I would think geothermal activity would be something not to get too close to, given the potential for the planet wiping out the colony on short notice if it's having a bad day. And since we're talking about a young planet, geologically speaking, there's bound to be a fair amount of volcanic activity and even tectonic shifting. That's why I figure there's just one Pangaea type of continent.
I agree the minerals and ores would be important, which means of course that we would need some sort of prefab equipment for boring and for processing what we find. Again, such a camp probably should be located a safe distance from the colony because of the nature of the work.
If the materials are readily enough available, I would suggest building a number of habitats, so that ecosystems of savannah, tropical and other life can be established early on. That would be a structural engineering feat, though, since we would need a lot of space to get the ecosystem established properly, something close to a thousand square miles per ecosystem.
And no concrete bases, either. They found at Biosphere 2 that concrete takes decades to cure, and in a closed system it gradually causes the air to go anoxic. Perhaps we would grind the top 10 feet of soil into small rocks and rock dust -- more prefab equipment -- and secure the supports into the rock beneath somehow, then dome the entire enclosure. Probably should do the rock grinding anyway, just so we can start creating alien soil.
And of course that means we'll need compost or some earthly soil to help establish the soil on our alien world, which will be bereft of life. So we'll need to pack a ton of that -- several tons, actually. Maybe a cubic mile? That should allow us to create an inch or two of top soil over a lot of surface area, and two to three inches of top soil in our farming areas.
If concrete becomes necessary for the bases, we'll need a way to correct the oxygen problem, since the plants won't be able to support the ecosystem and cure the concrete at the same time. Maybe we could supply each ecosystem with a mechanical air converter, or with a supply of liquid oxygen that can be released when levels in the air start to get too low.
I think it really would be necessary to do more than wait for the algae to convert the atmosphere for us.
Showing posts with label acheron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acheron. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
colonizing space amid alien life
Would you take part in colonizing another world? It's meant as a serious sci-fi question.
I myself would love to, and probably if it were to come when I was in my early 20s, I would jump at the chance. Now that I'm 33, married and have two children -- and all that that entails -- reality almost certainly would prevent me from leaving, since that would mean uprooting all of us from all our friends, family and loved ones. The separation would be too irrevocable, and I don't think I'd be able to content myself just with lightspeed communication, given the number of years that would pass between communiques.
And since superluminal travel is out of the question, well, like I said, I couldn't see myself doing such a thing at this point in my life, though I would always think wistfully of our distant kin.
My initial thought would be a world where there is no other life, but the question of intelligent life on other worlds is an interesting one.
Someone -- I think it was Beethoven Brucker -- mentioned a story where a Christian missionary tried to bring the gospel to an alien race, who had no understanding of the Christian concept of sin. The evangelism didn't go very well. The aliens were utterly freaked out, and ended up crucifying the missionary, thereby introducing their own fall.
Ray Bradbury has done two stories on the subject. In one, "The Man," he has a crew of astronauts landing on a world where Christ has just been and just departed. I don't remember much else about it. I think it was included in "The October Country." His second one was in "The Martian Chronicles," and showed a missionary trying and utterly failing to interest the Martians in his religion since it was something they had no use for.
Some time ago I toyed with the idea of a story around space travelers encountering intelligent life on other worlds, only to discover that the intelligent life in question is human, having been there since humanity was scattered after the Tower of Babel. Still might be a story worth developing at some time.
In any event, I think the question of bringing sin to other planets is a moot one. I don't think there is life elsewhere, and if we talk about a barren planet, I don't think the planet will suffer much for being awakened by life. If there is life elsewhere, I rather imagine it's fallen too. If not, true, we would bring our own sin to it, but think of what we could learn of grace by mingling with an unfallen people.
I myself would love to, and probably if it were to come when I was in my early 20s, I would jump at the chance. Now that I'm 33, married and have two children -- and all that that entails -- reality almost certainly would prevent me from leaving, since that would mean uprooting all of us from all our friends, family and loved ones. The separation would be too irrevocable, and I don't think I'd be able to content myself just with lightspeed communication, given the number of years that would pass between communiques.
And since superluminal travel is out of the question, well, like I said, I couldn't see myself doing such a thing at this point in my life, though I would always think wistfully of our distant kin.
My initial thought would be a world where there is no other life, but the question of intelligent life on other worlds is an interesting one.
Someone -- I think it was Beethoven Brucker -- mentioned a story where a Christian missionary tried to bring the gospel to an alien race, who had no understanding of the Christian concept of sin. The evangelism didn't go very well. The aliens were utterly freaked out, and ended up crucifying the missionary, thereby introducing their own fall.
Ray Bradbury has done two stories on the subject. In one, "The Man," he has a crew of astronauts landing on a world where Christ has just been and just departed. I don't remember much else about it. I think it was included in "The October Country." His second one was in "The Martian Chronicles," and showed a missionary trying and utterly failing to interest the Martians in his religion since it was something they had no use for.
Some time ago I toyed with the idea of a story around space travelers encountering intelligent life on other worlds, only to discover that the intelligent life in question is human, having been there since humanity was scattered after the Tower of Babel. Still might be a story worth developing at some time.
In any event, I think the question of bringing sin to other planets is a moot one. I don't think there is life elsewhere, and if we talk about a barren planet, I don't think the planet will suffer much for being awakened by life. If there is life elsewhere, I rather imagine it's fallen too. If not, true, we would bring our own sin to it, but think of what we could learn of grace by mingling with an unfallen people.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
oxygenating atmosphere on acheron
The idea of using algae to assist in creating the appropriate atmosphere has occurred to me, but my concern there would be that it will take millions of years to reach the point that the atmosphere is breathable if algae are the only or even primary means of changing the atmosphere. You would need to seed the ocean and other major bodies of water, obviously, but it's going to take forever for them to reproduce enough to make a major difference, especially since a lot of the oxygen they produce is just going to be absorbed by the water anyway. It's only after the water reaches the saturation point with oxygen that it's really going to start entering the atmosphere.
Aquatic plants also would need to be down below the surface far enough to block out the ultraviolet light until an ozone layer had developed. Most likely the initial colonies of marine life will be in something like Sea World, with an eye toward eventually releasing the animals into the wild once the food chain has reached the point that it can support the larger animals. But with an ocean of the size we're talking about, I imagine we're talking about thousands of years without a major concerted effort.
I'm thinking some sort of apparatus would be needed that could be mounted on the continent's rocky surface, or rather embedded in the surface. I'm also imagining that if it's going to make any sort of progress in changing the atmosphere, it's going to move a tremendous volume of air in a very short period, kicking up whirlwinds everywhere, and probably igniting the gases in the current atmosphere as the oxygen is let loose.
Obviously not something our colonists will want to live right next to.
Probably they would be in a dome-covered hometown, maybe five square miles or so, so they can establish a farming ecology until they can open the dome or build other dome-covered habitats. But you're going to need a lot more than five square miles to establish a healthy, self-sustaining ecology.
As to the tigon question, my understanding is that tigons are one of the results of crossing tigers and lions. (The other being a liger.)
But am I correct in thinking that cheetahs, leopards and panthers also are capable of interbreeding with lions and tigers? I remember hearing a while ago that ecologists were distressed to discover that the Florida panther had gone extinct -- not by being hunted to death, but by interbreeding with other great cats so that the Florida panther genome no longer existed.
I remember talking the point with my high school biology teacher. If the basis for calling two animals different species is based solely on their appearance or the differing habitats they prefer, then they're not really separate species. They're just different breeds or populations of the same species, with perhaps different grooming or mating habits or a different social structure, but that's it. It's just sloppy taxonomy to insist on classifying them separately.
Aquatic plants also would need to be down below the surface far enough to block out the ultraviolet light until an ozone layer had developed. Most likely the initial colonies of marine life will be in something like Sea World, with an eye toward eventually releasing the animals into the wild once the food chain has reached the point that it can support the larger animals. But with an ocean of the size we're talking about, I imagine we're talking about thousands of years without a major concerted effort.
I'm thinking some sort of apparatus would be needed that could be mounted on the continent's rocky surface, or rather embedded in the surface. I'm also imagining that if it's going to make any sort of progress in changing the atmosphere, it's going to move a tremendous volume of air in a very short period, kicking up whirlwinds everywhere, and probably igniting the gases in the current atmosphere as the oxygen is let loose.
Obviously not something our colonists will want to live right next to.
Probably they would be in a dome-covered hometown, maybe five square miles or so, so they can establish a farming ecology until they can open the dome or build other dome-covered habitats. But you're going to need a lot more than five square miles to establish a healthy, self-sustaining ecology.
As to the tigon question, my understanding is that tigons are one of the results of crossing tigers and lions. (The other being a liger.)
But am I correct in thinking that cheetahs, leopards and panthers also are capable of interbreeding with lions and tigers? I remember hearing a while ago that ecologists were distressed to discover that the Florida panther had gone extinct -- not by being hunted to death, but by interbreeding with other great cats so that the Florida panther genome no longer existed.
I remember talking the point with my high school biology teacher. If the basis for calling two animals different species is based solely on their appearance or the differing habitats they prefer, then they're not really separate species. They're just different breeds or populations of the same species, with perhaps different grooming or mating habits or a different social structure, but that's it. It's just sloppy taxonomy to insist on classifying them separately.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
mission: acheron
The scenario: You're preparing a ship that will travel at relativistic speeds to another star system with the express purpose of terraforming and colonizing another world. (We'll call it Acheron.) Figure it has lunar mass similar to ours to create a breathably thin atmosphere, gravity that is about 1.1 times Earth's gravity, and a single giant continent, with water covering about 65 percent of the world. Here's the catch: There is no life on this planet, which has a reducing (rather than oxydizing) atmosphere. Going on the old earth model, it's what our planet was two or three billion years ago. The land mass has cooled and solidified from the incessant rain, but the atmosphere at the moment is incapable of supporting terran life.
Obviously, that's your goal.
You have a crew of four dozen colonists, each trained in a scientific discipline that will be helpful to colonization or terraforming, and each possessing other abilities and interests that will allow useful diversions like entertainment. In cryogenic storage, you are taking the embryos of every known animal species1 so you can establish and maintain balanced ecosystems, you are taking seeds from every known plant species,2 as well as representatives of the Earth's other taxanomical kingdoms, as well as various other bits of equipment and machinery you will need.3
What equipment will you take? What sort of timetable do you project for each stage of the project? When will people be able to live on the planet? How do you see the colony developing?
One nice thing I see: very little in the way of transmittable disease. Since all the animals are being shipped as embryos, there will be no cases of avian flu or other such illnesses being passed up the food chain. The human colony also should be free of most extant human illnesses, since colonists presumably would be healthy when they depart. What illnesses do surface would be due more to genetics, nutrition and environmental contaminants, rather than viruses or bacteria. The first generation of animals probably will be somewhat retarded mentally, being as they'll be incubated and will lack the benefits of a placenta or the equivelant in their phylum, but even that will sort itself out in a generation or two.
1 For purposes of simplification and to reduce costs, a species will be considered any two animals that can breed and produce offspring capable of breeding. Therefore, the "dogs" will be a genetic mix of all Earth's interbreedable dog species, including wolves, coyotes, dingoes, jackals and Canis familiaris. Similarly, tigons -- not lions and tigers -- are the great cat represented. (I think other great cats like leopards and cheetahs also may be interbreedable here, but I'm not sure.)* The scientific assumption behind this is that habitat and natural selection are what led to the species divergence here on Earth, and that process will duplicate itself elsewhere. As for pedigree among domesticated animals, don't count on it. The wider the variety genetically, the healthier the herd.
2 Again, some consolidation is likely. I'm not as familiar with the taxonomy of Plantae, but I imagine some of the same geographical biases in species designation have come into play there as well.
3 Machinery obviously will be more advanced than anything we now have at the dawn of the 21st century, but should be theoretically achievable. I'd accept giant machines capable of producing chemical changes in the air to produce oxygen, for example, but not warp drive, transporters or replicators. I'm talking sci-fi here, not science fantasy.
* Does anyone know of any other such combinations? This is actually an interesting point for me, because I think it's relevant for discussions of Noah's ark. If tigers and lions are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring -- as they are -- I would argue that they better are classified as breeds of the same species, rather than as separate species. Keeping that sort of thing in mind, it quickly becomes obvious that the task of getting the animals on the Ark wasn't quite as impossible as some skeptics claim.
Obviously, that's your goal.
You have a crew of four dozen colonists, each trained in a scientific discipline that will be helpful to colonization or terraforming, and each possessing other abilities and interests that will allow useful diversions like entertainment. In cryogenic storage, you are taking the embryos of every known animal species1 so you can establish and maintain balanced ecosystems, you are taking seeds from every known plant species,2 as well as representatives of the Earth's other taxanomical kingdoms, as well as various other bits of equipment and machinery you will need.3
What equipment will you take? What sort of timetable do you project for each stage of the project? When will people be able to live on the planet? How do you see the colony developing?
One nice thing I see: very little in the way of transmittable disease. Since all the animals are being shipped as embryos, there will be no cases of avian flu or other such illnesses being passed up the food chain. The human colony also should be free of most extant human illnesses, since colonists presumably would be healthy when they depart. What illnesses do surface would be due more to genetics, nutrition and environmental contaminants, rather than viruses or bacteria. The first generation of animals probably will be somewhat retarded mentally, being as they'll be incubated and will lack the benefits of a placenta or the equivelant in their phylum, but even that will sort itself out in a generation or two.
1 For purposes of simplification and to reduce costs, a species will be considered any two animals that can breed and produce offspring capable of breeding. Therefore, the "dogs" will be a genetic mix of all Earth's interbreedable dog species, including wolves, coyotes, dingoes, jackals and Canis familiaris. Similarly, tigons -- not lions and tigers -- are the great cat represented. (I think other great cats like leopards and cheetahs also may be interbreedable here, but I'm not sure.)* The scientific assumption behind this is that habitat and natural selection are what led to the species divergence here on Earth, and that process will duplicate itself elsewhere. As for pedigree among domesticated animals, don't count on it. The wider the variety genetically, the healthier the herd.
2 Again, some consolidation is likely. I'm not as familiar with the taxonomy of Plantae, but I imagine some of the same geographical biases in species designation have come into play there as well.
3 Machinery obviously will be more advanced than anything we now have at the dawn of the 21st century, but should be theoretically achievable. I'd accept giant machines capable of producing chemical changes in the air to produce oxygen, for example, but not warp drive, transporters or replicators. I'm talking sci-fi here, not science fantasy.
* Does anyone know of any other such combinations? This is actually an interesting point for me, because I think it's relevant for discussions of Noah's ark. If tigers and lions are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring -- as they are -- I would argue that they better are classified as breeds of the same species, rather than as separate species. Keeping that sort of thing in mind, it quickly becomes obvious that the task of getting the animals on the Ark wasn't quite as impossible as some skeptics claim.
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