Planetology Discussion

[FichtenFoo]

Split from info thread... this thread will discuss aspects of the planets make-up such as gravity, atmospheric pressure, topography, geology, etc...

Nico PM'd me some valid points on atmospheric pressure on a low gravity world and such. Very valid points, but I think in order to make the story interesting we need a way around them. There's lower atmospheric pressure due to low gravity now on mars. Still... these things need to happen for the world to be what it is. Perhaps Trocken is an anomoly in that sense and no one has been able to figure out why it is that way as it defys all the known laws. There's always an exception to every rule.  That way we don't need an explanation yet and that gives me time to figure one out? Perhaps it's long long gone alien technology, but I don't want to see this story have any mention of alien ruins and such as that would take away from the overlying world and make the story too fantasyy right now. Perhaps for year 3 or 4 that can be introduced.

Anyway, I asked nico to post his PMs here for all to debate.

[nico]

Merci Mike

Well There are one or two things that can’t match on this planet.

First if the planet is smaller than earth and closer to its sun then you can’t have an atmospheric pressure higher than on earth because of the lower attraction of the planet and the higher temperature on the surface. The attraction is not able to keep the atmosphere on the surface it’s the problem on Mars. And you know Mars is further than earth in our solar system. The temperature evaporate water and put all gases in the upper slice of the atmosphere an then into space.

Second you can’t have the same atmospheric composition than on earth. Most of the gases on earth are very light. As written above, Trocken gravity is to low and temperatures to high to keep these gases on the surface. You can have some gases like CO2 ,ammoniac but I don’t think you should breath them.

For the same reasons you can't have  ice or liquid water on the surface maybe deep down in the coat but not on the surface.

I know why you build the world like this but it can’t work. As we says in France You can’t have the butter and the money from its sale. (le beurre et l’argent du beurre)

I think you should place your planet further, like Mars may be and it should be scientifically plausible.
 

Yes I know I’m boring but I’m a Stephen Baxter fan.

Ok I thought about that during my lunch and I have a solution that could work with few mods in you story.
 

First thing, put Trocken further from the sun.

Second introduce an exo civilization technology that produce a force field around the planet. This field granted the atmospheric pressure, space ships can cross it without any damage.
 

The technology is level 1 that means the people who build it were able to use any kind of energy sources that can be found on the surface of the planet (wind, sun, fossil energies, strokes, water, geothermic, etc)

Level 2 can use extra terrestrial sources as suns, black holes etc. There is a level 3 but I can remember their skills. These levels are not my idea it’s very serious. Scientists who are working on exo civilizations created these three levels to describe different kinds of exo civilizations.


Settlers don’t know anything about this technology. They are not able to understand how it work or to reproduce it. Anyone knows how or why this ancient civilization left the planet some say because the weather regulation system failed and the planet start to run dry. But who knows ? there are nothing on this planet that can help to solve this enigma. No cities, no machines no trace nothing.

But it helps you to keep your original environment as you described it on the site.

(It’s seem it’s not a good option for the moment so lets forget this…)


About people on the planet. If you have a lower attraction you don’t need to be as strong as a normal human. But the pressure is stronger so that balance the lower attraction. Ok there is a problem here. Why do you want to have a higher atmospheric pressure. I guess it’s for the flying devices.

With low pressure no propeller even reactors won’t work well. May be stratoreactors could fit. Rockets ? not in the atmosphere. Warp engines too advanced.


I think you should keep a Earth like atmosphere density or a very close one.

This post is to give my opinion on what Trcken should be to be more realistic but you make the rules and we are here to have fun.

Forgive my poor english.

[FichtenFoo]

Sounds good and great info. So then perhaps the mystery of Trockens thick breathable atmosphere despite it's low G and distance from the sun will remain a mystery for now. Could be alien tech with an invisible field burried deep in the planets core (central point) and remains unknown. Geothermal power. ;-) Maybe the other six planets I mentioned (and maybe earth too) are all a result of this undiscovered tech.

Hmmm... Fulcy wanted to avoid lasers and I agree... perhaps laser/beam weapons tech doesn't work on Trocken, Earth, and the other 6 "Eden" planets for some unknown reason but works in space. That field could have something to do with it. For now, lets leave that as a mystery to be solved later.

Thanks for the info!

[Major Blah]

Hmmm... Fulcy wanted to avoid lasers and I agree... perhaps laser/beam weapons tech doesn't work on Trocken, Earth, and the other 6 "Eden" planets for some unknown reason but works in space. That field could have something to do with it. For now, lets leave that as a mystery to be solved later.

Yeah I agree laser's not cool in small scale, it's too high tech and so easy to explain away

"Why's that small styrene rod sticking out there?"
"oh it's a laser canon"

As for explanation, scattering from the dense atmosphere or high energy requirement (too high tech to be mobile) might be possible... :roll:

[FichtenFoo]

I would think that this would bode poorly for space to surface lasers as well. They'd just fizzle out after reaching the "shield". Perhaps this was a defense feature of the original, but completly unknown and unrealized and hopefully not written about until far in the future terraformers.  :wink:

[Lingwendil]

Sounds good and great info. So then perhaps the mystery of Trockens thick breathable atmosphere despite it's low G and distance from the sun will remain a mystery for now.

All this talk about exo civilisations, breathable atmosphere on alien planets, kinda' reminiscent of the forerunners from the Halo storyline I'd say. But, who am I?

[chromesix]

You could keep the technology on the planet 'low' by having the sun in the system
produce a much higher level of electromagnetic radiation on the surface of Trocken.
In effect, really bad sunspot activity all the time. This would make big or complicated
electronic devices almost imposible to maintain because of the EM interference
screwing up their precision low voltage systems. Components of Lasers or other
beam energy weapons would become too volatile to use, need to be replaced
very frequently, etc. Computers and other hand held electronic devices would be
limited in how advanced they could be as a tradeoff between EM robustness vs.
processing power. Stationary, heavily shielded installations would be the exception
but not very common. Vacuum Tube technology would re-appear and become refined
because it can resist EM interference but this would 'bulk up' any equipment it was
used in but with only 1/2 Earth normal gravity you could still lug it around. Spacecraft
would have their delicate electronics shielded as a matter of course so they would be unaffected.
An invader hoping to overwhelm the locals with high tech arms would quickly find their
laserguns malfunctioning while the low tech locals blow the invaders brains out with
old styled handguns.

Thoughts?

[FichtenFoo]

Heh... Fulcy and I discussed this when trying to figure out a way to negate lasers. His idea. Seems like a good explanation and more plausible than alien tech. Also works as a good explanation to the low-tech. But unfortunately doesn't jive too well with the higher-tech backstory. Perhaps original local original tech before the collapse had that in mind already.

[FichtenFoo]

Hmmm... I had a thought that might be interesting for the atmospheric phenomenon.

Perhaps scattered around the planet are large holes. At first they were thought to be volcanos, but later that theory was dispelled. These holes appear bottomless but cannot be explored thoroughly since they are too narrow for an AG equipped vessel to descend and too deep to safely explore otherwise. These act like gysers in that at regular incraments (but not all at the same time) they expel what seems like just "air" in large gusts. In the desert, these holes have sand and debris blown into them and the result is large columns of sand that resemble a smoke stack or dust devil.

These holes could be a sort of undiscovered planetary ventilation system which keeps the atmosphere pretty consistent. It could be scrubbing the atmosphere and converting bad gas into good gas.

One ledgend tells of a junker that fell into one when his aircraft malfunctioned. He was thought dead by his squadron until twenty minutes later the gyser erupted and out he blew with his parachute deployed. This can not be confirmed and no one has volunteered to put it to the test.
-from ´The Junkers Way` by J.J.Redd

Then the tech could be explained away with excessive sunspots.

[fugu]

Hi Guys,

Somethings been bugging me for a while. I read somewhere that flowing water from the northers and southern hemispheres flow towards the equator due to a planets spin. Also that some rivers flow underneath deserts until they're forced upwards by bedrock. So the question is do the Trocken seas have some sort of submerged cave networks linking them togeather from north and south? Are there submarines prowling the seas? If there are no links between the seas, does this mean that seas from north and south have "unique" creatures that evolved in those seas alone?

[FichtenFoo]

The seas are created from the melting of the polar caps. There are actually 3 rivers that flow north here on earth IIRC and I live near one, the Monongahela. I think the other 2 are the Nile and Amazon.

The 3 northern seas are interconnected by surface rivers. I believe that's written on the planetology page on the Min G site. I see canals being used as well to divert water to areas for farming needs and whatnot.

I see no reason why there wouldn't be submarines... especially in the Ra Guild.

[jubjub64]

I was toying with the idea of under ground rivers and made this render.  Don't know if the glowing crystal is too much but I needed a light source.:roll:

Planetology Discussion

[BM2]

here's a thought - after rereading throught he planrtology - if the air pressure is roughly twice earth normal - 14.7 at sea level and the gravity is half earth and it is hot - the hot moist air would form a heavy cloud layer high in the atmoshere- assuming the poles are cooler and the warm air would fall you create a lot of thermals and high winds around the poles that would probaly turn into super tornadoes occasionally? Also denser air is hardwer to compress and that could have an effect on submersibles - you would need greater volume in the ballast tanks to create bouancy- the lower gravity would decrease pressure so you wont need the round hull - could lead to some amazing designs- I would imagine that the RA guild would have a fleet of submersibles to escort a large merchant fleet.

[mtomczek]

I was sketching around last night and came up with this. Rough idea of a sand sea of some sort.

Planetology Discussion

click here for a larger version:  Big!

So the idea I was toying around with was a giant sand sea that flows and moves like water, but is essentially made up of quick sand. The rock formations are large sandstone like structures that have been worn by the heavy winds that ravage the sea. The sun is nearly always blocked out/partially covered by sand particles that hang in the air.

The two lone adventurers in the center of the sketch are to give a sense of scale to the rock formations.

[FichtenFoo]

Looks pretty cool. I think the mountains might be too pointy though... Maybe more of a southwestern US weathered eroded feel.