Quote from: Sigmund;367781I can see how they might be tents, but they might also be something else. If they are tents, I would doubt anyone would actually be living out of them because it's frickin Mars. Maybe shading some sort of equipment. Or, they aren't actually tents. Maybe Solar energy collectors.

That's what I was thinking. More like tarps covering six-wheeled tractors, piles of rusting, stacked piping, and some metal crates with corporate logos on them. The structure itself is much bigger than it looks, since it goes down into the planet another mile or so, with a huge geothermal reactor down there. With no gasoline or obvious solar paneling, this'd be how they would power the whole place, I'd think.

I love threads like this. Creative shit.

-=Grim=-

I've always thought of using that pic as the location for some future game session. At some point I'll even try to draw a regular or hex map version of it.

The terraforming situation I think would be a nice backdrop or 'B' storyline for my Martian Civil War/Rebellion for Independence idea if I ever got that campaign to happen.

The terraformers & terraforming corporations involved would be one of three or four main stories or groups interacting and conflicting in the campaign setting.


- Ed C.

I doubt it's terraforming, since to keep an atmosphere on Mars you'd have to increase the gravity.  If it is terraforming it's after we developed the technology to shoot a solid iron asteroid the size of Mount Everest into the core of Mars and not destroy the planet.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;416850I doubt it's terraforming, since to keep an atmosphere on Mars you'd have to increase the gravity.  If it is terraforming it's after we developed the technology to shoot a solid iron asteroid the size of Mount Everest into the core of Mars and not destroy the planet.  

Not necessarily true - you could teraform Mars *if* you could somehow keep pumping out enough atmosphere to balance the sublimation loss.

I'd say if you wanted to have a "blue Mars" it'd probably be at least 500 years from now, conservatively.

Quote from: Werekoala;416949.................
I'd say if you wanted to have a "blue Mars" it'd probably be at least 500 years from now, conservatively.

So, circa 2505 to 2515 then ?
 Damn.

 Was hoping to set things a tad earlier in the timeline than that.

For the factions or groups in the setting I 've got : 1)Colonists, 2) Earth Colonial office & their troops, 3) The Terraformers, 4) Religious types with homemade spacesuits, 5) 'Rebel' colonists (Small at first in the campaign but their numbers grow over the course of things), 6) various scientists in small groups exploring Mars - including some Archeologists hoping to find ruined structures.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;416952So, circa 2505 to 2515 then ?
 Damn.

 Was hoping to set things a tad earlier in the timeline than that.

For the factions or groups in the setting I 've got : 1)Colonists, 2) Earth Colonial office & their troops, 3) The Terraformers, 4) Religious types with homemade spacesuits, 5) 'Rebel' colonists (Small at first in the campaign but their numbers grow over the course of things), 6) various scientists in small groups exploring Mars - including some Archeologists hoping to find ruined structures.


- Ed C.

Well it doesn't have to be 500 years if we don't create the tech ourselves, remember Total Recall.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;416850I doubt it's terraforming, since to keep an atmosphere on Mars you'd have to increase the gravity.  If it is terraforming it's after we developed the technology to shoot a solid iron asteroid the size of Mount Everest into the core of Mars and not destroy the planet.  

The estimates I've read said that after Mars had a significant atmosphere, it would last about 250 years without further work.

I actually had an idea for how to get around that for a short story that i never wrote. If we can terraform Mars, why not just dome the bitch? Or, rather, build struts all over the whole planet to hold up roof made of flat panes of something like a more elastic diamond, which in turn holds in the atmosphere.  Dot it with periodic docking stations, and ships land on the roof.

You could go a few ways with the concept; a nanotech-built seamless crystal sphere, or a lower tech (as per your illustration) latticework where you see the carbon or whatever frames between the panes. The second one might have a uniform height over the terrain- maybe just high enough to allow for weather and precipitation so it doesn't have to be regulated by people or bots.

It could be engineered to give a good greenhouse effect, and since Mars doesn't (as far as I know) have ANY tectonic activity, the only things to worry about would be meteor strikes and space dust. Bots could be deployed to repair them and clean up.

Now, an engineer is probably barfing on himself at this "stupid" idea, but it passes the plausibility test for me; the low gravity on Mars should allow for higher structures, etc.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;416976Now, an engineer is probably barfing on himself at this "stupid" idea, but it passes the plausibility test for me; the low gravity on Mars should allow for higher structures, etc.

Doesn't sound stupid to me.  Aside from the sheer scale and requirements of futuristic materials.  It would be able to retain heat and possibly block out harmful radiation that Mars' lack of a magnetosphere would otherwise let in.  (for a brief summary see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars)

Terra-forming Mars sounds all nice and cool, but like there is a major hitch, one that I've not seen addressed in games or very many science fiction books.  

Mars' gravity is 1/5 of Earth's, so bone loss and muscle loss will occur in even the first generation.

After several generations, "Martians" will have far weaker skeletal structure and muscles, and any weakling "Earther" could kick their ass any day of the week, and twice on Sundays. A strong Earther could probably crush a Martian's face with one blow; as in, totally smashed and dead.

No, without increasing Mars' gravity, there's no point to it. More likely would be a collections of O'Neill style colonies, with workers going down to the surface for 1 to 6 month work "tours", then back home for a year to recover.

Just IMO

Something one might wish to consider when thinking about this kind of stuff is the design philosophy behind the internal arrangement of the structure. In the West, today, most architecture is all about access (or so it seems to me) in some past societies, however, that was not the case, for example in the Peruvian city of Chan Chan elite compounds were designed in such a way as to be nearly impossible for an unfamiliar visitor to find their way in alone. The point of this was to restrict access to and protect the elites, of course.
I have always imagined that if you had a facility like a terraforming station that you would design it the same way, making it extremely difficult fro the uninitiated to find their way from place to place, not to mention finding the vulnerable/important stuff.

Quote from: Aos;416998Something one might wish to consider when thinking about this kind of stuff is the design philosophy behind the internal arrangement of the structure. In the West, today, most architecture is all about access (or so it seems to me) in some past societies, however, that was not the case, for example in the Peruvian city of Chan Chan elite compounds were designed in such a way as to be nearly impossible for an unfamiliar visitor to find their way in alone. The point of this was to restrict access to and protect the elites, of course.
I have always imagined that if you had a facility like a terraforming station that you would design it the same way, making it extremely difficult fro the uninitiated to find their way from place to place, not to mention finding the vulnerable/important stuff.

Shit. After reading this post, I finally understand my old University's Biological Sciences building.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;417231Shit. After reading this post, I finally understand my old University's Biological Sciences building.

RPGPundit

That also might explain three buildings on the University of Cinccinnati campus.  We always joked the initials " U.C." stood for 'under construction'.

During the late '80s/early '90s there was a building that had stairwell that went up one floor and stopped at a dead end wall - the staircase to nowhere.
 It was of course the Engineering Department building.


- Ed C.