Terraforming in the OTU

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

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

Frankly, I think the justifications presented for terraforming here seem very keen to find reasons for its viability regardless of the realities of the process anyway (much like any "why would they do that?" problem in Traveller, to be honest).

That being the case, it's best to describe Terraforming as what it really is - one of the grandest follies imaginable. It's nothing but a pointless and extravagant waste of time to occupy a society that could have otherwise solved its habitability problems in a myriad of other, simpler, and more economical short-term ways.

Terraforming is not remotely an 'equilibrium' state for a society. The likelihood of its completion would be very low given the other pressures against it (internal politics, funding, physical issues, changes of heart etc). I would suspect that societies that tried this would completely bankrupt themselves (socially or economically) before the process was anywhere near complete and would inevitably settle back towards the equilibrium of saner, short-term solutions.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

That being the case, it's best to describe Terraforming as what it really is - one of the grandest follies imaginable. It's nothing but a pointless and extravagant waste of time to occupy a society that could have otherwise solved its habitability problems in a myriad of other, simpler, and more economical short-term ways.

And just how many major terraforming projects is there evidence for in the Classic Era? The Ancients did terraforming. The Darrians did a little. There's a few major Imperial and Solomani terradorming projects mentioned in canon. Small scale terraforming (improving parts of already livable worlds) seems to be pretty widespread. But those grand folly projects you express so much scorn for are not really that numerous.


Hans

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

And just how many major terraforming projects is there evidence for in the Classic Era? The Ancients did terraforming.

Pretty much all of their "terraforming" was the in-setting excuse for the inadequacies of the world generation system. Remove those inadequacies, and the Ancients did very little terraforming at all.

The Darrians did a little. There's a few major Imperial and Solomani terradorming projects mentioned in canon. Small scale terraforming (improving parts of already livable worlds) seems to be pretty widespread. But those grand folly projects you express so much scorn for are not really that numerous.

True, there's one in the Solomani Rim (Hephaistos?). Small scale terraforming (e.g. irrigation of deserts) is fine. I'm just saying that once one stops trying to make up crazy excuses to justify global terraforming and just accept that it's going to be too much hassle in the vast majority of cases, one isn't going to see a lot of it.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Yes, but no one had to terraform Virginia or New England, dude.

:)

You keep skipping that bit, Johhny.

Because it isn't particularly relevant.

All settlement involves transforming the environment of the settled area. The question is whether the settlers have two things:

1. The physical ability to to so, and

2. They wish to settle there, for whatever reason, badly enough pay the price/expend the effort to exercise the ability in 1.

[Johnny1A.2]

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.

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!

The third option (given the other two) is completely crazy.

'Crazy' is relative. It depends pretty much entirely on one's frame of reference. Settling North America was crazy for the Pilgrmims, too...from the point of view of economic rationality. They had other motives.

Motives are infinitely variable.

From a cold economic POV, the existence of relatively cheap FTL technology would appear to make terraforming always too expensive to bother with. Yet human history is packed with activities that make no economic sense, yet happened anyway, because economics is subordinate to culture, religion, and politics, once you're past the hard limits of technological possibility and available resources.

And when faced with a completely uninhabitable world, the options become:

1) Skip it and settle elsewhere
2) Colonise it with environmentally sealed habitats.

Terraforming simply isn't worth even considering at all for such worlds.

'Worth' is not a meaningful concept unless you have a specific frame of reference for what is and is not valuable. This varies enormously, even amid different countries, cultures, and religions in the real world today. In a world of multiple galactic cultures, the variation would only be greater.

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

'Crazy' is relative. It depends pretty much entirely on one's frame of reference. Settling North America was crazy for the Pilgrmims, too...from the point of view of economic rationality. They had other motives.

This is terraforming a hostile planet, not settling North America a few hundred years ago. It doesn't compare at all.

Do people even understand the magnitude of what has to be done to terraform a world? It's not just "stick some smokestacks on a planet and leave to cook for a while".

Yet human history is packed with activities that make no economic sense, yet happened anyway, because economics is subordinate to culture, religion, and politics, once you're past the hard limits of technological possibility and available resources.

And culture, religion, and politics are infinitely more fickle that technology. Look at the US Manned Space Program - Apollo died because of politics, and the Space Shuttle ultimately died because of that too - and that's over the timescale of a decade or two. You have projects dying and being born every 4 years or so because of elections. Even dictators die and their "visions" die with them when their replacements come along. Does anyone honestly think that a terraforming project that takes decades or centuries would survive that long?

'Worth' is not a meaningful concept unless you have a specific frame of reference for what is and is not valuable.

Time is valuable. Peoples' effort is valuable. Resources are valuable. That is the case in Traveller, as it is now.

There is absolutely nothing that one can gain from terraforming that isn't there already - you want the planet's resources? Then mine them - it doesn't matter if the atmosphere's breathable or not. You want living space? Dig out some caverns, seal them up, fill them with air. Or build space stations or habitats. Or a honking great dome over a large area. You don't need to change the entire planetary environment to do that.

This is why I think it's a folly. Extremely advanced societies who think nothing of largescale manipulation of matter and megascale engineering projects and have near infinite resources and energy, and who also have nothing better to do may start and finish them, but that's not the OTU.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

This is terraforming a hostile planet, not settling North America a few hundred years ago. It doesn't compare at all.

Do people even understand the magnitude of what has to be done to terraform a world? It's not just "stick some smokestacks on a planet and leave to cook for a while".

In the end, that doesn't matter at all, because the difference is only one of degree.

And yes, the comparison between the settlement of North America is comparable. Or for that matter, the settlement of Europe. Everywhere humans have gone on Earth, outside of our homelands in Africa and the Middle East, we've transformed the environment, sometimes to a degree beyond the wildest dreams of the people who currently live there. We've already significantly transformed Earth, and the process continues.

The fact that terraforming is several orders of magnitude more difficult than anything done in previous history is only an issue of time and scale. It's not a fundamental barrier.

And culture, religion, and politics are infinitely more fickle that technology. Look at the US Manned Space Program - Apollo died because of politics, and the Space Shuttle ultimately died because of that too - and that's over the timescale of a decade or two. You have projects dying and being born every 4 years or so because of elections. Even dictators die and their "visions" die with them when their replacements come along. Does anyone honestly think that a terraforming project that takes decades or centuries would survive that long?

Apollo lived in the first place because of ephemeral politics. It's not really a relevant comparison because it had no deep foundations.

History holds many examples of multi-generational projects that stayed on track. Our current time period, the modern West of the last few centuries, is historically abnormal.

There is absolutely nothing that one can gain from terraforming that isn't there already - you want the planet's resources? Then mine them - it doesn't matter if the atmosphere's breathable or not. You want living space? Dig out some caverns, seal them up, fill them with air. Or build space stations or habitats. Or a honking great dome over a large area. You don't need to change the entire planetary environment to do that.

How is that relevant? The Pilgrims didn't 'need' to do what they did, either...except that for their own reasons, they thought they did. America didn't 'need' to transform much fo the west into irrigated farmland...except that for cultural reasons, our great grandparents and grandparents thought they did. That made no economic sense, either, but involved moving entire rivers thousands of miles, creating artificial lakes bigger than entire counties,
and the expenditure of immense sums over the course of over a century.

The people of early-Western Europe didn't 'need' to build enormous elaborately decorated cathedrals over generations...but they did it. The early monastic orders had no 'need' to go into remote areas and convert wilderness into farmland, but they did it, because they 'needed' it by their own standards. What people 'need' depends on what they believe in, on what they value, all of economics ultimately turns on unmeasurable intangibles.

Trying to apply today's economic, cultural, and religious standards to either the past or the future is an exercise in futility. Motives depend on countless factors that simply can't be calculated outside the frame of reference of a time or place.

Would most groups capable of terraforming opt to do it instead of going elsewhere (assuing both options were available)? Probably not. Can we assume that it won't happen because of that? Nope. Odds are, based on past human history, that some people would find their own reasons to do the 'irrational' thing.

[jeff37923]

I can think of a few circumstances with reasons for terraforming in the OTU.

A) The Ancients - They did a lot of weird things.

B) Minor Races - They do not have jump drive and thus terraforming a nearly habitable world to their lking may be a viable option.

C) Prestige - An interstellar government may elect to terraform a world as a show of political or industrial strength.

D) Low Mass Worlds With Thick Atmospheres - Below a certain mass, a world will lose its atmosphere over a period of time. Worlds in this category use terraforming to build up an acceptable atmosphere for the inhabitants.

None of these violate the consistancy of the OTU canon.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Do people even understand the magnitude of what has to be done to terraform a world? It's not just "stick some smokestacks on a planet and leave to cook for a while".

I won't presume to tell you what is and what isn't realistic in Real Life, but SF literature is chock full of planets that have been terraformed by dumping a carefully selected load of catalysts or bioengineered organisms and waiting for several decades or centuries. So it's defintely a full blown SF trope. I'd say that if it isn't true, it at least ought to be. It's just too good a story not to believe in.


Hans

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by jeff37923

I can think of a few circumstances with reasons for terraforming in the OTU.

A) The Ancients - They did a lot of weird things.

B) Minor Races - They do not have jump drive and thus terraforming a nearly habitable world to their lking may be a viable option.

C) Prestige - An interstellar government may elect to terraform a world as a show of political or industrial strength.

D) Low Mass Worlds With Thick Atmospheres - Below a certain mass, a world will lose its atmosphere over a period of time. Worlds in this category use terraforming to build up an acceptable atmosphere for the inhabitants.

None of these violate the consistancy of the OTU canon.

The problem with trying to calculate whether something is 'likely' is that in any story (or gaming world), the characters are almost always motivated by current-day motives and priorities, even if the story or game is set 1000 years in the future or the past. It's very hard get into the mindset of a person from another culture in our time, it's harder to do so across time, and it's hard to create much sympathy or interest in readers or players for different cultural mindsets.

So the questiona almost always ends up turning into 'Would WE do 'x' if we had those options open to us?' But that limits the possibilities and is very unrealistic.