Space: Desert Planets

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, you know, regardless of that, the point of the joke is still valid: A planet has diverse terrain types (as GURPS calls them), and fiction with "desert planets" and "jungle planets" and "swamp planets" is naive. You might as well have aliens come to Earth and call it "the water planet."

I think "water planet" touches on another issue here - water comes with a lot of ecological diversity. For that matter even deserts come in a lot of different types, even here on Earth. Desertworld may have dozens of different kinds of biomes, each dominated by entirely different organisms that can easily tell them apart. Just because it all looks the same to humans with their pathetically inferior moisture senses that can't even distinguish between 2 and 5% relative humidity, and total inability to smell phosphates....

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I think "water planet" touches on another issue here - water comes with a lot of ecological diversity. For that matter even deserts come in a lot of different types, even here on Earth. Desertworld may have dozens of different kinds of biomes, each dominated by entirely different organisms that can easily tell them apart. Just because it all looks the same to humans with their pathetically inferior moisture senses that can't even distinguish between 2 and 5% relative humidity, and total inability to smell phosphates....

Its not even that hard. You drop me off in a desert 30 miles from my hometown and I can tell you roughly what direction we went (its a unique spot, but the point about being able to distinguish different deserts stands).

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The desert is probably not the economic center, if it can't sustain a significant amount of life. The economic center is probably the tiny oases scattered across the desert.

I assume that there are mineral resources in the desert. That mining operations of some kind brought in people. Someone, thinking themselves clever, dumped refugee populations from desert areas of Earth or other similar planets. The mixture would be like a cross between the Wild West and one of those Foreign Legion pictures they based on Beau Geste.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

I foresee a lot of ghost towns on desert worlds that were abandoned after the resources they were mining dried up . . . .

Agreed, the said Ghost towns would last longer on a desert world. Left over Ghost towns on a mined out Desert world would make a good place for Pirate bases, smugglers, or any other type of nefarious secret base.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Riverworld wasn't a planet at all. It was a comparatively narrow strip 20 million miles long. The mountains that line the sides of the strip are just there to act as the bars of the crib. The reason why polities are small there is because agriculture and mining are impossible meaning that territorial acquisition is pointless.

The constant supply of enslaveable people, surplus goods, and luxury goods at each grailstone made territory acquisition canonically gainful.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Riverworld wasn't a planet at all. It was a comparatively narrow strip 20 million miles long. The mountains that line the sides of the strip are just there to act as the bars of the crib. The reason why polities are small there is because agriculture and mining are impossible meaning that territorial acquisition is pointless.

As I recall the books it was a planet (possibly a re-engineered Earth). The River ran from the Arctic to the Antarctic and then turned around and went back, again and again. If you could climb the mountains you could then climb down again and be up to 20,000 miles up or down river. But the mountains were too high.

In the later books people take an airship to the control center at a polar sea.