02-26-2015, 12:05 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
A mountain is defined as higher than its surroundings. It's not possible to have the entire surface of the planet be higher than the height of the surface of the planet.
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02-26-2015, 12:14 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
Obviously it would be a Mountain-and-Valley planet. Which would be excellent for producing countless little autonomous states with a dizzying variety of local social experiment.
Last edited by David Johnston2; 02-26-2015 at 12:18 PM. |
02-26-2015, 12:16 PM | #23 |
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
Or one of those planets with far too many cliffs -- its just most of the time we think of that as a cliff, canyon, or rough desert planet.
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02-26-2015, 12:36 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
If you want something like a Desert Planet with realism then why not a world with a Pangea-like supercontinent with the largest area in a Hadley Cell desert. For extra dryness, place vast high mountain ranges in the path of the prevailing winds at the coast. This would leave most of the continent in a vast rainshadow.
With the sea as most of the planet. And only the interior deserts habitable (this is achieved by massive coastal storms blocked by the big mountains) the planet would seem to be all desert.
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02-26-2015, 01:43 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
Tatooine, the other well-known Desert Planet, was said in the novelization of the original movie to have water in oases and in the sky, hence the moisture vaporators needed to "yank it down" (quote from the book). There's also been indications of underground lakes in various EU books written on the planet. My guess would be the largest concentrations of surface water are in the polar regions (small ice caps) and normally-inaccessible mountain lakes and geysers.
I'm not really sure how this would be modeled in GURPS, though. It may be just flavor text for a world with a low hydrography and hot climate.
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02-26-2015, 02:42 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
The "desert planets" I think of are Arrakis, Anarres, Geta, and various versions of Mars all the way back to Barsoom. I suppose Tatooine is a desert planet, but I think you could say the same about Vulcan. Really, though, I see both of them as stage sets. "It was raining on Mongo that afternoon," as the old joke has it.
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02-26-2015, 06:01 PM | #27 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
Quote:
"Ice" planets would depend on ocean life for much the same reason..
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Fred Brackin |
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02-26-2015, 06:33 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Space: Desert Planets
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Tags |
planet generation, system generation |
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