Terradyne

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Please. The first flying car was invented in 1938 and we keep on inventing them because they are Cool But Impractical.

As I said, we can't. They are cool but impractical with out current tech, and that's the best we're able to do on that line right now. Henry Ford didn't technically invent the automobile, either, he just make it practical.

We don't have flying cars (in general distribution) because flying cars are as inefficient and problematic as awkward combinations of two different technologies usually are. See sporks, helmet-pistols, amphibious tanks and many other examples. It doesn't make sense to mass produce flying cars.

But it would if someone found a way to combine the technologies in a practical way. It's something we'd like to do if we knew how (make a practical flying car). We don't know how.

And we don't have moon colonies for the same reason. It doesn't make sense to build moon colonies. At least not with current technologies. Too expensive, no significant return on investment. We could in theory put a scientific outpost on the moon which would be like the scientific outposts in Antartica but a real colony like that of Terradyne doesn't make sense and won't make sense for a very long time, if ever. (When the time comes we may just skip past the moon due to the inconveniences of gravity that low.)

But we could in theory do it now, assuming the gravity issue doesn't turn out to be a show-stopper (and on that we have next to no data, we know a lot about microgravity and free fall effects, almost nothing about 'significant but non-Earth-level gravity).

As you note, the motivation is in question as compared to the flying car, where the motivation is right there but the technology isn't up to it.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Infornific

It's neither dishonest nor arrogant to say that human colonization of the solar system looks impractical based on present and plausible future technology. You need to get into space and all the present and plausible near future technologies are either very expensive per pound (rockets of one sort or another) or require a huge initial infrastructure cost (beanstalks, launch loops, etc.) Once you're there, you need to bring along your own ecosystem. We've visited the bottom of the ocean, Mt Everest and the South Pole but no one lives there. Colonizing space is much more difficult. We'd need to figure out how to build and replicate ecosystems from raw materials and I think 20th Century science fiction writers grossly underestimated the difficulties involved. I can easily believe we'll go into space to explore and exploit resources but not to colonize. We don't build floating cities to drill oil at sea and we won't build cities in space to mine asteroids.

That said if there's some unexpected technological breakthrough, that might change the rules. By definition we don't know what breakthroughs to expect. But if we're sticking to plausible tech, it's hard to see people colonizing the solar system. I'd be thrilled to be wrong but unfortunately I think the naysayers have the evidence on their side.

Yeah, but 'plausible' is meaningless in analyzing the future beyond a few decades or so. Breakthroughs are by definition unpredictable, though historically they tend to occur in clusters. The world we live in today is fantastically implausible by the standards of 1850, which was equally implausible by the standards of even 1750. On the other hand, 1750 was not as big a stretch as all that compared to 1550 or 1450, certainly nowhere close to the same scale as the gap between 1750 and 1850.

One reason the speculations of SF were so wild in the mid-20th century was that they were coming off a period of fantastic technological transformation, so a continued, even exponentially accelerating, rate of technological change seemed natural and plausible.

(See Robert Heinlein's article in 1950 called Where To? in which he predicted just that, exponentiating techological change. Instead, at just about that time, the rate of technological growth suddenly began to downshift, so that 2013 is far more like 1950 than 1950 was like 1900.)

2100 is 87 years away. That's enough time for changes of breathtaking scale...or for things to stay recognizably the way they are now. Either is about equally 'plausible'.

[Mike Wightman]

This is one of the reasons the technological level scale is so hard to pin down.

TLs should represent major shifts in the scientific and engineering paradigm within a society.

Here is the real world this thread has already shown some of the TL shifts through history, but we have to careful with the tecnological breakthoughs of the last 150 years.

If you were living in the year 2500 looking back what major developments would you highlight as being paradigm shifts? How many TLs have we really advanced?

When we really do advance a TL the humans of that time will look back and say that we couldn't have predicted how life would look in 150 years time.

Which makes getting the future history right a bit tricky ;)

Eclipse Phase and Transhuman Space are similar games - the advantage EP future history has it is tied to an apocalypse for which the exact date isn't given, so we can't pin down exactly when it is suppose to take place in our future.

Terradyne and THS suffer from Twilight 2000/Traveller 2300 disease - it didn't happen so it can't happen without invoking alternative universe hypotheses - which I don't like.

Move Terradyne forward by a few decades and re-write some plot elements is a simple fix.

(The same will need doing for THS before too long).

[combatmedic]

I prefer the alt-timeline approach. I'm an IW fan.

I haven't got anything else to add about an 'update' for Terradyne.

If I develop some good ideas/question development for the setting I'll post those in a separate thread.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

(See Robert Heinlein's article in 1950 called Where To? in which he predicted just that, exponentiating techological change. Instead, at just about that time, the rate of technological growth suddenly began to downshift, so that 2013 is far more like 1950 than 1950 was like 1900.)

I think you're underestimation the TL shift due to the Information Age, no one in 1950 had the vaguest concept that we'd be walking around with hand-held computer/phones capable of accessing all the world's libraries and then some, that's a massive paradigm shift.

For $40 I added a tiny 64 GB chip to my smartphone to increase its memory, allowing it to keep more movies, books and pictures on hand than someone from 1950 even knew existed.

The sheer connectivity of today's world would likely put someone from the 1950s into greater shock than things like cars and airplanes being commonplace would do to someone from 1900 in 1950.

Granted, if you're arguing that the speculative TL 9 Microtech age is simply an expansion of TL 8, since it's immediately plausible tech which is incremental advancement from within the Information Age you have an excellent point, but the Digital/Information Age is a clear paradigm shift.

[tantric]

So, solar power sats, some kind of LEO hotel, a moon base that is thin disguise for a mass driver, and maybe a captured metal rich asteroid, possibly making the power sats. I would put the 'colonies' in Antarctica, like cities at Erebus (geo thermal power) and mining outposts around it.

Anything else?

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by tantric

So, solar power sats, some kind of LEO hotel, a moon base that is thin disguise for a mass driver, and maybe a captured metal rich asteroid, possibly making the power sats. I would put the 'colonies' in Antarctica, like cities at Erebus (geo thermal power) and mining outposts around it.

Anything else?

Solar System exploration, done by remote. If a particular rock or iceball becomes extremely interesting for some reason (don't ask me how), a staffed forward base will be established so that the transmission lag on controlling the remotes will be reduced.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tantric

Anything else?

Stuff for player-characters to do. Specifically stuff that will constitute good sessions for an rpg.

That was the big failing that I remember from reading Teradyne lo these many years ago. I read it several times when it first came out and was never inspired to make a character even on a trial basis.

The book actually suggested that PCs work on the "road gangs" terraforming Mars. This might have epic status as a meme in the popular mythology of Terradyne but ti seemed deficient in adventure potential.

Yes, I have heard Bill Stoddard about the history of "Heroic Engineering" in science fiction. I read a lot of the source material for that but it's a thing easier read about than roleplayed.

So, what _do_ PCs in a Terradyne campaign do? You're not really ready to run until you can answer that.

[apoc527]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So, what _do_ PCs in a Terradyne campaign do? You're not really ready to run until you can answer that.

This is a harder question than it looks for Transhuman Space campaigns, and that is a massively huge, well-developed setting. I can't imagine the difficulties arising for a setting existing in a single book that is remotely similar to THS!

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by apoc527

This is a harder question than it looks for Transhuman Space campaigns, and that is a massively huge, well-developed setting. I can't imagine the difficulties arising for a setting existing in a single book that is remotely similar to THS!

Go on an adventure. Find a loophole in a lucrative contract. Fix an abandoned space station. Defeat an omnicidal TbaM astropus. Investigate the framing of an ethically challenged doctor. Purge terrorists from a Russian space station. Try to patent room-temperature superconductors.

The possibilities are endless.