InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "i become filthy mouse!"

Phoenix (凤凰) (spacelogic) wrote,
@ 2009-10-09 18:26:00

Current mood:

creative

contemplating new sci-fi story
Story idea of the day I'll never get around to writing down: gay bazillionaire, fed up with homophobes and hungry for adventure, founds colony on [suitable planet or moon, terraformed if necessary] as a haven for LGBT people who are not welcomed on Earth. Within a decade, however, it has fallen into civil war, split into a ridiculous number of factions. The white gay men, as the ruling class, are hugely unpopular with the other groups in the society, but said groups can't overcome their differences and work together any more than they could on Earth. Instead, they form gangs based on insignificant differences: the lesbians who believe in butch/femme dynamics control the most territory, but the tenuous alliance between the genderqueer factions and the various transgender gangs against them manages to counter them fairly well, and of course the bisexual outcasts can't be overlooked. It's an all-queer dystopia, and I think it ends up with the entire colony dying horribly, possibly in an explosion.

In other news, I changed distros again. I'm contemplating a post about Linux (why I use it) but I'm not sure I'm ready.

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	shadowvalkyrie 2009-10-10 09:11 am UTC (link)
	That sounds very awesome! Especially in the light of recent politics in your place, you should write it! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	spacelogic 2009-10-10 08:16 pm UTC (link)
	I don't really need another excuse to procrastinate, but I'll see what I can do. ...want to beta if I do get anything out? >:-D (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	shadowvalkyrie 2009-10-11 08:09 am UTC (link)
	Due to language barrier etc, I'd be a bad beta, but I'd love to read it and tell you my opinion. ":-) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	spacelogic 2009-10-12 01:09 am UTC (link)
	Pfft, rubbish; your English is better than a hefty percentage of native speakers'. I'll send it by when I get it to a stopping point (or the end, if that's the stopping point) -- I've been putting off my homework this weekend too much. shifty expression (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

shadowvalkyrie
2009-10-13 04:40 pm UTC (link)

Pfft, rubbish; your English is better than a hefty percentage of native speakers'.

This sentence kept me in a good mood for the entirety of a very troubling yesterday, thank you! *beams* (I still shouldn't beta for anything but content, though, or you'd get it back full of amusing Britishisms.) *g*

I've been putting off my homework this weekend too much. *shifty expression*

I've been procrastinating since February... Can you top that?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	spacelogic 2009-10-14 06:04 pm UTC (link)
	Not without failing everything, no. Our system doesn't work that way. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	beccastareyes 2009-10-12 03:31 am UTC (link)
	If you need any setting details or me BSing about terraforming, I'm happy to volunteer. (Reply to this) (Thread)

spacelogic
2009-10-12 06:17 am UTC (link)

That would be ace, as I'm afraid my enthusiasm for space far outstrips my knowledge. Primary questions I can think of right now are:

1) I could do the classic Mars colony story, which would require a bit less concentration because the gravity change is relatively small. On the other hand, I'm kind of interested in looking into a gas giant's moon, if I can find a logical candidate, because it makes more sense to me that a private citizen could get away with building a colony on one.

2) Do I want to have them be trying to create a full atmosphere, etc. or just do the protective structure cop-out, or combine the two? Currently I've got the construction happening within one guy's adult life, but since I haven't set a date on it I can handwave technological advances, I think.

Your Professional Scientific Feedback would be most useful.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

beccastareyes
2009-10-12 02:13 pm UTC (link)

1) The problem with gas giant moons is that they are mostly made of a mix of rock and ice. The exceptions are Io and Europa, which are also in Jupiter's radiation field -- you'd have to live underground. (That and Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system right now.)

Titan would be interesting, since really you only have to deal with the temperature and the unbreathable atmosphere -- well, and the fact the heat from settlements would melt the crust, and that solar power is useless. The others you could probably at least get a transient atmosphere, but you'd want to keep the temperature down to keep the crust from melting. Solar power would be slightly more useful, but these are places were we send

NASA would also throw a royal fit if Europa, Enceladus and Titan were touched before scientists could catalog them -- those are considered the most likely candidates for astrobiology.

Ceres might work as it's at least a rock and may contain some water bound up in it, but the gravity is weak, and you wouldn't have much to make an atmosphere out of.

I've also heard of fanciful ideas about building floating cities on Venus -- at Earth pressures, the temperatures aren't bad, and an Earth atmosphere would float on Venus (the oxygen-nitrogen mix is lighter than CO2).

2. As I mentioned above, I've heard of Mars terraforming ideas that just try to warm the planet and thicken the atmosphere (since the source is CO2 from the poles, these go hand in hand). The benefits are that liquid water can then exist on the surface, you can engineer plants to start producing oxygen, build large domes (less of a pressure difference, so there's less work to support it), not worry so much about the radiation, and go outside with only a breath mask.

The problem is that modern ideas are decreasing the amount of CO2 bound up on the surface. Most studies have assumed that the CO2 was stuck as carbonate rocks, like it is on Earth, but it's looking like more and more the CO2 was lost to space thanks to interactions with the solar wind. So, you'd need to find another way to get the gases you need. (That's a problem on a lot of places -- at least on the icy satellites you can just disassociate water and ammonia ice.)

Granted, any site with heavy infrastructure is harder to toss into anarchy, because that needs to be maintained. So any partial efforts are probably going to revert once things go to pot -- especially if the grounds have different ideas about terraforming. Also, it would confine people to certain areas -- which could work. If the different groups could spread out all over Mars or Titan or wherever, there might be less conflict than if there's only a limited amount of space. It could also mean that the PTBs (or others with resources) could use new construction as a favor to groups they want to attract as allies, or people they want to persuade to join their side*.

* I.e. a bisexual woman might not mention she likes men if the lesbians have better stuff and she's sick of starving. There's something very ironic about that.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	spacelogic 2009-10-12 08:19 pm UTC (link)
	Ooh, thanks -- that gives me a lot more to start from. I'll probably ask for more details when I think I've worked out what direction I want to go in, but I kind of have two weeks' worth of math homework I should be doing now, so I'm not allowed to do fun writing right now, so that'll have to wait for now. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	beccastareyes 2009-10-12 08:21 pm UTC (link)
	No problem. Rambling about space stuff is my favorite form of procrastination. (Reply to this) (Parent)