Setting Jam: Hyperbolic Trajectory

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by PTTG

What's an important group in the game?

The Trailing Far Orbit Economic Board. (TFOEB). TFOEB runs a stock exchange, banking system, and its own currency. It was established because of the high latency between the Earth-Sun L4 point and Earth (8 minute delay). This created many financial inconveniences, and the TFOEB was founded as a remedy. It has only grown in power and reach since.


Question: What's another important group in the game, and what's their relationship with TFOEB? (make an important group is such a fantastic question)
Question2*: What are the major energy sources used? Is nuclear fission dead, or finally widespread? Is fusion even possible? What about truly epic solar panels?



*because I feel like adding a question instead of just parroting the one I answered.

Originally Posted by PTTG

Slings. While space elevators turned out to be impractical, high-tensile materials enabled orbital tethers hundreds of kilometers long to dive deep into the atmosphere. High-speed aircraft can then rendezvous with the relatively slow and accessible tether tip, before being swung up into orbit. Meanwhile, electrodynamic thrusters re-boost the tethers to gain altitude.

There is a project to build an orbital ring, which allows space-elevator-like performance without the need for supermaterials, but it's been floundering for decades after early lunar prototypes proved successful.

Does that mean the moon has an orbital ring, but earth does not? That actually sounds really interesting. And space launch costs are still sort of high, at least for earth.

[TGLS]

What's something common now that's rare in-universe?

Freehold real estate for sale. Over the past five centuries, freehold real estate fell out of fashion, replaced by renting and leasehold real estate. When many modern stations are constructed, there are no or almost no freehold properties sold. With the sale of the last lands on the moon about one hundred years ago, the idea of owning a house to pass down to ones children has fallen out of reach of most people.

Questions

What's a good character background?
Why might 2-5 people find themselves in control of a spacecraft?
What's a rumor someone might hear?
Who is a powerful individual NPC? 
How do people get stuff off of earth into space?
What's another important group in the game, and what's their relationship with TFOEB?
What are the major energy sources used? Is nuclear fission dead, or finally widespread? Is fusion even possible? What about truly epic solar panels?
Why can't people own land anymore? Is it being concentrated in the hands of few? If so, why aren't they selling? Have governments changed how they feel about freehold title? If so, what caused them to move towards leaseholds? Or is it something else?

[ericthered]

Why might 2-5 people find themselves in control of a spacecraft?

Traveling between two space habitats. Yes, you need a license, but the freedom that your own little station-hopper gives you is enormous. Some merely moderately wealthy own them simply to skip the waits, security checks, baggage restrictions, and other hassles of commercial transport.

Besides, if you're stuck on one little station, you live in a very small world indeed.


Question: How does their medicine deal with a lost limb?

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Traveling between two space habitats. Yes, you need a license, but the freedom that your own little station-hopper gives you is enormous...

Good idea. A station hopper capable of jumping around Earth orbit gets away from some of the concerns normally given for small bands of adventurers with spaceships: orbital maneuvers are so low-performance that ion engines and solar panels do well, rather than total conversion power plants that can melt planets. Which is also why there's relatively little exploration and settlement beyond the earth-moon system; travel time gets unmanageable fast with common station-hoppers.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Question: How does their medicine deal with a lost limb?

Depends on the type of damage. It's easy to grow skin and muscle, but a whole limb with bone, blood vessels, and nerves is much more time consuming. It's entirely possible to get a re-grown limb or organ, but a prosthetic limb offers 100% functionality for less, and usually looks very natural. The biggest difference from today is that such limbs are fully integrated with the nervous system, providing fine control and full sensation, and prosthetic interfaces are nearly seamless with the natural body.

There are also enhancement cybernetics with greater than human performance. However, they are usually heavy, power-hungry, and unnatural-looking, and rarely better at doing the job than the same equipment which isn't implanted. A forklift is still better than full-body reinforcement which you lift a stack of crates, and you can get out of the forklift...

Still, there are people who like the aesthetic.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by PTTG

<SNIP> and adopts the aesthetics of real diamond-hard "speculative engineering," but is ok making assumptions where convenient to allow the story to proceed. <SNIP>

What's an important group in the game?

An important group is the Transolar high energy solutions collective (THESC), commonly and semi-derogatively called the Highway department.

Operating laser propulsion stations that provide an efficient means for correctly equipped and registered spacecraft to travel away from the sun. Fees are collected by locations at the destinations that benefit from higher traffic. A collection agency is also involved for those who choose to take a free ride.

This group is a fairly recent creation and may yet prove to be the equivalent of a dot com bubble company but may also turn into something akin to a group of railway barons.

Heavily leveraged to and intertwined with the TFOEB the Highway Department strives for both more independence from and dominace over the TFOEB. The current conflict is over exclusively using TFOEB currency for its fees or allowing other currencies to be used.

Questions
How advanced is cryogenic or similar technology?

Given the scope of the setting it seems to be that getting back from the further reaches of the solar system is going to be more expensive than going out. Is this the case?

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by (E)

Given the scope of the setting it seems to be that getting back from the further reaches of the solar system is going to be more expensive than going out. Is this the case?

Judging by the ongoing development of THESC, it's a time of rapid change in that regard. For the past few centuries, human exploration of deep space has been limited by years-long transfers to anywhere past the belt. Indeed, transfer between rocks even within the belt can take far longer than a trip back to the inner system. There have been attempts -- there are tiny research outposts in the Jovian and Saturnian systems -- but with the mass deployment of laser propulsion, industrialization has sped up significantly. Mars, in particular, is opening up, with thousands of people working on the moons to build a space infrastructure. Nothing compared to cislunar space, but the biggest concentration of people beyond Lunar orbit. Other groups are re-considering the Belt's resources, playing a big part in the beam-rider boom. (I'm assuming future tech gets you normal Holman transfer times but beam-rider is significantly improved, though I haven't done the math yet).

Question: Who's leading the push to develop Mars space, and why?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Question: Who's leading the push to develop Mars space, and why?

K2Rouzi is leading the push to develop Mars, having been searching for a purpose after losing out on their bid for the orbital ring project around Earth. Plans to develop Mars were drawn up before the deployment of laser propulsion, though the only concrete work they really accomplished in this period was scouting out Pavonis Mons as a possible terminus of a space elevator.

Now in an era of cheap interplanetary travel, K2Rouzi is putting long drafted plans into motion, and seeks to monopolize Mars. Many of their competitors on Earth are pleased to see K2Rouzi to expend much effort on what they perceive as a boondoggle. Some pundits suggest K2Rouzi's Mars-Phobos space elevator (which will extend far beyond Phobos) will start and finish before the Terran Orbital Ring completes.

Question: Who actually won the contract to build the Earth Orbital Ring? What's taking so long?

[ericthered]

Why can't people own land anymore? Is it being concentrated in the hands of few? If so, why aren't they selling? Have governments changed how they feel about freehold title? If so, what caused them to move towards leaseholds? Or is it something else?

On earth, there are a bunch of factors behind this, but for space stations its a matter of there not being any land. The owners of space stations retain enormous rights over their structures, and they see no need to give up more legally than they have to. A space in a station was always more like a condo than a plot of land. And because of the required negotiations in claiming orbital paths, space stations aren't practical for anyone who can't build one with a thousand inhabitants or more.

On earth (and other celestial bodies), Governments and Giant Corporations have locked up most of the land and hold onto it jealously. Population growth, ecological efforts, and extreme urbanization has pushed people more and more into multi-unit housing. As the gap in power between the rich and poor grows, the land reform laws of the 18th -20th centuries are undone, letting a very few control all the land.


Question: How common is human genetic engineering?

Originally Posted by PTTG

Which is also why there's relatively little exploration and settlement beyond the earth-moon system; travel time gets unmanageable fast with common station-hoppers.

I did say earth "Orbit", including the Lagrange points between it and the sun... but those places probably are mostly drawing building material from the earth and moon.

[(E)]

What's a good character background?

A historic holdover from the earlier days of space exploration is a Troubleshooting License. Holders of this license are expected to be available to serve as a (hopefully intelligent and skillful) warm body to go to deal with any unexpected situation that might come up when asked.

Insurance companies lobbied for the creation of the license back when the population in orbit was quite low. If something went wrong with an unmanned facility and they wanted someone to travel to it and try turning it off and on again, sending a person from a nearby station was considerably cheaper than sending someone up from earth.

While the conditions required for the creation of the license no longer exist, the distances in space still make the role useful. Someone traveling three days to fix a problem saves more money than a person traveling for two weeks.

Holders of a Troubleshooter's License are granted extra rights when performing their jobs. Not all situations are technical issues and troubleshooters can deal with almost anything. If the holder has a contract with an insurance company they often receive a stipend for training and transport.

A troubleshooter should at the very least have experience operating in Zero G and operating communication equipment. A longer C.V. is desired though.

Question.
Is there a subculture around troubleshooting?

What are some other interesting backgrounds?

[TGLS]

What are the major energy sources used? Is nuclear fission dead, or finally widespread? Is fusion even possible? What about truly epic solar panels?

Widespread fission arrived centuries ago, when small modular reactors were developed to explore and possibly colonize the far fringes of the solar system. The colonies never materialized, but the reactors proved useful in mitigating the climate crisis. They are on a long, slow death now though.

Fusion power, while at first expensive and too radioactive on the D-T pathway, transitioned to the far cleaner D-He3 pathway, and began replacing many nuclear reactors across human space. This transition helped move Luna from backwater to power centre of the solar system. Small modular fusion reactors have been developed relatively recently, and they are steadily wearing away at fission's last niche.

With the advent of the lunar orbital ring, however, the future of energy production (at least around Earth) isn't fission or fusion, but solar. Photovoltaic factories on the moon are cranking out massive arrays that are in turn launched into space, to as part of constructing energy generating satellites. These satellites, once a minor component of the power generation mix, have grown so cheap (per watt, not per satellite) that laser based propulsion systems have become practical. The high demand for energy from THESC has led to boom times for companies in the solar industry, like Tranquil, Brillano, and Aurora-Optosyn.

When did the settlement of Luna begin and why?