04-20-2020, 09:25 AM | #31 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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04-20-2020, 10:42 AM | #32 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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For ex, if technological advancement is 'normally' an exponentiating curve, as Heinlein posited, the chances of two sapient races meeting on comparable levels is essentially zero. That would reflect the rate of advancement that the West has seen over the last 3 or 4 centuries. If you imagine first contacts between cultures at 1750 level, 1850, 1950, and 2120 levels, you see substantial differences over short periods. But if 'normal' advancement is far slower, the equation changes. If the 'norm' is bursts of fast advancement amid plateaus, that produces potentially a totally different picture. This sort of picture is consistent with larger scale human history. We don't have any data, so it's ultimately all speculation.
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04-20-2020, 10:49 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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Even on shorter scales, population growth is more tightly linked to cultural/religious factors than is commonly realized. There's no reason to assume that a warp-capable society would have either low or high female fertility rates, either is equally plausible at any given historical time.
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04-20-2020, 03:42 PM | #34 | |
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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Spock never explains how this supernova will threaten to destroy the galaxy In fact, as Memory Alpha points out Spock is talking total nonsense: "Having a supernova threaten the entire galaxy, as was claimed to be the case by Spock in Star Trek, is a physical impossibility under normal circumstances: the law of special relativity limits the shock wave's expansion rate to below the speed of light, meaning it would be a minimum of several years before it affected even nearby stars. The expansion of the blast wave would also result in it weakening and dissipating over time. Even if Spock consumed the star in time to prevent it from destroying Romulus, doing so would still leave the planet without a source of heat and light, resulting in it becoming uninhabitable anyway, albeit physically intact." "Within the Milky Way Galaxy, supernovae generally occurred approximately once per century." - Supernova (Memory Alpha) This is actually slower then our universe where a supernovae occurs about every 50 years. Nothing about "an infectious plague of suns going supernova" in Star Trek (2009). In fact, per the above the exact opposite is presented ie there are fewer supernovas in the Star Trek universe then our own. Again, excluding books and comics (their canonicity, even when novelizations of episodes or movies, is questionable) where is this particular idea coming from?
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04-20-2020, 04:32 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
As I recall, Romulus's sun was relatively unaffected; an amoral scientist took advantage of the supernova and shunted a lot of it through subspace to destroy the twin planets of Romulus and Remus a lot faster than the actual shockwave should have happened.
If things had occurred as normal, Spock would have had a hundred years or so to devise some way to prevent the supernova's shockwave from destroying the planets. (Mind, my source for this is Star Trek Online, which while not "canon" tries to follow the TOS-TNG-DS9-VOY-ENT canon as best it can. Discovery is messing things up.)
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04-20-2020, 05:45 PM | #36 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Jacksonville, AR
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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Being Star Trek like, the transporter makes betting to orbit very cheap. I haven't used spaceships to build a port facility to ballpark a figure, but I'm figuring something like $10/lb initally. Quote:
Possibly, that is pretty speculative. ST has progenitor/Preservers that have seeded terran life across the galaxy. Quote:
I don't expect to see generational ships as a rule in this setting. Quote:
Yes, but ST like TL^ changes this for the most part. I do want to have a plausible non-TL^ base to then change as needed tough.
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Travis Foster |
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04-20-2020, 05:50 PM | #37 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Jacksonville, AR
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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I don't think that is necessarily the case for mining; planets have processes that concentrate minerals and I haven't heard of any gems in asteroids, but I do expect a lot of space based industry. Destabilized terraformed Precursor planets (whether colonies or not) sound like something fun to encounter
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Travis Foster |
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04-20-2020, 05:57 PM | #38 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Jacksonville, AR
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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Actually, I do want hard science to have a seat at the table, the table just has seats for TL^, genre, and game-ability as well. I explicitly want a plausible hardish science base to add in the other seats [being alone in the universe and there being no means of ftl travel are pretty hard but incompatible with genre and setting].
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Travis Foster |
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04-20-2020, 06:08 PM | #39 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Jacksonville, AR
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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I think that teal world technologies are mostly s-curves and not exponential. Quote:
Yes, I think this makes for a better story for this kind of setting.
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Travis Foster |
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04-20-2020, 06:10 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Jacksonville, AR
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Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients
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Even if core developed planets have stable populations, colonies will tend to have higher growth rates. If you wanted to live in a stable society,, you would be lees likely to go to live on a colony.
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Travis Foster |
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Tags |
space opera, star trek |
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