Terraforming, Quantification, Techniques and Limitations.

After posting so much on the habitable planets thread, I thought that Iwould start this thread. Mygoal here istosmall get past the instinctive arm flapping and actually crunch the numbers to put the problems in context of a society that has the fusion rocket propelled colony ship at their disposal.

And thank you COACH! No matter where you go, there you are. I think even the very close nearly perfect colony planet candidates will require some terra forming. It is all the little dinky stuff that will kill you dead dead dead. A good novel on the Manti plague era would be good reading and a great clean canvas.

Another possible good canvas would be the Grayson disasters in greater detail and all they had to do and how close they came to just walking away from THAT planet. I think perfect planets will be IMPOSSIBLE to find because they do not exist. Thus the terra forming requirements ...plus the genetic tweeking of people.

HB of CJ (old coot) My opinions only and thank you. I LOVE this forum.

It's an interesting question. It also depends a little on when the terra forming starts? Ie: Does the survey ship that discovers the planet drop a "seed torpedo", do the colonists start with dome living while terra forming

Annachie wrote:It's an interesting question. It also depends a little on when the terra forming starts? Ie: Does the survey ship that discovers the planet drop a "seed torpedo", do the colonists start with dome living while terra forming

Based on the assumption that the planet had a CO2 atmosphere comparable to Earth's, I had estimated a minimum energy input to terraform at somewhere on the order of 1eex23 Joules. Currently, global photosynthesis is only about 40eex12 Watts so we would need somewhere around 2eex9 seconds or a minimum of 200 years for biological processes to do the job. I suspect that the process would take far longer. If the atmosphere is too dense, then biological terraforming takes forever.

In a lot of Sci Fi, planets are portrayed as being mono climatic. A planet is described as being hot or cold, wet or dry, as if these descriptions are accurate everywhere.

However; the Earth is hot and cold as well aa wet and dry depending on location.

If a planet is "hot" because it is on the inner edge of the habitability zone, the polar regions might be merely tropical or subtropical.

Similarly, if the planet is "cold" because the planet is on the outer edge of the habitability zone, then the equitorial zone might still have temperate or even Mediterranean climate.

Of course humans can always adjust the heat balance of a planet by installing an orbiting ring of of mirrors to reflect away excess sun or collect more light to correct for a lack of sun.

namelessfly wrote:In a lot of Sci Fi, planets are portrayed as being mono climatic. A planet is described as being hot or cold, wet or dry, as if these descriptions are accurate everywhere.

Well, the same is true of any number of non-SF films and media, really.

I don't think it would be practical for survey ships to do a general seeding of a newly discoverd - and close to Earth like- planet. How many tons of seeds and spores could you fit in something that you could soft-land or even do a long, log pass to broadcast said materials?

Grayson's survey had it looking like a good planet. It even had a good breathable air mix. The problem was the heavy metal concentrations in the air, soil and everything else which was NOT picked up by the survey ship sensors. I am presuming here that they didn't land any team from the survey ship and possibly didn't land a few probes to get good readings.

A potential problem with pre-seeding a planet with Earth specific life (even at the seed and spore level) is that you give dozens if not hundred of years for the Earth organisms and the local organism to experiment with each other. Does one kill off the other? Do some combine in unexpected ways and create something very bad for either the local life or the eventually to arrive Humans plus their plants and livestock?

In the present condtion of the Honorverse with hyper-space travel, it would seem prudent to bring what you think you are going to need with you AFTER getting a really good and on-the-ground in multiple locations survey of the enviornment.

Was Yeltsin star even surveyed beyond telescopic examination from Sol system? Really big telescopes in orbit with apertures of of kilometres should be able to image planets and get spectroscopic data to confirm an oxygen atmosphere. Interferometer with baselines measured in AUs should image continents.

Brigade XO wrote:I don't think it would be practical for survey ships to do a general seeding of a newly discoverd - and close to Earth like- planet. How many tons of seeds and spores could you fit in something that you could soft-land or even do a long, log pass to broadcast said materials?

Grayson's survey had it looking like a good planet. It even had a good breathable air mix. The problem was the heavy metal concentrations in the air, soil and everything else which was NOT picked up by the survey ship sensors. I am presuming here that they didn't land any team from the survey ship and possibly didn't land a few probes to get good readings.

A potential problem with pre-seeding a planet with Earth specific life (even at the seed and spore level) is that you give dozens if not hundred of years for the Earth organisms and the local organism to experiment with each other. Does one kill off the other? Do some combine in unexpected ways and create something very bad for either the local life or the eventually to arrive Humans plus their plants and livestock?

In the present condtion of the Honorverse with hyper-space travel, it would seem prudent to bring what you think you are going to need with you AFTER getting a really good and on-the-ground in multiple locations survey of the enviornment.

Brigade XO wrote:Grayson's survey had it looking like a good planet. It even had a good breathable air mix. The problem was the heavy metal concentrations in the air, soil and everything else which was NOT picked up by the survey ship sensors. I am presuming here that they didn't land any team from the survey ship and possibly didn't land a few probes to get good readings.

Grayson was not surveyed. The colony set out purely on faith that they would find a habitable planet.

SWM wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Grayson's survey had it looking like a good planet. It even had a good breathable air mix. The problem was the heavy metal concentrations in the air, soil and everything else which was NOT picked up by the survey ship sensors. I am presuming here that they didn't land any team from the survey ship and possibly didn't land a few probes to get good readings.

Grayson was not surveyed. The colony set out purely on faith that they would find a habitable planet.

That's what I thought.

And (assuming the timeline on the honorverse wiki is right) the Grayson colony set out over 400 years before the first hyper drive was testing. So long, long, before the era of FTL survey ships scouting planets for sub-light colonization (the model for Manticore's settlement)

In general a sub-light survey trip is improbable because of the time required.