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Old 02-26-2015, 12:05 PM   #21
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

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Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
It is a side note, but while we're on single binome worlds how come we don't have a Planatary Romance that takes place on a Mountain Planet.
A mountain is defined as higher than its surroundings. It's not possible to have the entire surface of the planet be higher than the height of the surface of the planet.
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Old 02-26-2015, 12:14 PM   #22
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

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A mountain is defined as higher than its surroundings. It's not possible to have the entire surface of the planet be higher than the height of the surface of the planet.
Obviously it would be a Mountain-and-Valley planet. Which would be excellent for producing countless little autonomous states with a dizzying variety of local social experiment.

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Old 02-26-2015, 12:16 PM   #23
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

Or one of those planets with far too many cliffs -- its just most of the time we think of that as a cliff, canyon, or rough desert planet.
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Old 02-26-2015, 12:36 PM   #24
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

If you want something like a Desert Planet with realism then why not a world with a Pangea-like supercontinent with the largest area in a Hadley Cell desert. For extra dryness, place vast high mountain ranges in the path of the prevailing winds at the coast. This would leave most of the continent in a vast rainshadow.

With the sea as most of the planet. And only the interior deserts habitable (this is achieved by massive coastal storms blocked by the big mountains) the planet would seem to be all desert.
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Old 02-26-2015, 01:43 PM   #25
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

Tatooine, the other well-known Desert Planet, was said in the novelization of the original movie to have water in oases and in the sky, hence the moisture vaporators needed to "yank it down" (quote from the book). There's also been indications of underground lakes in various EU books written on the planet. My guess would be the largest concentrations of surface water are in the polar regions (small ice caps) and normally-inaccessible mountain lakes and geysers.

I'm not really sure how this would be modeled in GURPS, though. It may be just flavor text for a world with a low hydrography and hot climate.
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Old 02-26-2015, 02:42 PM   #26
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

The "desert planets" I think of are Arrakis, Anarres, Geta, and various versions of Mars all the way back to Barsoom. I suppose Tatooine is a desert planet, but I think you could say the same about Vulcan. Really, though, I see both of them as stage sets. "It was raining on Mongo that afternoon," as the old joke has it.
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Old 02-26-2015, 06:01 PM   #27
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

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With the sea as most of the planet. And only the interior deserts habitable (this is achieved by massive coastal storms blocked by the big mountains) the planet would seem to be all desert.
This could work where an entire planet of bare sand couldn't. The oxygen could be created by photosynthetic sea life. Sand makes no oxygen. Something needs to be at the bottom of the bio-mass pyramid too.

"Ice" planets would depend on ocean life for much the same reason..
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Old 02-26-2015, 06:18 PM   #28
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

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Sand makes no oxygen.
Deep ocean doesn't produce much either.
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Old 02-26-2015, 06:33 PM   #29
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Default Re: Space: Desert Planets

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Deep ocean doesn't produce much either.
Whats on top of it does.
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Old 02-26-2015, 06:36 PM   #30
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Whats on top of it does.
Not really. You need nutrients as well as water, which mostly come from flow off land masses.
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