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http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-habitable-exoplanets-online-database
-worlds.html
http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/data
This is some interesting work. It might be interesting to have something
like this form a basis for some harder sci-fi gaming or at least for
picking out habitable planets.
Looking in NASA's expoplanet DB, of the expoplanets that had a Teff (K)
-
I'm thinking this is temperature in Kelvins - the lowest one with data
was 2290 K or so. That's a bit warm. But the catalogs above give some choices
that are interesting. And the other interesting points is that it lists
interesting exomoons as well.
We'll keep discovering new expoplanets over the next decades and learning more
about the ones we've already spotted and figuring out more about foreign solar
systems. But this sort of resource could be useful if you are
crafting your own sci-fi setting in a game or writing some sci-fi and
want to have it in the broad vicinity of Earth. Some of the data may end up
being drastically off (as we refine our knowledge... I get the impression from
the list of false positives on exoplanets that this isn't uncommon), but it
might do for some fiction or a fictional universe.
The one thing I take from this is that space is not likely to have all that
many very closely Earth like environments. That means, in a scifi setting or
gaming sense, that one of two things would seem likely:
A) That the few available habitable bodies would become quite valuable (and
hence possibly fought over) or
B) We'll have to reach some sort of post-singularity humanity that might
be capable of shelling into different body forms (see any number of books but
Peter Hamilton comes to mind as does the SF RPG Eclipse Phase)
Relevant to the GZG verse (or an alternate one), we don't normally envision
the GZGverse as heavily towards B, so I suspect A becomes more likely.
Terrestrial or at least habitable (non terrestrial) planets may be fought
over.
There will be the question of whether there is any sense in shipping resources
between systems; a lot would depend on how valuable they are and how cheap
transport with jump drives and interface technologies of the day. If we're
still using chem fuel to push mass to orbit, that makes every pound worth
quite a bit. So a resource would have to be damn valuable to make intersystem
transportation sensible.
That being the case, maybe then the only value in foreign living space is just
that. Living space. A place to move populations off Earth, both for the safety
of humanity on the large scale and to alleviate crowding in a crowded,
resource limited Earth. That and any Imperial aims various factions may have.
T.
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 06:29:26AM -0500, Tom B wrote:
> The one thing I take from this is that space is not likely to have all
Somewhere between the two is another possibility: borderline-habitable
planets become regarded as "habitable" for lack of a decent alternative. Sure,
you have to stay in sealed buildings or wear a mask to scrub out (most of) the
sulphur dioxide, but once you get used to the smell it's
fine...
(While I think you're right, I believe it's also the case that we don't really
have the tech to detect earthlike exoplanets so far. The size gate is
gradually closing, but it's not quite there yet.)
> There will be the question of whether there is any sense in shipping
Absolutely. A realistic setting needs realistic economics. (But I have a
degree in economics so I would say that wouldn't I?)
> If we're still using chem fuel to push mass to orbit, that makes every
Value per mass, at least. And value will vary from system to system
depending on how available local resources are (cheap surface-to-orbit
probably means cheap asteroid mining too).
R
> On 30/01/2012, at 23:06 , Roger Burton West wrote:
> Somewhere between the two is another possibility: borderline-habitable
Sure, you have to stay in sealed buildings or wear a mask to scrub out (most
of) the sulphur dioxide, but once you get used to the smell it's
fine...
Arguably this already happens on Earth. There are places in Australia that
only a miner would regard as habitable, and I was reading recently
about the mining boom in Mongolia. How do night temperatures below -40C
strike you? If we ever start mining in Antarctica, the lowest
temperature recorded there is -89C, which makes the Mongolian winter
seem balmy, and approaches the -107C lowest recorded surface temperature
on Mars. Saturation divers live for weeks on end in sealed hyperbaric "living
quarters". At present, people tend to accept living in such conditions for
short periods for high pay, but if it took months to get there... Robert
Hughes' "The Fatal Shore" might make instructive reading.
It's strange, but SF universes and future-histories tend to read as if
discovering FTL travel *bang* immediately leads to interstellar exploration
and colonisation. This doesn't make a lot of sense unless
the future-history includes a *lot* (a century or two?) of vigorous
prior space-technology development, and space-craft design progress,
simply to allow long-duration space missions in our local solar system.
If you took away the warp-drive, the starship Enterprise would still
require sub-light propulsion, life-support systems, artificial gravity
etc. If some bright spark in a physics lab invented hyperdrive next week, what
could we do; send a Soyuz to Alpha Centauri? But, just to take an example
rather than pick on one author, Jerry Pournelle's
CoDominium timeline has four years (2004-2008) for discovery of the
Alderson Drive through to first interstellar exploration, with colonisation
beginning roughly ten years after the first exploration ships leave the solar
system!
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How long did things like the gold rush take to get started?
As soon as unmanned probes brought back the hint of exploitable minerals all
sorts of corporations and every country that could would be flinging groups of
pioneers in a wagon at potentially viable planets looking for anything
exploitable.
There's quantium 40 in them there hills ye haaargh.
With the potential for mamoth returns and little in the way of government
regulation private industry would be quick to fill the needs of potential
exporation customers. Countries that tried to put too much regularion in the
way of private exportation would find themselves out of the race and people
would all be launching out of equatorial tax havens (the liberian registration
of space exploration).
Other countries would then need to work out how to make money from those
countries that did make the space travel perhaps with component supply or
eathside manufacturing.
The thing many authors under rate is the time to set up a colony. If you go
from orbiting colony barge to habitable city there;s a lot of work to do and
the colonists wold start with nothing. If it wasn't planned well it cold look
like a plane crash in the mongolian desert.
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 08:58:26AM +1100, Robert N Bryett wrote:
Indeed.
For my recent Aliens-inspired space game, I started with fully-robotic
lunar mining in the 2020s, followed by a bunch of sabotage and a belated
realisation that having humans on site is actually useful - which then
leads to asteroid mining too. So by the time FTL is developed in the 2040s
there's a space infrastructure in place to use it. Initial takeup is slow, but
then one company happens to find a world with biochemistry
that produces really useful drugs - and everyone else wants their chance
at the next massive profit centre.
So, wildly optimistic, but plausible-ish if you squint sideways a bit.
And that's where the optimism stops...
http://tekeli.li/this-dim-spot/
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Been reading our Charlie Stross as well as our Milton, I see.... :-D
Best, Ken
________________________________
From: Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org>
To: gzg@firedrake.org
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 5:37 PM
Subject: Re: Building a map of habitable space
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 08:58:26AM +1100, Robert N Bryett wrote:
Indeed.
For my recent Aliens-inspired space game, I started with fully-robotic
lunar mining in the 2020s, followed by a bunch of sabotage and a belated
realisation that having humans on site is actually useful - which then
leads to asteroid mining too. So by the time FTL is developed in the 2040s
there's a space infrastructure in place to use it. Initial takeup is slow, but
then one company happens to find a world with biochemistry
that produces really useful drugs - and everyone else wants their chance
at the next massive profit centre.
So, wildly optimistic, but plausible-ish if you squint sideways a bit.
And that's where the optimism stops...
http://tekeli.li/this-dim-spot/
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RBW said:
"Somewhere between the two is another possibility: borderline-habitable
planets become regarded as "habitable" for lack of a decent alternative. Sure,
you have to stay in sealed buildings or wear a mask to scrub out (most of) the
sulphur dioxide, but once you get used to the smell it's
fine..."
[Tomb] My definition of habitable was 'things which are going to be
habitable by humans using available technologies of the day'. This would
include your borderline habitable worlds.
I don't see us living on exoplanets with G ratings below 0.5 successfully.
Zero G and probably low-G as well does some awful things to our immune
systems and bones. Similarly, anything over about 1.2 Gs strikes me as
unlikely as well. You could try to run grav plates full time, but the energy
consumption would presumably be silly and this posits gravitational control
which may remain permanently elusive. And if the power went out?
But also temperatures of 2290 K or 4000 K seem likely to deter us.
The need for 12 essential vitamins (or the in other words, a collection of
necessary inorganic but also organic materials) in our diet means that many
places may not have key human-necessary nutritional elements. It's fine
to talk about supplementing diet at small research stations but not of a world
sized population; They would have to be able to produce the necessary
compounds themselves.
Then we'll talk about things like partial pressures of gasses in the
atmosphere, absence of allergens or poisons like heavy metals, etc.
Habitable I think will *always* mean marginally habitable, even with allegedly
'Earth like' worlds. I could be wrong, but so far I see no reason to believe
there is a planet out there with the right: a) atmospheric gas mix b) amount
and type of cosmic radiation arriving (and proper amount bouncing off or being
absorbed) c) habitable temperatures d) partial pressures in the atmosphere e)
gravitation f) presence of all necessary nutrients h) lack of poisons or other
compounds inimical to life
Some of these, tech may help us work around, thus turning 'not really
habitable' into 'yeah, we can live there in domes or whatever'. Some, not so
simple to compensate for.
I don't see an Earth 2 anywhere handy.
T.
PS - Economics? My condolences. That's almost as bad as Computer
Science.