Terraforming in the OTU

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Yes, but they're not really that "infinitely various" here at all. When faced with a borderline-habitable planet, one can either:

1) Skip it and find a more habitable one further away.
2) Colonise it with environmentally sealed habitats.
3) Terraform it.

The first option is generally a viable option (especially in the OTU, with its high number of habitable worlds). We're talking about founding colonies here, so this is in a time/region where the Imperium is expanding, so there almost certainly will be a habitable world further along the exploration path.

There are only 9000 systems in the Imperium and the Imperium is hemmed in by neighbors. The first option was viable in the Imperium's early days, but since the Civil War at the latest, every world in the Imperium has belonged to someone. A relatively small company like Al Morai managed to get title to two out of the 400 worlds in the Marches long before that. Today the RAW imply that the Imperium is willing to accept governments of low-population worlds as sovereign[*]! And the Imperium also reserve some worlds for other purposes, such as conservancies and reservation worlds.

[*] Mind you, I think the RAW is completely stuffed up on this subject, but it not relevant to this discussion, since low-population worlds that belonged to someone else would be just as effectively pre-empted.

The second option is eminently sensible. It requires minimum effort, it uses immediately available technology, can be set up very rapidly, and works to provide a habitable (if not sealed) environment for the populace. Built the enclosures large enough and you can have large parks and forests growing inside too!

Agreed. Ultra-tech is manifestly able to support population in the billions in vacuum environments. Conditions really can't get any worse than that. That is to say, if a world has worse conditions (e.g. insidious atmospheres), you can always put space habitats in orbit around it.

The third option (given the other two) is completely crazy. It requires a lot of effort, a lot of planning, huge amounts of investment, a guaranteed long-term commitment, and very little (if any) short term results. Such a project may be started, but unless you have an instant Genesis Device (a la star trek), given all the possible things that can happen over the decades/centuries that could derail such a vast project (be they social, political, or physical), it's pretty much a certainty that it will not be finished.

So you won't find any for-profit terraforming projects. I believe we've already established that. That still leaves not-for-profit projects.


Hans