New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Since the 1970's the price of getting a pound of material into orbit has decreased radically. Allow the next twenty years to do the same again and have the USA see a need to prove itself in a Space Race. Russia and China make noises about competition but they've got other issues. The USA successfully builds a moonbase at the lunar South Pole and mines the Asteroids. In the 2050's a Mars base is established.

It's now the early 2100's, 2113 to be exact. Earth has changed. Most societies blandly tolerate Plutocratic Oligarchies as the norm. Those, both left and right, committed to ideals like Liberty, Freedom, Fairness, Natural Justice, and Social Justice, have moved out into the solar system.

Basically it's a reworked Transhuman Space. It's a cyberpunk Earth that simply gave up and space is filled with competing ideals of Freedom and Justice. The Earth sees the solar system as a valuable safety valve, rebels can go away and be forgotten.

The main struggle in this setting is between the different visions of the Just and Free Society that the people in Space follow. Incompatible visions of the Left and Right, Secular and Religious, East and West, lead to violent conflict in the icy depts of space!

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Basically it's a reworked Transhuman Space. It's a cyberpunk Earth that simply gave up and space is filled with competing ideals of Freedom and Justice. The Earth sees the solar system as a valuable safety valve, rebels can go away and be forgotten.

Economics check: the rest of the solar system must be selling something to Earth to enable them to buy stuff. In Transhuman Space, that's Helium-3 for fusion reactors, but the precise thing does not matter. What does matter is that Earth will have no compunction about forming a buyers' cartel to force down prices. The rebels may have to form a cartel themselves to avoid becoming employees on starvation wages.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Economics check: the rest of the solar system must be selling something to Earth to enable them to buy stuff. In Transhuman Space, that's Helium-3 for fusion reactors, but the precise thing does not matter. What does matter is that Earth will have no compunction about forming a buyers' cartel to force down prices. The rebels may have to form a cartel themselves to avoid becoming employees on starvation wages.

Maybe it's to prevent or escape being "employees on starvation wages." that the fight started over. But assume the asteroids had plenty of economically useful minerals for a world that needed them.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Maybe it's to prevent or escape being "employees on starvation wages." that the fight started over. But assume the asteroids had plenty of economically useful minerals for a world that needed them.

IIRC, there's a specific asteroid that has enough gold in it to devalue gold as a precious metal, though I'm not sure which asteroid this is. Rare Earth elements are also very useful, and may not be that Rare when you aren't on Earth.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

IIRC, there's a specific asteroid that has enough gold in it to devalue gold as a precious metal, though I'm not sure which asteroid this is. Rare Earth elements are also very useful, and may not be that Rare when you aren't on Earth.

Rare Earths aren't even all that rare on Earth; the only difficulty is the toxicity of mining and refining.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

IIRC, there's a specific asteroid that has enough gold in it to devalue gold as a precious metal, though I'm not sure which asteroid this is. Rare Earth elements are also very useful, and may not be that Rare when you aren't on Earth.

I think you are referring to 433 Eros. It is nothing special, it is just one of the largest NEAs, look up 16 Psyche. It is supposed to be 5 ppm gold, which means that it might have 120 billion metric tons of gold, nearly 700,000x as much as has been mined through all of human history.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Rare Earths aren't even all that rare on Earth; the only difficulty is the toxicity of mining and refining.

In space, particularly so far from Earth, refining metals in a vacuum using solar mirrors could have great economies. With no biosphere, pollution is a different and far smaller problem. That also leads to cost savings.

Given cheaper spaceflight, a key premise of this setting, cheaper less environmentally disruptive processing would make space minerals highly competitive.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I think you are referring to 433 Eros. It is nothing special, it is just one of the largest NEAs, look up 16 Psyche. It is supposed to be 5 ppm gold, which means that it might have 120 billion metric tons of gold, nearly 700,000x as much as has been mined through all of human history.

Note that this concentration is not a lot better than a guess (its not like we've had a lot of samples to assay!), and points up one of the issues common in space resource enthusiasm - equating present to useful. Five ppm would be relatively marginal to mine here on Earth - enough to be worth open cut mining when the gold market is high, but not if you have to tunnel for it - never mind on an asteroid.

This doesn't make Eros a potential gold mine, it makes it somewhat enriched in gold relative to average crustal rocks. Which is where most of these numbers comes from in the first place, our best guess on the abundance of gold or whatever in rock in general, keeping in mind that a lot of Earth's metals are concentrated down in the core and depleted in crustal rock. There might be worthwhile ores on asteroids somewhere, but we really don't know. If they are uniform composition throughout, they usually would be too diffuse to be worth mining.

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Maybe it's to prevent or escape being "employees on starvation wages." that the fight started over. But assume the asteroids had plenty of economically useful minerals for a world that needed them.

I think it would be more that space minerals are much cheaper than earth minerals.

This is highly dependent on automation though.

If automation is cheap and easy, people won't be going into space , robots will and the demand for labor will be low other than maybe a few belters, bot wranglers mostly well paid corporate types like modern day oil workers.

Also it's kind of demand dependent . The industrialized world is mostly urban and will be that way in a cyberpunk setting Fertility has been below replacement for near half a century everywhere in the developed world and populations have been maintained largely in by immigration from less urban and developed areas

Once the rest of the world catches up , that will stop

So you have a at best slow growing or more likely static or shrinking population and lower demand

Also what do the belters want from Earth they can't find a substitute for in space? They have vast mineral resources compared to population size and it is possible to grow food in Space.

Water ice might also be common along with manufactured soil

Would they be buying consumer goods, luxury goods with credits or just be indentured workers to pay for start up?

[Astromancer]

One key aspect of my setting that escapes everyone's notice is who is in conflict with whom. Earth is only mildly interested in the conflicts. The Earth uses space as a safety valve. Disruptive elements are "allowed" ( often at gunpoint, but pointed statements are more common) too leave Earth and seek their future in space.

The main conflicts are in space. They're conflicts between spacers about the "Good Society." Right versus Left, Religion versus Secular Society, Democracy versus Authority, Hierarchy versus Networks of Equals, are all part of this setting. Earth doesn't much care as long as everyone stays trivial or just goes away.