancients" and what they could do, I got to thinking - what could the Third Imperium do with its current TL 15 technology. The thought that sparked this process was based on an Old Larry Niven novel, in which a man uses a ship to approach a given velocity, use a black hole as a sling shot, and return to Earth in its far future.
The man discovers that Earth and Venus aren't in the orbits that he remembers and worries that he isn't in Kansas (so to speak). Later on, the author describes a technique for tugging a world out of orbit using the mass of another world - thereby keeping earth at a comfortable temperature rather than have it get hotter and hotter as the sun burns its hydrogen, then helium, and some elements of carbon.
Which brings me directly to terraforming in the year 1105.
Imagine if you will, spotting a world that is just too cold for comfortable habitation. The world just isn't close enough for that comfort zone that most humans like to see on their world. Now imagine that there is a world between the main world and the sun, that is largely a piece of rock and way too hot to be comfortable. Net result is that you mount a few reaction-less drives on that world to stop its spin. Then you use the drives to impart a higher velocity for the world in question - forcing it by the laws of physics, to move further away from the sun. Now imagine using the huge (did I mention HUGE!) mass as an attractor for the main world. You use the mass you can move (and life on that world once you start to move it out of orbit - is going to be hellish) to gently nudge the main world out of its orbit into a faster orbit (and thus too, begin to move away from the sun) or to slow the main world (causing it to fall intowards the sun for a closer orbit).
You don't want to mount those reactionless drives on the main world, because you'd need to stop it spinning in order to apply the precise force necessary to rearrange the system's orbits.
Anyone see an issue here that would make it unlikely that the Third Imperium might consider rearranging the star systems to suit their desires? If this can be done at TL 15, what would or could the Ancients have done with say, TL 18 or 20 or what have you?
Just musing aloud.
The man discovers that Earth and Venus aren't in the orbits that he remembers and worries that he isn't in Kansas (so to speak). Later on, the author describes a technique for tugging a world out of orbit using the mass of another world - thereby keeping earth at a comfortable temperature rather than have it get hotter and hotter as the sun burns its hydrogen, then helium, and some elements of carbon.
Which brings me directly to terraforming in the year 1105.
Imagine if you will, spotting a world that is just too cold for comfortable habitation. The world just isn't close enough for that comfort zone that most humans like to see on their world. Now imagine that there is a world between the main world and the sun, that is largely a piece of rock and way too hot to be comfortable. Net result is that you mount a few reaction-less drives on that world to stop its spin. Then you use the drives to impart a higher velocity for the world in question - forcing it by the laws of physics, to move further away from the sun. Now imagine using the huge (did I mention HUGE!) mass as an attractor for the main world. You use the mass you can move (and life on that world once you start to move it out of orbit - is going to be hellish) to gently nudge the main world out of its orbit into a faster orbit (and thus too, begin to move away from the sun) or to slow the main world (causing it to fall intowards the sun for a closer orbit).
You don't want to mount those reactionless drives on the main world, because you'd need to stop it spinning in order to apply the precise force necessary to rearrange the system's orbits.
Anyone see an issue here that would make it unlikely that the Third Imperium might consider rearranging the star systems to suit their desires? If this can be done at TL 15, what would or could the Ancients have done with say, TL 18 or 20 or what have you?
Just musing aloud.