[Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by isf

Do you have a link to that discussion? I searched for terraformable and didn't find anything.

.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=2205169

.....is right about where those numbers came in. Defintely read the post from Agememos at the top of the page. The whole thread may be interesting enough.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=2205169

.....is right about where those numbers came in. Defintely read the post from Agememos at the top of the page. The whole thread may be interesting enough.

Ok, thanks. Agememos usually has interesting posts in any case.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Mixing any period SF with modern hard science in this area works out uncomfortably. Any star with a name of its' own has that because it's bright and bright stars tend to be too young to have Earth-like planets. For example, Sirius is only 240 million years old. Vega is twice that but that's till not nearly enough. Antares is only 11 million years old and isn't going to get much older (BOOM!).

The last time we had at it on these boards we ended up with a hard science number of 200 light-years between Earth-like planets. Even the number you got out of Space 1e was 100 ly. You might have gotten terraformable worlds every 50 or 60 ly.

In terms of useful advice (expecially for a flexible science setting that was Trek-like) I would not try and use Real World data. I'd just make stuff up concentrating on how much time I wanted PCs to spend travelling between planets.

The flaw in this as pointed out in several of Isaac Arthur videos is to use a lot of resources to get out of your own gravity well only go down another (ie set up a colony on a planet) is dumb.

Isaac Arthur also points out that if these Earth-like planets have life you have a potential War of the Worlds/Andromeda Strain situation on your hands. The odds the biosphere and the stuff in it will be compatible with your biology is effectively nil.

EC comics had a story where a multigenerational ship found out that for biological and physiological reasons they couldn't live on any planet and so lived among the star. Basically every planet with life could be the equivalent of Eden from Star Trek's "The Way to Eden".

A far more realistic situation is your civilization sets up space stations and starts mining the asteroid belts within that system. Once those are gone they would move on to the rocky planets using the gas giants for simpler elements. So planets become not something you settle on but something you mine.

[AlexanderHowl]

Mining planets when you are already in space makes about as much sense as building spaceships out of wood. Terraforming planets as biological reserves makes more sense, as any species should have a plan B, C, D, etc., a place where their members can survive should civilization collapse. While terraformed planets may eventually destabilize, they will likely last for tens of millions of years, meaning that humanity may stumble across thousands of examples of destabilized terraformed Precursor colonies.

[isf]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Mining planets when you are already in space makes about as much sense as building spaceships out of wood. Terraforming planets as biological reserves makes more sense, as any species should have a plan B, C, D, etc., a place where their members can survive should civilization collapse. While terraformed planets may eventually destabilize, they will likely last for tens of millions of years, meaning that humanity may stumble across thousands of examples of destabilized terraformed Precursor colonies.

I don't think that is necessarily the case for mining; planets have processes that concentrate minerals and I haven't heard of any gems in asteroids, but I do expect a lot of space based industry. Destabilized terraformed Precursor planets (whether colonies or not) sound like something fun to encounter

[isf]

Originally Posted by maximara

The flaw in this as pointed out in several of Isaac Arthur videos is to use a lot of resources to get out of your own gravity well only go down another (ie set up a colony on a planet) is dumb.

Being Star Trek like, the transporter makes betting to orbit very cheap. I haven't used spaceships to build a port facility to ballpark a figure, but I'm figuring something like $10/lb initally.

Originally Posted by maximara

Isaac Arthur also points out that if these Earth-like planets have life you have a potential War of the Worlds/Andromeda Strain situation on your hands. The odds the biosphere and the stuff in it will be compatible with your biology is effectively nil.

Possibly, that is pretty speculative. ST has progenitor/Preservers that have seeded terran life across the galaxy.

Originally Posted by maximara

EC comics had a story where a multigenerational ship found out that for biological and physiological reasons they couldn't live on any planet and so lived among the star. Basically every planet with life could be the equivalent of Eden from Star Trek's "The Way to Eden".

I don't expect to see generational ships as a rule in this setting.

Originally Posted by maximara

A far more realistic situation is your civilization sets up space stations and starts mining the asteroid belts within that system. Once those are gone they would move on to the rocky planets using the gas giants for simpler elements. So planets become not something you settle on but something you mine.

Yes, but ST like TL^ changes this for the most part. I do want to have a plausible non-TL^ base to then change as needed tough.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by isf

Possibly, that is pretty speculative. ST has progenitor/Preservers that have seeded terran life across the galaxy.

Microbes and viruses mutate at an insane rate and that is your biggest danger. Read Plagues and Peoples (1976) by William H. McNeill as it goes into the then brand new fundamentals regarding this and how they effected history on our own planet.

From Andromeda Strain:
"After consultation with astronomers and evolutionary theories, the Wildfire group concluded that bacteria could come from three sources [...]

The first was the most obvious-- an organism, from another planet or galaxy, which had the protection to survive the extremes of temperature and vacuum that existed in space."

Second, Earth organisms that left the surface of the earth eons ago.

"And if there were organisms out there, and if they had departed from the baking crust of the earth long before the first men appeared, then they would be foreign to man. No immunity, no adaptation, no antibodies would have been developed. They would be primitive aliens to modern man, in the same way that the shark, a primitive fish unchanged for a hundred million years, was alien and dangerous to modern man, invading the oceans for the first time."

"The third source of contamination, the third of the vectors, was at the same time the most likely and the most troublesome. This was contemporary earth organisms, taken into space by inadequately sterilized spacecraft. Once in space, the organisms would be exposed to harsh radiation, weightlessness, and other environmental forces that might exert a mutagenic effect, altering the organisms" So that when they came down, they would be different."

Originally Posted by isf

Yes, but ST like TL^ changes this for the most part. I do want to have a plausible non-TL^ base to then change as needed tough.

This is why I low-ball Star Trek Original Series to TL9^ - once you throw out the superscience that is more or less where the tech you are left with is at. Cranking Star Trek up to TL11^ is, IMNSHO, just being lazy...or not being that knowledgable about the material in the TOS show.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by maximara

This is why I low-ball Star Trek Original Series to TL9^ - once you throw out the superscience that is more or less where the tech you are left with is at. Cranking Star Trek up to TL11^ is, IMNSHO, just being lazy...or not being that knowledgable about the material in the TOS show.

I'd probably go with Enterprise at TL9^, ST:TOS/TAS as TL 10^, and TNG onward at TL11^. The idea here is assuming a full TL difference between TOS and TNG, and between ENT and the TOS/TAS era.

It's possible, however, that Enterprise is at TL8^, which puts TOS/TAS at 9^ and TNG onward at TL10^; I don't recall what form the energy weapons in Enterprise took, or if they were Human or Vulcan tech to begin with. The key, of course, is the ^; warp drive, artificial gravity, and contragravity are the main superscience advancements available in Enterprise, along with the electro-plasma conduits (the main reason consoles explode!), and then a healthy dose of more refined TL10^ Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite technology at the formation of the Federation to bring the Humans up to speed.