Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Here is the Helios Beta mini system
The Cyrranus System from Battlestar Galactica
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Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
I should also make them green and not blue. The color scheme for solid planets is thus, Red indicates it is in the inner zone, green indicates its in the habitable zone, and blue indicates its in the outer zone. The circles in the Caprica/Gemenon map indicate distance from Caprica more that anything else, not all those circles represent viable orbits, and certainly none are around Gemenon, though they should be. Generally all orbits more that a third away from either planet or less that 3 times away from both planets are unstable, though you can fly through them in a spaceship, you can't orbit at those distances and expect your orbit to be stable without active correction.Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
That is one unEarthlike aspect to them. I'm thinking of having native humans there, basically Barbarians and savages besides the pirates and more recent colonists.Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Also this is what the inhabitants of Tauron look like. The Cylons that made it to Earth took some lifeforms back to the 12 colonies with them (After the radiation had died down a couple centuries later), some where humans, one type of human found on Earth at the time were these Neanderthals, that seemed well adapted for the cool climate on Tauron, so they became that planet's primary inhabitants. The pirates generally either give the natives wide berth or they may try to enslave some of them, however they are just as intelligent as regular humans and that does for the Neanderthals as well. So pirates mostly do their own work or use captives from more civilized regions.
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Here's the next to last chart, the Helios Gamma minisystem:
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
My gut instincts tell me those 3 planets orbiting so close together can’t be stable... see Orbital Resonance on Wikipedia. Planets in that sort of proximity need orbits further apart in order to have the necessary resonance to be stable, I think.
Where’s that Barycentric Caprica & Gemenon?
Where’s that Barycentric Caprica & Gemenon?
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Yes, I know, had to squeeze them all into the life zone so they'd be habitable. One answer is that this map doesn't show the inclination of one of them. Look at this map in the upper left hand quadrant:
Since Libran is inclined, it doesn't spend much time in the vicinity of the other two planets, therefore it is not affected much by their gravity, nor is the other two affected much by Libran's gravity. Traveller is a bit 2-dimensional with its maps, and the purpose of these maps is to track movement between the planets, but it is at best an approximation. I could also show how these planets move, the table has stats including the orbital period of each planet. It that information you can calculate how much each planet moves every four days. Caprica for instance has an orbit that is pretty much identical to Earth's, the star it orbits has the same mass as Earth's sun, so it and Gemenon orbit that star once every 365.24 days, and they are spaced far enough apart so that the two planets orbit once a month around their barycenter. Caprica is a wild version of Earth, many of the animals are actually from Pleistocene Earth, and civilization, after the destruction of the colonies didn't come until the arrival of the pirates and some other from off-world settlers.
I think I'll place this system below the OTU map about right here:
The upper two subsectors are at the bottom of the OTU map, the others are of my own creation, this area is know as the wilds, this is beyond the Imperium, a few client states are here, this is located rimward of the Solomani Sphere to be precise. Little is generally know about this region, although there is a pirate base on Caprica, and thus this is known as the Caprican system, the other 11 worlds are little known, and the pirates like to keep it that way for as long as possible. There are too many garden worlds here for this situation to last however.
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
A skew like that doesn’t invalidate the math, but it does alter it... Can’t say by how much, though.
Where’s that Barycentric Caprica and Gemenon?
Where’s that Barycentric Caprica and Gemenon?
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Depends on by how much the middle orbit is inclined to the outside and inside orbit. What happens if all three orbits are on the same orbital plane is that the inner planets slowly over take the outer planets in their orbits.Tenacious-Techhunter said:
I've listed Scorpia, Saggitaron, and Libran as having orbital periods of 198.364, 246.627, and 303.614 days respectively, So I guess Saggitaron would have to have its orbit inclined by a certain amount so as not to interfere with Scorpia, and Libran, this would create a 100 day difference in the orbital periods of Scorpia and Libran.
This map shows Libran as the inclined planet. As you can see by this map, its hard to tell which planet has the middle orbit, but if you don't want these planets to interfere with each other, yet you want them all within this star's lifezone, they have to fall within a narrow range of orbital distances, yet to keep Libran far enough away from the other two, it has to be in the middle orbit and it orbit has to be inclined, without it Libran would spend quite a long time within 9 million miles from Scorpia and within 11 million miles of Saggitaron, since they are close in orbital distances, they would move slowly past one another and have a lot of time to gravitational perturb one another. I correct my table by the way, it should be Scorpia, Libran, and Saggitaron having orbital periods of 198.364, 246.627, and 303.614 days respectively. The author of this map had a job, he had to draw a picture of a system with 12 garden worlds in it, and he had only 4 stars to work with. In the case of Helios Alpha, he had Caprica and Gemenon as a double planet, this put both worlds at the same distance from their Sun. Since Helios Alpha is our Sun's twin, and Caprica Earth's, that means that Caprica goes in at 93,000,000 miles. Picon had to be inclined and further from the Sun than Venus, other wise it would be Venus, and if not inclined it would interfere with and be interfered by Caprica and Gemenon. The Earth is a lot closer to the inner edge of the Sun's lifezone than its outer edge, so there was not much room to put Picon closer to its star without it also being like Venus with its runaway greenhouse effect, so picon gets inclined.
Leonis and Virgon orbit Helios Beta, it is a dimmer star, so its life zone is closer in and narrower, the map shows their orbits separated by an asteroid belt, which is also within the life zone, since asteroid belts have little mass, this is okay as the planets will throw asteroids inward and outward, but the asteroid themselves will barely affect the planets except by hitting them! since this star has only two garden worlds, we can assume they would be spaced far enough apart to have an asteroid belt in between and not interfere with each other, no inclination is needed.
Helios gamma is a G9 V star and is somewhat brighter, it has 3 planets: Scorpia, Libran, and Saggitaron, Libran is inclined to minimize orbital interference, and since this star is brighter than Helios Beta, its life zone is wider, and there is room to place two garden worlds within it, but not three without inclining the middle orbit.
Helios Delta is K2 V star, it is the dimmest of the four, so Aquaria gets inclined, and Aerilon and Canceron get placed at the Trojan points of the Gas Giant Hestia.
As you can see the orbits aren't placed close together as I have shown them, but this map isn't drawn to scale anyway, it only shows orbital relationships with one another, lots of information is missing, so I have filled in the blanks with my own guesses and randomizations,
As for Caprica and Gemenon, I will get to that, I spend the last three days on vacation in the Adirondacks.
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
If you’re the one picking the orbit radii, you need to work a bit harder on your orbital resonances; they’re just about the only thing that is going to keep your planets on track.
Hi guys,
Some quick notes here after having my attention directed to this thread.
1. If someone wants to post setting material built on Traveller on our forums, we have no issues with that. It may be of interest to others, it may not, but that is not really the criteria on which to judge it. So long as the post is clearly titled (I think this one is), those not interested in it can avoid as they desire.
2. If we receive any complaints from copyright holders, then images they own will come off the forum quicker than you can say Caprica Six. However, in the absence of that, and with the caveat that nothing commercial is taking place, we will not be policing these forums for such material. We would take the view that this is for fan-based utility, and few creative copyright holders are going to have an issue with that.
Oh, and while shoving all the desired planets into the CHZ is a solution, you might be able to make a world habitable outside that area by playing with its atmosphere. Just saying
Some quick notes here after having my attention directed to this thread.
1. If someone wants to post setting material built on Traveller on our forums, we have no issues with that. It may be of interest to others, it may not, but that is not really the criteria on which to judge it. So long as the post is clearly titled (I think this one is), those not interested in it can avoid as they desire.
2. If we receive any complaints from copyright holders, then images they own will come off the forum quicker than you can say Caprica Six. However, in the absence of that, and with the caveat that nothing commercial is taking place, we will not be policing these forums for such material. We would take the view that this is for fan-based utility, and few creative copyright holders are going to have an issue with that.
Oh, and while shoving all the desired planets into the CHZ is a solution, you might be able to make a world habitable outside that area by playing with its atmosphere. Just saying
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
When I played with putting the twelve colonies into a Traveller setting, rather than try to shove them all into a single star system, I put them in adjacent hexes on a subsector map.
12 worlds with ATM 5, 6, or 8 all within Jump 1 of each other would be a tasty find and quickly be settled by anyone. Simple J-1 connecting a "cluster" of habitable worlds.
When using Traveller rules, that is probably the easiest way to do it. I know the "official" material puts all 12 habitable planets within one star system, but that is what happens when WRITERS try to do SCIENCE without asking anyone.
As Matt suggested, a Thicker Atmosphere (ATM 8 or 9) would allow a world just outside the habitable zone to possibly have breathable/habitable surface, although it is still likely to be a bit cold. Greenhouse gasses in small (but measurable) concentrations (probably Taint the Atmosphere) would also allow it to be habitable, although probably still COLD.
Clouds and lots of water might allow a world just inside the habitable zone to still be habitable (probably HOT). Should be able to reasonably get 3 habitable planets around a G or F star. Interestingly, if you go with a red dwarf star (M class) you can likely get MORE planets in the habitable zone, like some real star systems we have found. Of course these planets would be tidally locked to their star, so not TOTALLY habitable...
12 worlds with ATM 5, 6, or 8 all within Jump 1 of each other would be a tasty find and quickly be settled by anyone. Simple J-1 connecting a "cluster" of habitable worlds.
When using Traveller rules, that is probably the easiest way to do it. I know the "official" material puts all 12 habitable planets within one star system, but that is what happens when WRITERS try to do SCIENCE without asking anyone.
As Matt suggested, a Thicker Atmosphere (ATM 8 or 9) would allow a world just outside the habitable zone to possibly have breathable/habitable surface, although it is still likely to be a bit cold. Greenhouse gasses in small (but measurable) concentrations (probably Taint the Atmosphere) would also allow it to be habitable, although probably still COLD.
Clouds and lots of water might allow a world just inside the habitable zone to still be habitable (probably HOT). Should be able to reasonably get 3 habitable planets around a G or F star. Interestingly, if you go with a red dwarf star (M class) you can likely get MORE planets in the habitable zone, like some real star systems we have found. Of course these planets would be tidally locked to their star, so not TOTALLY habitable...
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
To TOM KALBFUS - Modern science now believes that the Neaderthals were blonde/Ginger with blue/Green eyes and Homo Sapiens were the dark haired, dark skinned folks like you show above.
Yes, the Aryan ideal of a pure human was actually created by significant cross-breeding with Neaderthals.
Genetic Testing is a wonderful thing...
Yes, the Aryan ideal of a pure human was actually created by significant cross-breeding with Neaderthals.
Genetic Testing is a wonderful thing...
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
How long do they have to be on track? Lets take the simple case, lets suppose there was a planetary system where one planet orbited at a 90 degree angle from another planet that was a little further out. How often does this planet come close enough to the second planet to significantly influence its orbit? How often does this planet cross the orbital plane of the next planet? About twice per orbital period. Now lets suppose that planet was orbiting with a 0 degree inclination at the same radii, when the 90 degree planet crosses the orbital plane of the next planet further out, it is traveling at a much greater relative velocity past the next further out planet, that would the planet at that same radius if it was orbiting in the same orbital plane, because it would be traveling only a little bit faster than the further out planet, it would pass that planet very slowly and would gravitationally interact with it for a long period of time, plenty of time to influence its orbit.Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Here are some ideas that weren't used. Suppose the planet orbited in the opposite direction from all the other planets in the system?
Also have you ever considered the possibility that this system was not natural? It seems a very improbably arrangement to happen by chance. I'd say off hand that all of he twelve colonies were terraformed before they were settled by humans. I think its possible to arrange a system like this, and it might be unstable for billions of years, but for mere millions of years, it could be quite a stable arrangement for human settlement. Take for example Caprica and Gemenon, both are each other's moon, yet they aren't tidally locked with each other as is our moon. It takes time for tidal influences to slow down the rotation of an orbiting body and tidally lock them with a planet, but Gemenon is not tidally locked with Caprica and Caprica isn't tidally locked with Gemenon, this indicates that perhaps this system is either very young or artificial, or maybe both at the same time. Who might have done this? Perhaps the Lords of Kobol, I think in this example they weren't gods but machines built by man, there were 12 Cylon models, and there were 12 Lords of Kobol, all named after the classical Greek deities. These lords weren't gods, but they were still quite powerful, they could terraform planets for instance. Also a famous saying for the BSG series was "This has happened before and it will happen again," the Lords of Kobol were the prior incarnation of the Cylons.
Getting back to this system, it was designed to house the 12 colonies of Kobol, it probably contained a lot of size 8 worlds, and the Lords of Kobol just built a lot of machines and moved them around until they occupied the right orbital positions, and then they terraformed them, and later humans settled on them. There was a conflict on Kobol which destroyed civilization there, much like the final Cylon War in the twelve colonies, and the humans escaped from Kobol to this system.
The orbital configurations are stable enough to last a million years easily, and it doesn't need to last longer than that.
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
There are some pros and cons to that. What makes it so interesting is this system they created, otherwise it would just be another ho hum science fiction setting where you need an FTL drive to reach the various parts, but the interesting thing about the Cyrannus system is you don't need a jump drive to get from one planet to another. The furthest parts of this system are separated by 0.16 light years, this is about two "light months" Caprica and Gemenon can have near real time communication, it is 493,000 miles of separation between the two worlds, light travels at 186,282 miles per second, that makes them 2.65 light seconds apart, so radio communication would have been established early on, most commerce would have been on a slower than light basis, with an economic incentive towards faster than light travel. It is possible within the old physics to send a rocket ship from the system of Helios Alpha to Helios Delta in less than a year using the classic travel formulas for slower than light travel, the speed of light limitation only pinches a little. With commerce between all twelve worlds, and money to make, people would have economic incentive to figure out faster ways to travel, as commerce would have already existed on a slower than light basis.Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
The colonists arrived here in a slower than light ship, the FTL jump drive was only invented after all the twelve colonies were settled, but until that happened they were stuck in this system of four stars, that is why they were so vulnerable to a Cylon attack, the FTL drive was only a recent discovery, and settlement of worlds in other systems had only just begun, it was not the United Federation of Planets. My guess is the FTL Jump Drive was invented during the First Cylon War, as a means of gaining a tactical advantage over the enemy. Wars have a way of accelerating technological development when people are desparate. I'm not sure the FTL drive existed during the time of the show Caprica for example, it definitely did exist 10 years into the first Cylon War, where the Movie Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome occurs. In the time since that war, some worlds in the surrounding systems were lightly settled, by the now politically unified Twelve Colonies.
They also put God into the picture, which most science fiction writers don't do for fear of offending certain readers and viewers. They literally used "Deus ex Machina" It would be more ho hum if they stuck to the usual Star Trek stuff. BSG also had a very unique tech level, they were only futuristic in spaceships and the technology needed to make Cylons, everything else was our tech level. The pirates in my example for instance, would be very unimpressed with the Ancient Caprican slug thrower firearms, if they could build a Cylon, they would arm it with lasers and plasma weapons, not these slug throwers seen on the show which would quickly use up ammunition.
Why do you suppose Mars has the atmosphere its got, and not the one that we once imagined it had?
Mars is that way because it is small, has no magnetic field, and it is farther from the Sun. if Mars had a thicker atmosphere, it no longer does now, because it was lost into space. I think Mars can temporarily be made habitable if given an Earthlike atmosphere, such an atmosphere would have enough greenhouse effect to produce balmy tropical temperatures on its surface, but that atmosphere would eventually be lost into space for the same reason that its first early atmosphere was lost.
One idea I have been toying with is to have red dwarfs orbiting a G-Type star, each one is a little brighter than the previous one orbiting closer to the star. A tidally locked world orbits each red dwarf, and the heat from each red dwarf carries over to the far side to make up for the lack of heat and light coming from the distant primary. I don't know any examples of red dwarfs orbiting near the habitable zones of primaries, but that doesn't mean their aren't any.
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
Tom Kalbfus said:
The problem with this line of thinking is that you are assuming the planets spawned into existence perfectly formed, as opposed to developing over time; the correct answer to this question is, “Long enough for the system to have formed from a dust cloud into its current state.”; which means it had to be pretty damn stable.
Tom Kalbfus said:
Not impossible, but you still have to account for its gravitational effects.
Tom Kalbfus said:
This really isn’t part of any Battlestar Galactica canon that I’m aware of. It’s fine if you want to go this route, but if you’re going to do that, you might as well go whole-hog with it, and put all the planets on the same orbit, with some phase difference between them. Also, you’re going to have to leave some blatantly obvious equipment related to moving planets around. Frankly, if you can move planets into whatever orbit you want, you can make them all the same size within a reasonable enough tolerance to make them stable. So I’m not really buying the “artificially made” argument. I think you’re better off doing the orbital resonance work.
Tom Kalbfus said:
Considering that they are each experiencing 20 times the force of the Moon on each other, it’s pretty laughable that they wouldn’t be tidally locked.
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
Tom Kalbfus said:
Mars doesn’t have the mass to support a thicker atmosphere; it has been bleeding off atmosphere into space for its entire life. Maybe if we slammed the entire asteroid belt into Mars, we can change that... What we thought Mars had has little to do with anything, since our assumptions about it were based on very naive observations. I mean, hell, we even thought the moon had an atmosphere once... no reasonable conclusions to draw from stuff like that.
Tom Kalbfus said:
This doesn’t work the way you’ve put it. The Primary and the Red Dwarf both contribute to the habitability of the planet; you would have to put a planet at the Lagrange point, and adjust the power of both stars so they both contribute a portion of their habitability to the planet. Anything else, and the seasons caused by the planet orbiting the Red Dwarf are far too outrageous.
Mars is a bit of a dead world today, and without the mass to hold in the atmosphere it is indeed slowly losing it. However, if Mars had active vulcanism today (and Olympus Mons was active), it could be adding more gases to the atmosphere. Whether or not it would be sufficient to offset the losses is unknown.
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Well our Solar System is 5 billion years old, that is the planets of this system are 5 billion years old, What if the Cyrannus System was not 5 billion years old, what if it wasn't even 1 billion years old? If these Worlds are young enough, they might not have had time enough to become tidally locked. All 12 worlds support human life, they have wildlife that is compatible with humans, humans can eat them and they can eat humans. They have dogs and cats, they raise livestock, have chicken dinners, nothing alien about them or the animals they share their worlds with, what does that tell you? At the very least, all the ecologies on all the 12 colonies were planted there, a terraformed world is to that extent artificial, I don't think it was parallel evolution, I don't think it was chance that made these planets this way. I think if we could spin up our moon and give it a 24-hour rotation period, it would not slow down and become tidally locked after a few days, the angular momentum of the Moon is very significant. I think in similar terms Caprica and Gemenon could easily stay spinning for hundreds of thousands of years, the slow down in rotation would be greater than Earth's slowdown due to Lunar tides, maybe 20 times greater, so what does that mean? Does it mean that instead of taking 1 billion years to completely slowdown and tidally lock it instead takes 50 million years to do the same? Over the span of 50 million years 150, thousand years isn't that significant. Lets say Caprica was arranged to have a 24-hour day, and it would be expected to become tidally locked with its twin planet in 50 million years, so lets do the math. 24 hours means Caprica turns 15 degrees per hour relative to its twin, and if it became tidally locked with it in 50 million years, what happens after only 150,000 years? 150,000/50,000,000 = 0.003, and 0.003 * 15 degrees is 0.045 degrees, subtract this from 15 degrees per hour and we get 14.955 degrees per hour and if we multiply this by 24 we get a 358.92 degree rotation every 24 hours. divide 360 by this number and we get 1.003 days or a day that lasts 24.072 hours long, for game purposes that is still a 24 hour day!Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
If we moved Jupiter into orbit 4 and made Mars its satellite, then Mars would indeed have volcanism due to tidal heating, we set up some orbital resonnances and Mars would be constantly changing its distance from Jupiter and it would have volcanism like Io, if we give it enough volcanism, it would be belching out gases and recycling its crust the way Earth does. We would have to supply just the right amount of tidal forces to make up for the lack due to insufficient radiactive decay in Mars' crust, we don't want hyper-vulcanism the way Io does.phavoc said:
Tom Kalbfus said:
That's one way to do it I suppose. Though I haven't seen any figures on how long it took it's atmosphere to escape. So a more active volcanic mars might just take longer to lose its atmosphere. However if it was belching out gases and putting a lot of fine particles in the thin atmosphere, that should also affect the planetary temperature somewhat. On Earth vulcanism has caused lower temperatures, so whether or not the effect would be the same in a much thinner atmosphere is the question. But Mars has less clouds too (now at least), so that would need to be factored in.
Hell, it's sci-fi, so GM's perogative! Make it a marginally habitable world if you want!!
