Terradyne

[Flaco76]

Would anyone be interested in an updated Terradyne setting? Or is it too dated to be updated?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Flaco76

Would anyone be interested in an updated Terradyne setting? Or is it too dated to be updated?

I might. I like that kind of gritty TL9'ish thing.

[schmeelke]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I might. I like that kind of gritty TL9'ish thing.

Agreed. I like the idea of colonizing the solar system, starting with the Moon and Mars.

Originally Posted by whswhs

...the 1-TB hard drive that's as big as a sofa and costs $10k.

Ha! I don't remember that; I'll have to re-read the setting. The part I remember is a comet impact giving Mars enough atmospheric pressure to survive without a pressure suit. I have no idea how realistic that is. Or how long such an atmosphere would last.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by schmeelke

The part I remember is a comet impact giving Mars enough atmospheric pressure to survive without a pressure suit. I have no idea how realistic that is.

There was a point where the uncertainty in the orbit of comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) gave it a non-zero chance of impacting Mars in October 2014. I did some back-of-the-envelope math and concluded that such an impact (~56km/s, if I recall correctly) would deposit enough energy and volatiles to raise the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere to a new equilibrium right at the Armstrong limit.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by schmeelke

Agreed. I like the idea of colonizing the solar system, starting with the Moon and Mars.



Ha! I don't remember that; I'll have to re-read the setting. The part I remember is a comet impact giving Mars enough atmospheric pressure to survive without a pressure suit. I have no idea how realistic that is. Or how long such an atmosphere would last.

Not a comet as such. Saturn's outermost moon, Phoebe. I do not believe the idea to be practical but if Mars gained atmospheric pressure by such means, the atmosphere would be retained for a very long time by human standards.

[cybermancer2k1]

While I'd like to see Terradyne return, even as just an e23 reprint, I think the real question is how hard would Transhuman Space step on its toes? A lot of the background conventions are the same.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by cybermancer2k1

While I'd like to see Terradyne return, even as just an e23 reprint, I think the real question is how hard would Transhuman Space step on its toes? A lot of the background conventions are the same.

This is the key factor, right here.

THS not only "updated" Terradyne, it took the same goals (fairly hard sci-fi, near-future setting with an inhabited solar system) and much of the same background information and actors (Columbia Aerospace, etc.), updated all of that stuff, and then added in (highly) optimistic projections of the latest advances in biotechnology (none of which appeared in Terradyne).

Ergo, THS is the upgrade of Terradyne or, more specifically, the successor setting which surpasses the original in every qualitative way.

If you want something similar to Terradyne, use THS and subtract out the parts you don't want, and you'll have a setting that's still better than the original.

[cybermancer2k1]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Not a comet as such. Saturn's outermost moon, Phoebe. I do not believe the idea to be practical but if Mars gained atmospheric pressure by such means, the atmosphere would be retained for a very long time by human standards.

This is one of the things that would need updating. It would probably be easier to nudge a series of comets into the proper orbit or nick a Kuiper Belt Object than steal one of Saturn's moons. But the resulting outrage at Terradyne's having done so was part of the narrative.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by cybermancer2k1

This is one of the things that would need updating. It would probably be easier to nudge a series of comets into the proper orbit or nick a Kuiper Belt Object than steal one of Saturn's moons. But the resulting outrage at Terradyne's having done so was part of the narrative.

That's not an issue of "updating". The inherent problems of moving a 200 kilometer object are no greater now than they were then. It was just a part of "the whole point of this setting is to have an inhabited solar system no matter how little sense it makes".

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by schmeelke

Ha! I don't remember that; I'll have to re-read the setting. The part I remember is a comet impact giving Mars enough atmospheric pressure to survive without a pressure suit. I have no idea how realistic that is. Or how long such an atmosphere would last.

Others on her can give more qualified replies about how long it'd last, but I believe it could be decades, even a century or two. You'd need several very large comets, though. Mars is smaller than Earth, but still very big.