If humans colonised a new Earth...

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by revelcharlie, Nov 27, 2016.

  1. Wolf Daemon

    Wolf Daemon Active Member

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    Well if you want an accurate answer look to how North America was colonized. People will start plotting out land, setting up homes (if it's sci fi they will most likely be modular homes) and crops. If they find an indigenous species what they do all depends on who is leader of the humans and if the aliens are hostile or not and how advanced they are. You have a lot of research to do.
     
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  2. Wolf Daemon

    Wolf Daemon Active Member

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    You never know what a man is capable of until shit hits the fans.
     
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  3. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    I love zombie threads.
     
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  4. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    About four months. Not long.
     
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  5. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    Kicking the zombie up into action...
    Ability vs want. There's gotta be some squirrel-tentacled elephant-eating plant out there that would sell for a fortune on eBay. And then there's the real estate. Whacking the golf balls off one low-gravity oceanfront and onto a neighboring planet has gotta be worth something to someone. How about it? Wouldn't you fancy spending your retirement years on another world? At all?
    Maybe for a similar reason why people who have lived their entire lives on a planet would want to move to outer space?
    And yet we're going to colonize Mars. Don't you think that by the time we can fly through interstellar gas at relativistic speed, that we'll have technology to comfortably live on planets we can't touch now?
     
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  6. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    "Behold, a fertile world, a mere 20 million light years away."

    "Excellent! Deploy the altered-time-experiencing peace droids."

    "Beep boop, my perception is eternal." *squirrel-tentacled elephant-eating plant appears* "Greetings sentient. Wouldst though live in tandem with our colony- *gets eaten*

    "The colony is besieged!"

    "Inconceivable! Deploy the Space Exploration Protection Fanatics!"

    "SUFFER NOT THE STAGNANT TO LIVE!"
     
  7. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    That was really, really good!
     
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  8. Dr.Meow

    Dr.Meow Contributor Contributor

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    The only reason we would lose the earth and have to colonize other planets is because the unchecked capitalists have destroyed it. Guess what, the only people that would be able to afford going to another planet without being a necessary asset would be the capitalists... The people that can fund such a project in the first place, and don't you know they won't want any "commoners" on their new planet. At risk of going too "conspiracy theorist", this is kinda something you can see happening almost. Also, without naming any names, guess who just donated millions to NASA for colonization projects (hint: he has a desk in the oval office).

    Okay, that's more than enough tinfoil hat for me today...
     
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  9. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    Silly Tumplodytes. An extended stay on Mars would expose the colonists to untold amounts of lobotomizing radiation. The brain damage wouldn't take them very far beyond where they are now... but still.

    Tis Saturn's moon Titan, with it's oceans of ethanol and plastic mountains, where the cradle of the Spacer shall arise.
     
  10. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    Meh. There's some progress in that area that looks promising. Harvard researchers managed to "reduce the functional “age” of muscle tissue" with NAD+ treatments. Human trials are coming up and if it pans out, radiation won't be much of a problem or a problem at all. NASA took the research seriously and requested their data. News outlets are incorrectly describing it as age-reversing or an immortality solution. What it could do is take people out of nursing homes and let them live productive lives again, as well as prevent or reduce radiation damage that you mentioned.
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323141340.htm

    Paper:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867413015213
     
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  11. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    Glorious. We'll need you on our Hearthship.
     
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  12. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Why wouldn't the uber rich want to bring a labor force with them? Even if you go with robots, someone has to build them.
     
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  13. Dr.Meow

    Dr.Meow Contributor Contributor

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    Yes, but only those that are necessary, and this will also allow them a chance to reinstate slave labor as well.
     
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  14. Dnaiel

    Dnaiel Senior Member

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    By that time, I'm pretty sure robots will be building themselves. And they'll do it better than humans could. Heck, they're better drivers already.
     
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  15. Karl Derrick

    Karl Derrick New Member

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    This kind of depends on how realistic you're making it. I'll add my two cents on the reality of things (afaik), and the rest is up to you.

    TL:DR: it would be their doom! But hey that what makes stories interesting. :)

    When dealing with foreign planets, the first thing I say is: remember, if there's no oxygen, there's no fire. :) Since your planet is earth-like, you're alright, but keep that in mind if you ever go for different planets.

    Now, I suppose you're starting out from a point where the interstellar travel is done. One thing to keep in mind about interstellar traveling, though, is that it takes a long time, unless it's a star that's very close, like Proxima Centauri, which is at around 4 light years distance. Would take 4 years of travel at light speed (if that was possible), or around 20-30 years at the current speeds of our space gadgetry. So a spaceship should have self sustainable means (food, water, etc).

    Currently, our astronauts can't stay longer than a few months at the International Space Station lest they start having health problems (and they have to exercise frequently, to keep the body from atrophying due to lack of gravity). I'm not sure how is this ever going to be worked around. They also have to re-adapt to live in gravity when they come back. They feel quite heavy for I-don't-know-how-many hours (if not days).

    Also, while in the spaceship, people don't walk around, they float around. Remember that. :)

    Entering the atmosphere may also be a challenge. I'm totally not the person to speak about that, and I'm not sure that you could just fly in without burning your vessel all the way to hell. If you have to fall in and burn, then how much it would burn I think might depend on the the atmospheric composition, pressure, and gravitational pull. A vessel that was once built to fly (or fall) in earthly gravity might not resist the burn. It would also be a little lighter or heavier now (and heavier can be BAD!).

    Now, the thing about other planets though is that any planet, regardless of how similar to earth it would be, it would probably still be quite inhospitable. It really doesn't take much: you can't survive in the atmospheric composition/pressure that you find at the top of Mount Everest, let alone in the one you'd find in another planet. We evolved to survive in this specific atmospheric composition and pressure, gravitational pull, temperatures and levels of background radiation. (Also in this specific amount of ultra-violets and other solar stuff, but on this I'm just guessing.)

    They could go in with space suits... but they couldn't live on in space suits.

    I guess you could work around this. Maybe your fictional planet is luckily (or maybe they knew it all along) really very similar to earth, to the point that their health would suffer some, but not enough that they couldn't still survive long enough to reproduce and to make it somewhat worthwhile. Eventually, over many generation they would evolve to adapt to the new environment.

    They'd feel lighter or heavier (and grow taller or shorter, and weaker or stronger, over a few generations), depending on whether the gravity was lighter or heavier. You could make it different enough that, upon arrival, they would still remember enough to tell the difference after so many years in zero gravity, or maybe they could just measure it (all travelers should be scientifically trained, for obvious reasons).

    As far as native fauna is concerned, some animals would probably be similar, morphologically, but probably not physiologically. In other words, aliens might look similar on the outside, but not on the inside (you know aliens on TV are bullshit when both their morphology and physiology are exactly that of an earthly mammal - and ET and Superman are, realitically, bullshit).

    This is because flying animals would naturally evolve into the most aerodynamic shapes (depending on their flying and resource gathering patterns), under[liquid] ones would evolve into the most hydrodynamic shapes, and the land animals would evolve more widely into whatever shape is most convenient to where they lived. But on the inside, they might be quite different.

    Also, standing on two legs is not really the most likely thing to happen to animals, as it has some disadvantages over 4. I'm not sure if more than 4 has any advantage over 4.

    Intelligence also doesn't seem to be granted (or even needed). Animals tend to stagnate for as long as their habitat stagnates: hippos have remained hippos for a long, long time, for example. The evolution of the fauna would also be dependent on the sun(s) and moon(s), and the planet's internal factors. Not all animals need eyes, ears, noses, etc, and those who have them, have them at different levels. It depends on whether they ever have light, or ever have dark for some reason, or whether they live under water, etc. A being that lives in a noisy place (if a natural noisy place exists) will probably have little use for ears. I suppose that a being that lives near an active vulcano (with all the gases and smokes) will have less use for a nose.

    So, fish would in some way look like fish, birds would in some way look like birds, and land animals would in some way resemble all the variation you find on earth (which is pretty large). You can account for animals that went in and out of water over time for imagining animals that resemble some of the ones from another type. Wales and hippos are direct cousins, but wales look like fish, and hippos look... amphibious. Dolphins also look like fish, but neither they nor wales are fish. Same logic for bats (and they have eyes, but don't use them). So there can also be quite some overlap in all of this.

    On a related note, the biggest brains are found where gravity doesn't work against them. Takes more resources to maintain a neck that's strong enough to support a bigger brain, unless you live under water. Thus wales are the ones with the biggest brains of all. And just out of curiosity, octopuses have 9 brains.

    As for the flora, I guess it's the more flexible part. Most of it, I'd guess would still feed off of the sun(s), so they'd grow long and upward (if they have to compete with other flora - bushes are short because they grow out in the sun without much competition; under the trees that have less chances, because the trees beet them to it and monopolize the sun. Vines (my blind guess here) may be bushes that evolved to compete with trees). But the rest is left to your imagination. The colors, the smells, the shapes, the insects, the birds, the reproductive ways, etc. Just go wild, I guess.

    As for resources, it's the same thing as here. The periodic table is the same everywhere, although there may be heavier metals we never found that might occur naturally there (they were created at the center of stars that once died, not in the planets themselves, so I don't think that requires an explanation). So I guess chemistry, resource extraction and usage, and all of that, would go pretty much the same way. Depending on the gravity, materials would have a different weight. Notice that most of the periodic table is metals.

    For food... that would probably be quite a bit of a pain. We evolved to eat the stuff that we also artificially selected to be more edible, and there's still a lot of it that isn't 100% healty. Chemistry is quite complex...

    Probably all fauna and flora there would be poison. But since this is fiction, then maybe there could be something that would be at least a bearable enough poison that wouldn't be rejected by the organism (maybe only a few times until the stomach was used to it - and maybe they be pooping thin for a while, and nauseous) or that wound't be damaging enough that they couldn't subsist on it. If they could survive on something, over many generations they'd adapt to it and also adapt it to them. But at the start, on a best case scenario, my guess is that they'd probably be struggling quite a bit. They might be better off feeding off of the ship, assuming they had a way to go back and forth.

    By the way, some animals there might eventually adapt to them as cats and wolves adapted to humans. Wolves stood around humans because humans would throw away edible waste, and humans tolerated them because they kept an eye out on the territory and made noise if anything was intruding. Cats adapted because of farming. Farms attracted rodents, rodents attracted cats, and so they'd hunt there and would keep diseased rodents away, which helped avoid plagues. And they were tolerated by humans because they didn't eat the veggies.

    Eventually they both also evolved into tamed pets.

    I guess that's all I can think off the top of my head. Have fun!
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2017
  16. Dr.Meow

    Dr.Meow Contributor Contributor

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    [​IMG]
    That's a long one...I can't really disagree with much here, but at the same time I'm not sure what to disagree with exactly if I did. He's right though, some things wouldn't be too different depending on the circumstances (or that's what I gathered from this post). Things are the way they are on our planet because that's what works the best. Whether by evolution or creation, it doesn't matter, it would be somewhat similar on another planet. Partially why I always thought it was odd that alien species in sci-fi were so different from animals and humans we have here.
     
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  17. Karl Derrick

    Karl Derrick New Member

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    Eggzactly. One can argue over whether different gravity and all that stuff wouldn't significantly affect how life would evolve elsewhere, but since we've never seen life elsewhere we just have no clue at all. I don't think it's inconceivable that some species could have three legs, though, or some other wild variations. Might be quite funny. :)

    Oh and sorry for the Mother Of All Walls of Text...

    I missed a spot though:

    To build stuff elsewhere, I think we'd probably be better off building off of its resources, and make bricks and boards and stuff like that there. We might take just the necessary tools in the ship to start off with. I guess not just hammers and pickaxes and stuff, but also some carpentry machinery... a forge maybe. Not sure.

    Also, I'm not sure how breathable the dust there would be, considering the dust of our moon isn't very healthy, if I recall correctly.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2017
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  18. Dr.Meow

    Dr.Meow Contributor Contributor

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    I will say that if we had the means to colonize distant, earth-like planets, we wouldn't need things like hammers and pickaxes to build with. Pretty sure we'd have some very advanced technology, not too unlike teleportation in some way, that could build it. Either that, or construction bots, I mean seriously, we'd be pretty freaking advanced just to get to the nearest goldilocks planet anyway. At just under five light-years away, it would take some sort of extreme propulsion to get us there... If we don't have something more lightweight and much more advanced than hammers, then we have no business trying to colonize.
     
  19. Rickard Eriksson

    Rickard Eriksson Member

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    Bacterial environment needs fungi, not sure a alien virus could do any harm to a human though
     
  20. Karl Derrick

    Karl Derrick New Member

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    At 5 light years it's not that big of a deal. Our slowest probe, voyager 1 took some 30 or whatever years to float across 2. If at this point we had a spaceship capable of the current speed of our fastest probes, we'd get to 5 light years in maybe less than that. Remember that in space, mass isn't a nuisance, so it could be as big as we would make it and still use similar thrusters.

    As for the tools, we have all sorts of hammers and screwdrivers, etc. We would need to be more advanced in terms of having enough renewable resources in the ship, and all sorts of stuff, but the tools tend to follow the economical path. Hammers haven't evolved that much because we don't need them to. They simply work, and are sturdy enough and cheap to make. No need for a fancy digital hammer that also serves coffee if your dirty old one still gets those pesky nails where you want them. :)
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2017
  21. Dr.Meow

    Dr.Meow Contributor Contributor

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    I don't want to be a stickler here, but if we can fund a trip to colonize a planet...we can afford some far more efficient tools. True, no need to reinvent the wheel, but I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about disposing of the wheel and making hovercars. No wheels needed. We'd have the equivalent of something like that, only for construction. Our current means of building is not that far from caveman technology, just a bit more advanced. It has room to be overhauled.

    As far as spaceflight, even if it took 20 years to get to alpha centauri, then your primary issue would be convincing someone to spend 20 years on a ship just to do it. Wouldn't happen, and the people would die before then because space does not accommodate life. Zero gravity and extra radiation from all sources would kill us before we got there. Going to need artificial gravity and some form of force field that can reflect the radiation in space, both very advanced techs. It would also be just as easy at that point to have FTL, bending space or something to get there faster. It's a fantasy setting as well, so we could use a bit more imagination without all the realism, and for a book, it would be much more interesting if they had advanced capabilities to colonize other planets. I think any reader would get bored and call bullshit if the writer didn't do something more advanced than our current technology. Just my opinion at least.
     
  22. Karl Derrick

    Karl Derrick New Member

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    In realistic terms, I'm not sure hover-vehicles would ever be much of a thing. Of course I'm just pointing out the real deal as I know it. A fiction writer can always work around certain things in some way. They'd still be a potential failure if the new planet had a substantially heavier gravity.

    I personally might feel interested in a story where tech wasn't as advanced as per usual, or even as the characters would think it was. On one hand because that would create more challenges and maybe help make the story interesting on its own, on the other hand that would fit the notion that we would never predict all of the challenges that colonizing another planet would entail, especially if it was our very first attempt (which I don't know if it's the case in the OPs story). A lot might go wrong that they'd have to overcome on the fly.
     
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  23. Dr.Meow

    Dr.Meow Contributor Contributor

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    The reality of certain tech is not unrealistic, though. There may or not me hovercars, but there is currently the capability to teleport matter from one place to another. First attempt with that failed, guy showed up in a floor...ouch. Since then, they have been much more successful with objects, and will be a long time before they convince a human it's safe again, but it's not impossible. Teleporting raw materials in great quantities from an alien mountain to build with would be a lot more effective than drilling it out.

    All I'm saying is that it is unrealistic to think our technology wouldn't be more advanced by the time we are ready to colonize. We would also spend fabulous amounts of money to ensure that it was successful, and use the most advanced technology to make sure we were able to get there to do it. 20 years of space travel is unrealistic by every measure of the concept. We can't spend more than a few months in space before it starts to become extremely hazardous to health. So in order to make sure we have living beings arriving there you need one of two things. FTL travel which can get us there in a matter of days to weeks. Or proven cryogenics and something that can block the radiation in space, then we'd need to test these things on animals, for example, to make sure that they worked in a zero gravity, high radiation environment. Those are very advanced technologies, not impossible ones, but impossible for today's tech. By the time we have those things, if you still want to tell us that we have nothing more advanced than hammers and pickaxes...then most people would call foul and drop the book, with a lot of criticism against it. It's not about being unrealistic, this is the realistic answer, because there's a very realistic reason we can't colonize other planets right now, for many reasons that mostly include not being advanced enough in technology.
     
  24. Karl Derrick

    Karl Derrick New Member

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    I'm not sure you can teleport materials without drilling them first. Especially considering they are rarely just there for the taking, they're usually under or behind a whole lot of rock or mixed with whatever stuff they're mixed with. Maybe I'm missing something... I played Terraria a lot! :)

    But if you advance tech all the way to cheerful convenience, then the process of settling is probably not going to be the relevant part of your story (or may not be as interesting if it is), because it will mostly just be handed to the characters on a silver plate, as usual.

    The OP mentioned that the story is probably set in a somewhat near future, and them having to escape a dying earth. The earth will only die "naturally" in some 10 billion years if it gets swallowed by the inflating sun as it dies, or else it'll freeze after the sun is "dead". Humans won't be around in 10 billion years anyway. If there are any living things, humans will be a long forgotten species.

    So that would imply a more immediate threat, and regardless of how pressing matters would be, they'd still need at least quite a few decades to come up with proper thought out planning and proper equipment or rushed planning and equipment. This would likely be mainly a scientific endeavor, not a privatized one like our moon colonization is (where private profit-driven companies are the ones trying to get at it).

    But even if you had plenty of time, you'd still be under pressure of a threat, and so teleportation, warp drives, hovercars, and all that fancy stuff would very unlikely be among your concerns. Regardless of how thought out your planning would be, you'd plan for the worse, and concentrate on the logistics and the survival inside a space ship first, in case that cozy planet you're aiming for turned out to not be exactly what spectrometers showed you, but rather hostile in terms of fauna, a poisonous atmosphere (very likely), natural climate or even earthquakes and vulcanos, which would force you to keep roaming around in space looking for other planets.

    You'd need a Plan B (some alternative planet). The spaceship would have to have its scientific labs and telescopes and spectrometers, etc, just in case plan B also failed. It would have to have food production, and it would have to have space for a lot of people, though not anywhere near 7.5 billion (it would be subject of extreme controversy on earth too, the decision of who gets to go - I wonder if some people wouldn't try to make a profit making it all sound like fear-mongering, and delay your efforts). It would have to be quite like a city in itself.

    You'd also focus on settling on the planet, and you might develop some new clever yet specific tools, but your main concerns would go along with the ones you already have, and focus on how to use the resources of that planet to build stuff in to the ways that are already proven to work. It would be a risky shot in the dark (or in the foot) to be developing new technology without a clear degree of certainty that it would be cheaper or just as costly to replace and maintain, and significantly more effective.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2017
  25. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Voyager has not traveled 2 light years. We don't have any propulsion systems that go that fast.
    Per JPL:
     

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