Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
For half a second, I thought this was going to be the scenario for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 game.
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The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_pointhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
Space is also frikkin huge. I have never sat down and checked the maths of the Expanse but I do wonder if they are on the optimistic side.
For these reasons i do not believe there will ever be flesh and blood asteroid miners. It is a very expensive way to play Russian Roulette. Robotic gravity tugs will drag the asteroids slowly to the earth sun Lagrange points Where gigantic concentrator mirrors will melt whole asteroids and they cool out in the various mineral layers. Which are then strip mined by automated machine.
Humans in space are going to on the Moon, Mars under meters of radiation shielding, possibly in the clouds of Venus assuming the atmosphere above them give adequate radiation shielding. Also assuming that other issues with living in space are solved.
Earth orbit is a bad place to try and block solar radiation, because some of the time the satellites are on the night side. The Earth Sun L1 Lagrange point is much better. Exponentially increasing computation for block chain mining is a design feature of Bitcoin and a problematic one, IMHO. Not likely to be a long term thing.
So deploying a solar sail at L1 looks like a good idea so how did go wrong. Well it was put is place by a consortium of rich Americans with out government sanction and there was a metric to imperial conversion error. The sail was too big and blocked too much of the Sun
It triggered a global ice age. The US tech elite fled to space and mostly live in Low Earth orbital habitats built by Bigelow Space, some in a Lunar base on the Lunar south pole mining water and Elon Musk had begun his Mars colony before the solar umbrella was unfolded. So most of north America, Europe, Russia and anything in the northern shadow of the Himalayas is uninhabitable.
China was badly disrupted by the change, the LEO colonies make they money by hosting server farms for GPS,VR and ecommerce as well as the transit for some needed but valuable rare elements obtained from the automated asteroid mining.
India was less badly affected and is now the leading global power and looks like regaining the space capabilities once held by the USA a century ago. Nigeria and Brazil its nearest rival, with China once again gathering strength.
I may, if you are interested post more tomorrow when I have had some sleep. it is well past my bedtime.
I find some of the basic premises implausible. The big issue with space is radiation from cosmic rays and from the solar wind. You need 12 to 16 meters of stuff (water will do) between the inner skin of your spaceship/habitat to be safe and otherwise you time limit your exposure.
Space is also frikkin huge. I have never sat down and checked the maths of the Expanse but I do wonder if they are on the optimistic side.
For these reasons i do not believe there will ever be flesh and blood asteroid miners. It is a very expensive way to play Russian Roulette. Robotic gravity tugs will drag the asteroids slowly to the earth sun Lagrange points Where gigantic concentrator mirrors will melt whole asteroids and they cool out in the various mineral layers. Which are then strip mined by automated machine.
Humans in space are going to on the Moon, Mars under meters of radiation shielding, possibly in the clouds of Venus assuming the atmosphere above them give adequate radiation shielding. Also assuming that other issues with living in space are solved.
Earth orbit is a bad place to try and block solar radiation, because some of the time the satellites are on the night side. The Earth Sun L1 Lagrange point is much better. Exponentially increasing computation for block chain mining is a design feature of Bitcoin and a problematic one, IMHO. Not likely to be a long term thing.
So deploying a solar sail at L1 looks like a good idea so how did go wrong. Well it was put is place by a consortium of rich Americans with out government sanction and there was a metric to imperial conversion error. The sail was too big and blocked too much of the Sun
It triggered a global ice age. The US tech elite fled to space and mostly live in Low Earth orbital habitats built by Bigelow Space, some in a Lunar base on the Lunar south pole mining water and Elon Musk had begun his Mars colony before the solar umbrella was unfolded. So most of north America, Europe, Russia and anything in the northern shadow of the Himalayas is uninhabitable.
China was badly disrupted by the change, the LEO colonies make they money by hosting server farms for GPS,VR and ecommerce as well as the transit for some needed but valuable rare elements obtained from the automated asteroid mining.
India was less badly affected and is now the leading global power and looks like regaining the space capabilities once held by the USA a century ago. Nigeria and Brazil its nearest rival, with China once again gathering strength.
I may, if you are interested post more tomorrow when I have had some sleep. it is well past my bedtime.
Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
When this becomes apparent, the owners would try to fold it back up (however they opened it in the first place), or somebody would try to shoot big holes in it, or rip it up, or make it move.
One potential 'disaster' adventure: An asteroid that is supposed to arrive at L5 for mining has been diverted to pass through L1 and the solar sail / shade. The PCs could:
- go chop the asteroid into tiny little pieces (what was that Bruce Willis movie? Armageddon?)
- rendezvous with and remove all foreign hardware from the asteroid
- divert its course again, to something random (and far from any further collision)
- divert it back to original trajectory: L5
- maybe make sure it DOES hit L1 and sweep the whole malfunctioning contraption along with it: Ice Age problem solved!
- rendezvous with the asteroid and 'close escort' it - so nobody else can mess with it.
- find out who is messing with 'our' asteroid in the first place
- get into the legal arguments over how you can / can't claim an asteroid as your property, personally or as a corporation, in the first place
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All excellent plot hooks
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
This may sound crazy, but if hacking* can be turned into interesting game mechanics, so (perhaps) could lawyering.
If you could abstract away the really boring bits perhaps legal shenanigans could be a compelling sub-system, especially if it complements the other parts of the game. "See if you can keep the shipping container tied up at customs until we can get our team there."
*(Used in the popular if incorrect sense of breaking through computer security.)
Chad Hooper
First Post
Some random thoughts from me:
In this setting (however it ends up evolving as you write it up), the Moon is a potential threat to any life/business interests on Earth. Whatever mining consortia, political/geographical groups of people, or tech/data interests there are dirt-side, the people in charge absolutely have to make sure Luna doesn't fall into hostile hands (because kinetic bombardment is a very real threat from the top of the gravity well with a minimum of ballistics equipment relatively speaking). If there are revolutionaries opposed to Terran based interests, there can be multiple plot lines involving countering/aiding the rebels, taking back Luna from/reinforcing it for the rebels, taking it back for the Terran mining interests, the list can go on.
You can go as far afield as you want, easily, with what you have so far. Want to insert a horror arc? Have an alien derelict ship drift in (probably spotted by Belt facilities out past Jupiter's orbit). Upon examination it is found to be infested with (xenomorph eggs/larvae? Eldritch horror imprisoned in a stasis field now being disrupted by the Jovian tidal stresses? Or is it a live invasion ship of quasi-Formics, Trojan Horse style?) Possibilities, like space, are endless!
Or keep it tame but grim, gritty, dirt-in-the-gutters cyberpunk Sanctuary. Make everything dirty, time-worn, seemingly obsolete like in the Aliens movies (including most people!), not shiny new like Star Trek, much as I love that setting.
Organized crime, where is it, who runs it, what contraband is valuable and to whom? What new drug(s) have been developed based on new (to Earth) substances found in the Belt, or due to subterranean lichens/molds/fungi/bacterial colonies discovered on Mars and its moons?
Where real science enhances your setting, by all means, use it. Where it interferes, toss it. While your setting is called "Earth and the Sol System", or some such, it is *your world*. You have full poetic license, or as my wife likes to call it, DMD, Dungeon Master's Discretion. What you say goes. Perhaps radiation levels were misreported due to cruder equipment in early explorations/English to Metric conversion errors, or just incompetent personnel. Or perhaps the hazards of in-system space travel were exaggerated during the Cold War by the super powers to discourage the privatization of space travel? All the facts only finally get rechecked circa 100+ years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and suddenly the sky is no longer the limit?
As I said, random. Hope you find some of it useful
In this setting (however it ends up evolving as you write it up), the Moon is a potential threat to any life/business interests on Earth. Whatever mining consortia, political/geographical groups of people, or tech/data interests there are dirt-side, the people in charge absolutely have to make sure Luna doesn't fall into hostile hands (because kinetic bombardment is a very real threat from the top of the gravity well with a minimum of ballistics equipment relatively speaking). If there are revolutionaries opposed to Terran based interests, there can be multiple plot lines involving countering/aiding the rebels, taking back Luna from/reinforcing it for the rebels, taking it back for the Terran mining interests, the list can go on.
You can go as far afield as you want, easily, with what you have so far. Want to insert a horror arc? Have an alien derelict ship drift in (probably spotted by Belt facilities out past Jupiter's orbit). Upon examination it is found to be infested with (xenomorph eggs/larvae? Eldritch horror imprisoned in a stasis field now being disrupted by the Jovian tidal stresses? Or is it a live invasion ship of quasi-Formics, Trojan Horse style?) Possibilities, like space, are endless!
Or keep it tame but grim, gritty, dirt-in-the-gutters cyberpunk Sanctuary. Make everything dirty, time-worn, seemingly obsolete like in the Aliens movies (including most people!), not shiny new like Star Trek, much as I love that setting.
Organized crime, where is it, who runs it, what contraband is valuable and to whom? What new drug(s) have been developed based on new (to Earth) substances found in the Belt, or due to subterranean lichens/molds/fungi/bacterial colonies discovered on Mars and its moons?
Where real science enhances your setting, by all means, use it. Where it interferes, toss it. While your setting is called "Earth and the Sol System", or some such, it is *your world*. You have full poetic license, or as my wife likes to call it, DMD, Dungeon Master's Discretion. What you say goes. Perhaps radiation levels were misreported due to cruder equipment in early explorations/English to Metric conversion errors, or just incompetent personnel. Or perhaps the hazards of in-system space travel were exaggerated during the Cold War by the super powers to discourage the privatization of space travel? All the facts only finally get rechecked circa 100+ years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and suddenly the sky is no longer the limit?
As I said, random. Hope you find some of it useful
S
Sunseeker
Guest
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