Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

[TrashMan]

Tough it is conceivable that a scout ship heading in to deep space and back with alien artifacts might go unnoticed it would not bring something revolutionary to humanity in such a small scale.

What you need in order to elevate humanity two tech levels higher so they can compete with the other races (ignoring infrastructure, fleet size, training) is a major colony still relatively intact for salvaging (it needs to contain antimatter power sources at least). Let’s say that such a thing exists in deep space and the scout corps has found it. They map it; they scan it, record it and ship as much as they can back home.

The Loroi and Umiak are constantly fighting.
A single scout that comes back with Loroi or Umiak wreckage would do a lot in that regard.

an old starship still functioning dating back millions of years.

A 50-year old car is a total wreck, and you expect a starship to be operation in a million years?
It never ceases to amaze me how many SF and Fantasy writers have no concept of how time erodes things.

[Jericho]

The Loroi and Umiak are constantly fighting.
A single scout that comes back with Loroi or Umiak wreckage would do a lot in that regard.

what do you mean with a lot?

Exactly how would they come back with a wreckage and from where? Salvaging operations if they are necessary have already been conducted throughout the wastes, where do you propose that we look for a shipwreck?

Have you seen what happens when an antimatter reactor blows up (page 84) there isn't much of a wreckage left to be worth salvaging.

And for what purpose? Technologically we are going to need decades to keep up with the rest (atleast) and it's much easier if we have experts from said species assisting us.

A 50-year old car is a total wreck, and you expect a starship to be operation in a million years?
It never ceases to amaze me how many SF and Fantasy writers have no concept of how time erodes things.

Not really. Doesn't really matter as i never intended write anything i was just throwing out some lose ideas i thought of over the years though in hindsight it feels like i'm ripping off something here and i can't remember what. But if i learned something from star trek it's that every problem is solved by technobabble.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I think the trope of alien technology still working after millions of years is supposed to highlight just how advanced the technology is, being able to accomplish things and last longer than anything humans could devise. At least, I'm pretty sure that early sci fi writers understood that. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the ancientness of the artifacts was intended to provoke a perception of inhumanness, something that transcends time and space.

That being said, if humans discovered an ancient alien library, that could be pretty important and big, even if the only physical object recovered was an internet terminal. (The actual data is no doubt stored in the atomic structure of a pulsar or something silly like that.)

[fredgiblet]

A 50-year old car is a total wreck, and you expect a starship to be operation in a million years?
It never ceases to amaze me how many SF and Fantasy writers have no concept of how time erodes things.

There's a big difference between a car that was left in the woods (like the ones my parents found where we built our house when I was little), a car left in a barn and a car left in a garage. Now extrapolate that to a car left in space with almost no environmental hazards. I doubt it would be in good shape, but it wouldn't be as bad as a car on Earth.

[Suederwind]

A 50-year old car is a total wreck, and you expect a starship to be operation in a million years?
It never ceases to amaze me how many SF and Fantasy writers have no concept of how time erodes things.

Have you ever read something about archaeology? You would be surprised how well something can be preserved if it is kept in the right enviroment (if intentional of by accident is unimportant).
If you mothball a ship in space, I think you would most likely just need to remove the air from the ship (so no rust and other oxidation), keep it in a save orbit (away from debris, asteroids, planets, etc...) and keep the ship save from too much radiation or heat. If you do that, I think such a ship could survive a long time. You might not be able to cruise around in space with it after a million years, but it might be still there and some of its systems might be still operational.

[discord]

sueder: depends on the technology used, for our current tech, about 50 years is where it starts going to shit anyway(without maintenance) due to simple molecular bleed in silicon(electronics) effing up the transistors(pretty much THE building block of all electronics as we know it today, except vacuum tubes, which are still transistors just works on different physics.)

[GeoModder]

There's a big difference between a car that was left in the woods (like the ones my parents found where we built our house when I was little), a car left in a barn and a car left in a garage. Now extrapolate that to a car left in space with almost no environmental hazards. I doubt it would be in good shape, but it wouldn't be as bad as a car on Earth.

I'd doubt it would still be in space at all. More likely it was careened into the local sun by gravitational perturbance of the closest planet.
And over the course of a million years, vacuum ablation would take its toll as well.

[Zakharra]

There's a big difference between a car that was left in the woods (like the ones my parents found where we built our house when I was little), a car left in a barn and a car left in a garage. Now extrapolate that to a car left in space with almost no environmental hazards. I doubt it would be in good shape, but it wouldn't be as bad as a car on Earth.

I'd doubt it would still be in space at all. More likely it was careened into the local sun by gravitational perturbance of the closest planet.
And over the course of a million years, vacuum ablation would take its toll as well.

If it's on a planet, the ship would probably have deteriorated into uselessness from atmosphere/water leaks, animals digging in, geological disturbances (earthquakes or mountain building) unless it has incredible self repair systems and a way to keep the power flowing, but in space it could survive a lot longer. Although you are right in that just by itself it could be damaged, knocked off course by planetary gravity or whatnot. But a ship would remain intact and useable (theoretically) for hundreds of thousands, to millions of years if it is in something like an asteroid dry dock. Protected by the bulk of the asteroid and voided of air and life support, it would be able to remain intact from anything that might have destroyed or damaged a free floating vessel.

[TrashMan]

A 50-year old car is a total wreck, and you expect a starship to be operation in a million years?
It never ceases to amaze me how many SF and Fantasy writers have no concept of how time erodes things.

There's a big difference between a car that was left in the woods (like the ones my parents found where we built our house when I was little), a car left in a barn and a car left in a garage. Now extrapolate that to a car left in space with almost no environmental hazards. I doubt it would be in good shape, but it wouldn't be as bad as a car on Earth.

Space HAS environmental hazards. That's the gist of it.

Entropy strikes regardless if a car is in a garage or not. Atoms break apart on their own given time.
Sure, a car in a garage won't deteriorate as fast...but it will deteriorate. And the problem is - that garage will deteriorate too. And then crumble on top on the car.

You know what the most durable building material humanity uses? Stone.
The pyramids and the Colosseum are over 2000 years old. And 300 years from now, baring any massive earthquake or disaster, they will still stand. Our greatest skyscrapers will not.
Everything humans built needs a ridiculous amount of maintenance. Without it, our bridges and building would fall apart.
In 200-300 years, there would be little left to ever hint humanity was here.

There is good documentary called "Life after people" that dwells into this matter.

Nothing - no building, no vehicle, in space or on earth - will still be in operational shape after thousands of years without maintenance.

But a ship would remain intact and useable (theoretically) for hundreds of thousands, to millions of years if it is in something like an asteroid dry dock.

[TrashMan]

The Loroi and Umiak are constantly fighting.
A single scout that comes back with Loroi or Umiak wreckage would do a lot in that regard.

what do you mean with a lot?

Exactly how would they come back with a wreckage and from where? Salvaging operations if they are necessary have already been conducted throughout the wastes, where do you propose that we look for a shipwreck?

Have you seen what happens when an antimatter reactor blows up (page 84) there isn't much of a wreckage left to be worth salvaging.

And for what purpose? Technologically we are going to need decades to keep up with the rest (at least) and it's much easier if we have experts from said species assisting us.

It's war. You don't always have time for salvage operation and it doesn't matters who's salvage we pick up.
There's plenty of Umiak wreckage if we can't find Loroi wreckage.

Also, another silly sci-fi trope is that reactors are like a barrel of gunpowder and explode when sneezed at. Every ship worth it's salt has security systems and the reactor would not blow up when damaged.
Not sure who started that trope (was is start trek with their warp core breaches?), but even if reactors were so incredibly unstable, they STILL wouldn't blow up all the time. That would depend on the damage to the ship.
One can easily "mission kill" a ship without blowing it up.
Take for instance the Bellarmine. Cut in half, it was for all purposes "dead". Of course, the enemy wanted to make sure, but there was no need.

[fredgiblet]

I'm not so certain they were concerned about the ship, I think they were concerned about what it was carrying.

Even the most cursory examination would have shown that the 'Bell wasn't Loroi or Umiak, yet it was attacked anyway, that smells of someone knowing full well that we are a third-party and likely knowing we aren't involved at all yet still attacking. At the moment my primary thought is that someone knows far more than they are letting on and deliberately tried to keep us out.

Hypothesis 1:
The Historians are playing the Loroi and Umiak against each other and trying to get them to exhaust themselves so they can destroy both.

Hypothesis 2:
Everything was going just as planned by the Soia and then we show up threatening to spoil the experiment, they have to try to clear us out to prevent the experiment from failing.

[Grayhome]

Arioch, what are the GURPS statistics for Mars? Would it be low pressure, thin atmosphere? Also what temperatures would the martians have to deal with on a seasonal basis? You do not have to go all out here, just some simple, basic statistics would be great.

[Arioch]

Arioch, what are the GURPS statistics for Mars? Would it be low pressure, thin atmosphere? Also what temperatures would the martians have to deal with on a seasonal basis? You do not have to go all out here, just some simple, basic statistics would be great.

I don't have the GURPS books handy, and I don't recall how they classify planets, but the stats for Mars in 2160 would be pretty much the same as they are today. It has a surface gravity of 0.376G and a day that's 24 hours and 37 minutes long. Despite some early terraforming efforts, the atmosphere is still very thin (about 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure), and the temperature is still very cold but swings widely between -225°F (−143°C) in a winter night and +95°F (+35°C) in a summer day. Humans still need pressure suits with an oxygen supply to survive on the surface.

[Roeben]

What kind of Terraforming is going on? Are "we" dumping industry greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere?

[Arioch]

What kind of Terraforming is going on? Are "we" dumping industry greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere?

Yes, and specifically in the southern Hellas basin the AIC has started seeding extremophile cyanobacteria to start the greening process.

[RedDwarfIV]

Mars' problem is twofold. It' volcanically dead, meaning it doesn't produce an atmosphere by itself, and it has low gravity, meaning it just can't hold a thick atmosphere to itself. A lot of gas would just float off into space.

Industrialising Mars would help by warming it up, but I'm fairly sure 1 bar of atmospheric pressure is beyond the planet's capabilities.

Among other things, you'd need to drop an ungodly number of asteroids onto Mars to increase the mass [likely throwing away what atmosphere it does have in the process] until it gains the 90% Earth's mass that it would need to hold 1 bar of atmospheric pressure. Many of the earliest asteroids to reach it would have to have high concentrations of radioactive elements. Doing this as fast as possible would hopefully heat the planet itself up, which is important for the next step.

You'd need to install a Luna-sized moon to kick-start and maintain internal convection, which would make Mars' liquid outer core spin, generating a magnetic field that would stop harmful radiation reaching the surface and stop solar winds from stripping off the atmosphere.


(Image provided by Argonne National Laboratory, UC Chicago)

As shown by this image, it's not so much a question of if there's a liquid core that can be spun, than if there's a solid core. The Earth's inner core, according to Wikipedia anyway, helps the outer core's rotation by trapping the more bouyant materials. It also provides something stable for the outer core to rotate around.


So yeah, I don't think that the TCA could have terraformed Mars to be Earth-sized and have an ecosystem or even a life-supporting atmosphere in the time that it's existed. Especially since, to terraform Mars, you'd need to evict all the colonists you sent there previously.

[GeoModder]

I'd doubt it would still be in space at all. More likely it was careened into the local sun by gravitational perturbance of the closest planet.
And over the course of a million years, vacuum ablation would take its toll as well.

...But a ship would remain intact and useable (theoretically) for hundreds of thousands, to millions of years if it is in something like an asteroid dry dock. Protected by the bulk of the asteroid and voided of air and life support, it would be able to remain intact from anything that might have destroyed or damaged a free floating vessel.

Essentially, every object in space is free floating. Your docking asteroid as well, and thus remains open to all collision hazards of space.
Further more, space is most definitely not a benign environment for unprotected objects like space ships. Over the course of a million year, its hull and afterward inner ship systems will deteriorate into uselesness. Atom after atom, molecule after molecule.

Among other things, you'd need to drop an ungodly number of asteroids onto Mars to increase the mass [likely throwing away what atmosphere it does have in the process] until it gains the 90% Earth's mass that it would need to hold 1 bar of atmospheric pressure. Many of the earliest asteroids to reach it would have to have high concentrations of radioactive elements. Doing this as fast as possible would hopefully heat the planet itself up, which is important for the next step.

Venus has quite a bit denser atmosphere then Earth. Its all in the composition of said atmosphere.
Also, ever checked on Saturn's moon Titan? It has a denser atmosphere then Earth as well, and is even smaller then Mars. But in this case its a combination of atmospheric composition and location within a planetary satellite system.

[Arioch]

Titan is much smaller than Mars (0.0225 Earth masses, vs. 0.107 for Mars) and it's much colder than Mars, yet it has a thicker atmosphere than Earth (1.44 atmospheres or 146.7 kilopascals), even though it's being constantly bled off by Saturn's magnetic field. It's quite possible to maintain a thick atmosphere on a small world with no magnetic field; you just have to have a mechanism by which the lost atmosphere is continually replenished.

[Roeben]

Also keep in mind that bleeding off Mars´s atmosphere might have very well taken millions upon millions of years. A terraforming that takes up to 250 to 1000 (assumed) years is NOTHING compared to that, and would secure it as habitable for human beings for longer then the species will likely continue to exist.

This even goes for smaller moon-like objects.

[RedDwarfIV]

Among other things, you'd need to drop an ungodly number of asteroids onto Mars to increase the mass [likely throwing away what atmosphere it does have in the process] until it gains the 90% Earth's mass that it would need to hold 1 bar of atmospheric pressure. Many of the earliest asteroids to reach it would have to have high concentrations of radioactive elements. Doing this as fast as possible would hopefully heat the planet itself up, which is important for the next step.

'induced' magnetosphere, though not a magnetic field of its own. It's atmosphere is almost entirely made up of carbon dioxide.

Titan's atmosphere likely comes from either cryovolcanic activity [no cryovolcanoes have been identified yet though] or

Venus has quite a bit denser atmosphere then Earth. Its all in the composition of said atmosphere.
Also, ever checked on Saturn's moon Titan? It has a denser atmosphere then Earth as well, and is even smaller then Mars. But in this case its a combination of atmospheric composition and location within a planetary satellite system.

Fair enough, though atmospheric composition is also important to habitability. Venus also has an ionosphere and a sun diffusion of material from below the surface. It does have an active interior, because of tidal effects from Saturn. Mars doesn't have that.

Titan is much smaller than Mars (0.0225 Earth masses, vs. 0.107 for Mars) and it's much colder than Mars, yet it has a thicker atmosphere than Earth (1.44 atmospheres or 146.7 kilopascals), even though it's being constantly bled off by Saturn's magnetic field. It's quite possible to maintain a thick atmosphere on a small world with no magnetic field; you just have to have a mechanism by which the lost atmosphere is continually replenished.

I guess so. But if you're going to terraform a planet, you may as well go the whole way. Humans work best at 1 gravity, so if in giving Mars a completely stable atmosphere, you could also increase its mass... why not?

... though again, pre-terraforming colonists would probably collectively stick their hands up to give reasons why not.

I did some research abput the effect of solar wind on Mars. Apparently the magnetic 'umbrellas' that protect some of the atmosphere at Mars' southern pole occasionally connect with the solar wind and send large amounts of ionised atmosphere away - 2.5 times as much as solar wind's effect on Mars' atmosphere alone according to some figures. That's suspect though, since the information was gathered by Global Surveyor, which measures electrons, not ions. We'll have to wait for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN [MAVEN] mission to reach Mars in September [planned insertion is the 22nd, two days after my birthday, funnily enough] to get solid figures on how fast Mars is losing its atmosphere.