1. Defender

    Defender New Member

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    Accurate date writing, how?

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Defender, Feb 19, 2016.

    Hi again fellow writers,I know I must be turning into an eye sore with my eternal questions, and I thank you for you patience, all of your advice has been FUNDAMENTAL and extremely helpful to me but i have been working on a timeline for my story to help navigate through the fiction and also make it easy for myself and others to see the direction in which I am taking the story, but the major issue in doing this is dates! I have absolutely no idea how to do this! If any one can help the first question would be if the first two events are the formation of a NASA like org. and the innovation of terraforming technology how far apart would these events be in a realistic scenario, like I mean I know that it would take hundreds of years to terraform, but how long until the technology to do it is developed? A hundred years? Forty years? Any ideas would have greatly appreciated and welcomed!
    Thanks for your time!
     
  2. Defender

    Defender New Member

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    Okay so i was able to determine, thanks to Penfist that terraforming technology could be achieved in less then three decades. So after the technology is discovered and humans begin to colonize planets, how much time would go bye before they would discover alien artifacts on them?
     
  3. Penfist

    Penfist Member

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    I'm going to weigh in again and clear something up: my three decades was speculation based on what I know about current human technology and presupposing the following: a) major government support and funding b) no disruptive events happening geopolitically that would derail a massive research effort and c) a target planet near enough earth to be realistic (has to be Mars at the moment)

    Which begs the question: are there alien artifacts waiting to be discovered on Mars?
     
  4. Defender

    Defender New Member

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    Oh no, don't get me wrong this story is not meant to be accurate in real life, it is a science fiction theme, so the date you gave is fine, because i did not say it was a real-time estimate, I merely stated I have determined the date for my fictional story.
     
  5. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I echo @Penfist as regards the difference between when a technology is theoretically achievable/have-able and when said technology actually finds itself used. Did you know that electric cars and internal combustion engines came about at roughly the same time at the turn of the 20th century? Did you know that pure electric cars again made a very brief appearance on the market in the late 1990's only to be swiftly and silently disappeared from the market again? Did you know there's a whole debate as to why that happened? Just because we can do a thing doesn't mean we will do it. Sooooo many other factors come into play. Even if the technology is technically feasible, is it economically possible? Will said technology destabilize preexisting economic dynamics (electric cars vs. oil producing nations)? Electric cars have been a thing for over a 100 years now and we're just now seeing them hit the market (and stay on the market).

    One of my biggest pet peeves in Science Fiction - the genre I love so much - is the idea that the amazingly different, super-mega-fantastic sci-fi future is just a few decades away. It never, ever, ever plays out that way. People in the 1950's were totally assured that you and I would be living in space stations or on other planets today in 2016. In the film Bladerunner, the inception date of the replicant Pris was just this past Valentine's Day, February 14, 2016. But, as I look around, nope, no off-world colonies, no replicants, no Bladerunners, no flying cars, none of that.

    [​IMG]

    And Roy was made just a few week before that....

    [​IMG]
     
  6. DeadMoon

    DeadMoon The light side of the dark side Contributor

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    I watch this guy a lot on you tube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogrSQkBJn1KF0N9I4oM7eQ

    you may have to sift through on videos but there is a lot of good real life info on space and technology.
     

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