Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Sure, once.

Twice if they haven't heard of each other.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

In such a case, wouldn't they abandon the planet and put a biohazard sticker on the door?

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

There are IMO only two resons to colonize a world with insidious atmosphere: a) lack of choice (The misjump scenario) and b) there's something there that it's economically advantageous to go live there to exploit. Once there's an outpost there, the possibility exists that a self-perpetuating community will develop, although it's much more likely to stay some sort of "oil platform" setup. The high-population worlds would be very much the exception that beat the odds. Which is why a world creation system that doesn't link population with habitability has a rather large built-in flaw. A population distribution that is the same regardless of the physical stats is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

Annother dodge is to say that people don't live ON the world, they live in orbit around it (They just work down on the surface ;-)).


Hans

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

No, not really. Easier is counter to makework; they are in fact exclusive in most cases.

Terraforming is, at best, a long term goal. At worst, makework. And if the goal is making work for displaced workers, taking the easier route is contraindicated by virtue of the goal of tying up as many people on the project as possible.

It's politics, not economics, that drives it.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

If it's a local population, who's going to pay for moving them? Interstellar travel is expensive. If it's a sufficiently small population, they may be saved by charitable neighbors, but if they have to pay for it themselves, they're more or less stuck on their rapidly deteriorating world. They'll either develop habitats that can protect them (and that they can afford) or they die.


Hans

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

There is one other. You have a cargo of insidious atmosphere-breathing colonists.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Many people find that less verisimilitudinous than political grandstanding.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

I watched Alien this afternoon. Is the "xenomorph" the sort of colonist you had in mind?

:)

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Living in a ship in space is easier than living on a Venus-like hellhole. Heck, living on an airless rockball or asteroid elsewhere in the system is easier. The 'lack of choice' assumes that there is absolutely nowhere else in the entire system (including the ship itself) that is better than the hellhole.


On that we can agree, at least.

Though if they live on a moon, then you might as well list the moon's UWP as the mainworld and not the hellhole's.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

I guess you've done huge surveys of the traveller community to know that, have you? ;)

Also, I don't buy your "makework" idea. You start with the assumption that people would do that, I don't think they would. There'd be easier and more visible ways to "makework" than throwing people onto a hellworld. Hell, you could do any number of megaengineering projects/follies on more habitable worlds instead (e.g. build pyramids, statues, great big patterns of lights visible from space etc).