Too many planets

Barnacle Bill · #1 February 2nd, 2001, 06:37 PM

quote:
Originally posted by dmm:
BB,
I agree that humans could not live undomed on the _surface_ of gas or ice planets. But why can't they live elsewhere, floating in the atmosphere of a gas planet, or in caverns or oceans under the surface of an ice planet? Then they might only need minor, reversible genetic engineering to allow them to live there, given the right atmosphere. (Yeah, yeah, I know I'm still ignoring a lot of biology. But this is space opera, not serious sci-fi.)

If they are "floating in the atmosphere" of a gas giant, they are either in a floating dome or you have made them into something which is not "human". You are talking about pressures higher than the bottom of the oceans, and a high gravity trying to pull them deeper. They would have to be naturally buoyant like a fish or a blimp, able to tolerate the pressure, able to move without contacting the surface, etc... That is a new species, even if it has a human fore-brain.

On an ice planet, you are talking about temperatures where gases are liquid, etc... It isn't any warmer in a cave. You know, they drop liquid nitrogen on warts so they quick freeze and can be broken off. You are talking about making the entire human body able to tolerate that sort of cold. Again, by the time you get done with that the result is (a) not bilogically human or even "life as we know it", but rather an entirely different species, and (b) could not live in any other environment.

Not even in space opera do you see that degree of genetic engineering. What you see in space opera is adapting people to live in the sorts of unpleasant environments we have here on earth, again like gills & flipper feet & webbed fingers to live underwater or fur & blubber to live in the arctic w/o needing an Eskimo suit.

In SE4, people try to capture populations that breath other atmosheres so they can colonize w/o domes or atmosphere conVersion. I can see genetic engineering as something that might let you create your own. They would still be specialized to one atmosphere rather than able to breath everything. You would be making these people in a lab, not converting them from existing people, and they would be expensive, and would need to be treated in the game as a separate race. Creating people to live w/o a dome on an ice or gas giant planet would be a MUCH bigger deal than making people to breath a different gas, and therefore even more expensive.

[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 02 February 2001).]

dmm · #2 February 2nd, 2001, 07:30 PM

OK, I think I see the main reason why we're not understanding each other. You're assuming that "undomed" means the people are totally free to walk about the planet unaided by technology. I was assuming that, domed or undomed, they are using various colonization techs to allow them to live there.

Regarding the atmospheric pressure on a gas giant: the pressure only gets huge if you go deep into the atmosphere. It is strictly a function of how much the atmosphere on top of you weighs. My colonists are smart enough not to go too deep. And, as we've been discussing in another topic, the gravitational acceleration at the outer edge of a gas giant's atmosphere is also not that large. (For Jupiter, at its equator, gravity is only 2.3x Earth's. For Neptune and Uranus, it is comparable to Earth. Source: Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 62nd Ed., 1982) On the negative side, I was surprised to find that our solar system's gas giants are COLD. However, there have been discoveries recently of gas giants orbiting Sun-like stars at Earth-like radii, so perhaps gas giants don't _have_ to be cold either.

Regarding ice planets being way too cold, even under their surface: I was assuming that they were not a solid hunk of frozen nitrogen, but instead that they were like some of the huge moons of Jupiter and Saturn are thought to be, with a frozen surface covering a liquid (or maybe rock) interior. The interior is kept warm by volcanism induced by gravitational tides or radioactivity or pressure.

apache · #3 February 2nd, 2001, 07:34 PM

Well, my theory on Gas Giant colonization is that they are in some sort of massive space station that orbits the planet within the atmosphere. This would be quite feasible, especially if there was some sort of anti-gravitational technology. They could fly around in aircraft or whatever to get from place to place.
I think the difference between the domed Versions of all the planets and non-domed is basically the life forms would need some sort of breathing apparatus to survive outside the dome, while in non-domed planets, they would need simply an environmental suit to protect them from the hostile environments. This would allow them to get around the planet much easier if they did not need to bring their air with them.

Barnacle Bill · #4 February 2nd, 2001, 08:37 PM

I definately interpret "undomed" as meaning walking around like people do on earth. You don't need breathing apparatus, you don't need any special high-tech equipment, if civilization drops back to the stone age on that planet due to some disaster the folks there can still survive (perhaps at lower population density due to food production). The "dome" thing means you can't use the surface of the planet normally and have to live in a structure with the right environment, which isolates you from the outside environment. "Undomed" means you can live normally in the outside environment.

For colonists not to go too deep in a gas giant's atmosphere, that requires that they have a way to do that. That requires they must be naturally buoyant like a fish in water, or some hypothetical critter which floats in the air like a blimp by virtue of internal cavities filled with some lighter-than-air gas. Either of those require, in addition to buoyancy, a means of propulsion without touching the ground. If they live on an artificial structure which is itself buoyant, or supported by gravity, that is a "dome". No life form that I can think of here on earth could live in the atmoshere of a gas giant, outside of a man-made artificial environment. Certainly not a human, or anything produced by genetically engineering humans if the result was to recognizable as & interfertile with humans.

If you have to live deep in the caves under the surface of an ice planet to take advantage of the heat from a molten core, that is a "dome" too, for all practical purposes.

So, I can see life forms from an rock or ice or gas giant planet being able to live on one of the other two INSIDE a constructed artificial environment which mimics their natural one (i.e. a "dome"). I can't see them ever being able to live "undomed" on one. If you change a gas giant critter unough to live on an ice planet "undomed", it is no longer a gas giant critter but rather an ice planet critter. If you change an ice planet unough that a gas giant critter can live on it "undomed", it is no longer an ice planet but rather a gas giant planet.

The tools do not exist to model this properly in SE4 via mod for ALL the three planet types. The choice seems to be to either make each type a racial trait so you can never colonize the other, or make it work right for one and eliminate the possibility of races originating on the other two. In my data set, I did the later.

If separate abilities existed for colonizing a given planet type with a dome and colonizing without a dome, it could then be modeled correctly by making the "colonize without a dome" a racial trait and "colonize with a dome" something anybody could learn.

dmm · #5 February 2nd, 2001, 10:07 PM

quote:
Originally posted by apache:
I think the difference between the domed Versions of all the planets and non-domed is basically the life forms would need some sort of breathing apparatus to survive outside the dome, while in non-domed planets, they would need simply an environmental suit to protect them from the hostile environments. This would allow them to get around the planet much easier if they did not need to bring their air with them.

Yeah, that's the way I was thinking about it.

I think BB is being too restrictive saying that undomed colonies should be able to survive under stone-age conditions. How many modern urbanites would survive if Earth suddenly reverted to stone age conditions? And we're not very advanced compared to the spacefaring SEIV races.

However, I do very much agree with BB that, for example, rock races should always have a harder time colonizing gas and ice planets. I would like to see that idea (dare I say "reality"?) reflected in the rules, just not as restrictively as BB proposes.

Ideally, I would propose 4 classes of colonies:
4. total artificial environment (wrong atmos, wrong type)
3. partial artificial environment (right atmos, wrong type)
2. lightly domed (wrong atmos, right type)
1. unrestricted (right atmos, right type).

The max pop, facil, & storage would increase for each class. The ability to build the top two colony classes would be a racial trait. To compensate for making the game harder for peace-lovers, give players the ability to trade population with other players, or allow immigration, or allow research into genetically-altered populations.

Barnacle Bill · #6 February 3rd, 2001, 01:40 PM

quote:
Originally posted by dmm:
How many modern urbanites would survive if Earth suddenly reverted to stone age conditions? And we're not very advanced compared to the spacefaring SEIV races.

That is why I wrote "perhaps at lower population density due to food production". If technology on earth today suddenly dropped to the stone age, there will be a huge die-off. I can't think of a scenario for dropping it to the stone age which wouldn't involve killing lots of people, anyway, but if it did then most remaining people would die because they did not know how to survive, and because as technology goes lower the population density you can feed goes down. In the end, though, people will be left alive. From what I have read, North America had about 2 million inhabitants when Europeans first found the place. The combined population of the US & CAnada today is in the vicinity of 300 million. That is the sort of "die off" you would be talking about.

Now consider folks living in domes on the moon. There is no nature - nothing to hunt or fish, not roots & nuts & fruits & berries to gather. Hydoponic farms, etc... require chemical processing, which is gone. Food is not the real problem, though. The equipment that reprocesses the air cannot be operated or maintained. Everybody dies.

I do agree there should be degrees, much as you have proposed. It is much more difficult to put a dome in where the atmoshere is just the wrong gas than it is when you have to deal with all those other issues.

[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 03 February 2001).]