Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Given that the OTU essentially (and pretty much specifically) assumes no change in the human condition over thousands of years of future history, I would say that's actually the most realistic approach to take in this setting.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Fair enough. Though as I said above, even that allows a reasonable chance that somebody in a galaxy containing that many cultures and peoples would do it. (Also, given that many planets, there would likely be some worlds that are better terraforming candidates than anything in the Sol System.) That wouldn't make it common.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

You can have an infinite number of apples without having a single orange.
You can't simply hand-wave away mind bogglingly stupid ideas with the vague notion that some unnamed culture would do it.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Why can't he hand wave it?

Rule of Cool goes a long way, Flyn, especially in Traveller. We're talking about a made up game universe with furries, magic powers called 'psionics', Ancient Astronauts, sufficiently advanced alien technologies, jump drive, contragrav, and all sorts of other fantastic elements. It's not Ben Bova's Traveller- unless you want it to be like that.

Now, I like to keep things fairly close to what I'd call' plausible' IMTU, so I cut down on terraforming. His TU may be different. So may yours. That's as it should be.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Handwaving things away in favour of a nebulous "Rule of Cool" is easy. It's also intellectually lazy, and makes for a setting full of "Cool" and little actual substance or coherency.

Thinking about things properly is harder, but if you think through all the consequences you get a more sensible, coherent, self-consistent universe. That may not be your idea of "Cool", but some people like a setting that makes sense and that isn't the RPGequivalent of a Michael Bay movie. ;)


Pretty much all SF requires at least one "unrealistic" element in it (often an FTL drive) by its very nature. Just because a few such elements are present though, that doesn't mean that the doors are open for any (or every) other unrealistic elements to be present there. If you do that, pretty soon the whole setting is gonzo and nothing makes sense at all.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Irrelevant comparison.

Nor have I tried to do so. Further, 'mind-bogglingly stupid' is a purely relative concept.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Actually, that's unrealistic. Since motives are infinitely variable, and the frame of reference is constantly changing, you can't create a really sensible, coherent, self-consistant fictional universe that's also realistic. Reality is never entirely sensible, coherent, or self-consistant, from the human POV, especially where human behavior is concerned.

Which is realistic if you're trying to project what an actual civilization that much more advanced that ours would look like, to us. Our own civilization would look precisely like that to an observer from, say, 3000 B.C.

Positing a civilization with that level of technological superiority but still applies our standards of value and motives is no more realistic than FTL, if that much.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Yeah, but I'm talking realistic human nature, not 'rule of cool'. It's unrealistic to assume that humans will always operate from purely economic motives, or that efficiency is always the guiding impulse of decision making. Likewise, it is unrealistic to assume that people in the distant future will think like we do, any more than we think like a Bronze Age nomad from the steppes.

That isn't to say human nature will change, barring some kind of genetic engineering or the like, it won't. But motives are infinitely variable around human nature, as we see from studying history. What is unthinkable can and does become mandatory and vice versa, as motives and cultures change, and economics is tangential to that.

Now, Traveller is by defintion unrealistic, like almost all SF, since it does assume that people think in the future the way we do now. It has to, from necessity, SF is always about the present.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Where did you get the idea that the Pilgrim settlement was a matter of a a few malcontents and a few months at sea? It required the steady effort of thousands of people spread across centuries. The cultural, economic and technological infrastructure that made the settlement possible stretched across thousands of miles of space and back centuries through time.

If your going to analyze the comparison, do it fully, don't just pretend that things came out of thin air. Likewise, a society capable of serious terraforming is not likely to do it as a society-wide endeavor, but later one when such efforts require only a fraction of the resources of the whole.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

The number of such attempts which failed and resulted in wasted funds, and no place to hold mass is proof of it being a major risk. There are quite a few gothic cathedrals that simply were not built safely. And several which remain standing only due to later addition of bracing.

The economic boon was not recovering the costs in the lifetime of the builders, other than by civic, "See, we built bigger than them," pride. And, to be very catholic, at the potential cost of their very souls, for excess pride is one of the 7 deadly sins...