[d20 Future] Moving Planets

[sinmissing]

Moving planets is a tad bit easier than building a Dyson Sphere, or at least that's what Larry Niven thinks. (ps - Larry Niven explains how to move planets in Ringworld or Ringworld Engineers, can't remember which. I'm pretty sure its Ringworld though)

 

[C. Baize]

In the Alternity version of PL7 Stardrive, societies have moved planets. It's expensive and difficult, but it has been done- the Thuldans moved 5 planets in to share a single orbit, terraformed the heck out of them, and use it as their capitol system. Conspiracy theories say that some alien race must have helped them, because they shouldn't have been able to do it on their own.

That may be the coolest flavor thing, ever.

 

[ThoughtfulOwl]

We could probably moving planets with today's (PL 5) tech, provided you can endure to wait centuries (or more) to see even te smallest progress. It's just a matter of building thrusters on suitable spots and then firing them every time they point in the right direction; what makes it utterly impratical is the amount of effort and time involved.

It doesn't take PL9 to move planets around; it just takes massive amounts of resources.

At PL6, with fusion torches and the ability to collect resources from a whole system, it is probably feasible to significantly alter the orbit of an Earth-sized planet in a matter of several decades.

At PL7 we could rely on much less intrusive gravity induction engines, much more efficient anc compact power sources and the resources of multiple star systems (thanks to FTL travel); a big interstellar nation might even gather enough resources to build a giant, spaceborne tractor beam facility with enough power to move planets around (maybe in a matter of weeks, if the power isn't that much). A ship able to incapsulate a planet and bring it around over interstellar distances is probably too much of a strain.
It could even be possible to create artificial planets that are starships, like the Eldar Craftworlds in Warhammer 40,000. A solution might be to drop self-replicating robots (or nanobots) programmed to turn an existing planet into a giant ship.

At PL8 resources could be gathered from an entire galaxy and a galaxy-spanning nation might already keep around several FTL-able "planet pushers" for terraforming and military purposes. Planet-carrying ships would be still great marvels.
Craftworlds become more of a possibility.

At PL9+ anybody with a car-sized device who sprouts enough technobabble can move planets around by reducing them the size of marbles and carrying them in their pockets. People wonder what business you have with planets when everybody can have his own pocket universe;and if you really move a planet around, the Bad Guy will blow it up with a single shot of the latest superweapon just for spite.

A planet-sized jumpgate along the orbit would be feasible at any PL, but it might require far more resources that it's worth, especially if it can't be moved to other systems at a later point.

As for moving planets safely:
1) Anything that has to deal with inertia and Newtonian action-reaction is going to make a big mess, unless the process is extremely slow.
2) Anything that changes (even just temporarily) the axial tilt, rotation speed or distance from the sun of the planet will catastrophically blow up weather patterns; the twister movie would be an example of sunny and calm weather, by comparison. The only solution is to make the whole planet an artificially regulated environment sealed from outside sources.
3) Anything that exposes the planet to strong tidal forces will make the surface a very bad place to live.

 

[DanMcS]

That may be the coolest flavor thing, ever.

Stardrive was full of wicked cool stuff like that. The fraal (grey aliens) had been observing earth for millenia from their city-ships before finally deciding they had to make contact with the earthlings (since we were inventing ships capable of exploring the solar system and were about to find them anyway). They were refugees from a far-off empire who had escaped in STL ships so long ago that they didn't remember where they came from or why.

Voidcorp was a big evil corporation secretly run by the AIs it had invented a couple hundred years ago. Turns out they were too smart, and took over the company without anyone noticing.

The Thuldans were pre-WWI Germany-esque- militarized, nationalistic, prideful, and capable of accomplishing quite a bit if they would stop trying to conquor everyone they could find.

The klicks were big mindless alien bugs, but they were somehow capable of FTL travel (since they weren't native to the star system they were attacking), which may have somehow used a nearby black hole. They were also the first exploratory wave of an interstellar empire which was about to encounter human space, which was none other than the empire the fraal had fled from all that time ago.

It's really too bad the whole line went under, and I'm glad it made it (at least a little) into d20 future.

 

[DanMcS]

Moving planets is a tad bit easier than building a Dyson Sphere, or at least that's what Larry Niven thinks. (ps - Larry Niven explains how to move planets in Ringworld or Ringworld Engineers, can't remember which. I'm pretty sure its Ringworld though)

And can I just interject, having read the whole series (Ringworld, Engineers, Throne, and Children) in the last month or so, that I need to read more about Known Space. I read a collection of short stories about Gil the ARM (a telekinetic UN policeman in the 21st or 22nd century) when I was in high school, but never really realized that there were more stories in this universe, covering time periods from Gil to the Man-Kzin wars to the Ringworld. Very cool.

In RW Children, they even (spoliers because apparently the book is very new)

Spoiler

get into some bizzaro physics about why you can't go FTL too near a gravity well. It's not because the gravity well destroys FTL ships- it's because the FTL space is inhabited by gigantic creatures which like to live near concentrations of dark matter and gravity, and eat regular matter if it passes where they can notice it.

That creeped me out something fierce.

 

[Buddha the DM]

Certainly not before PL9 IMO. Also, what move do you have in mind? Adjusting an orbit or going from one stellar system to another? In later case, I think it's impossible. It would be easier to Terraform a new planet and make it absolutely identical to the one left.

I remember seeing something once where someone had moved Mercury out of its orbit near the sun, and placed it in relatively near Earth orbit where it acted like a second moon.

I'm just thinking about in-system shuffling of planets, but will entertain ideas about interstellar planet moving.

 

[enworldatemylogin]

As PL 7 is Gravity age and thus with enough energy I'd say it could be done. With PL 8 you could miniaturize the power cells to make it easy or less energy/time consuming. Of course, this would probably just move it from one orbit to another or maybe the far end of the solar system.

For something like moving between stars I'd say PL 8, (and the jump gate in the planets orbital path is a cool idea).

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

OK, there are several ways you can move a world...

Huge induction engines, powered and cooled by tidal forces in the center of the Pacific Ocean (for example)

A small singularity, at a highly precise distance from the planet, dragging the planet behind it.

A massive "hyperwave" field that would drop it into hyperspace and move it at about 1.1 C or up to about 1.5 C

Artifical worm hole creation that will drop it through the wormhole.

Moving theorized "settings" in the galactic makeup. By changing and tweaking a few "settings" a whole world could be moved. (See the novel "Moving Mars")

Temporal displacement: This is partially what was done to the Terra Sol system in my Nova Wars Setting. By dropping the system somewhat out of "normal" time, the rest of the galaxy keeps moving past the "out of phase" system.

In any case, moving the planet, you would need a sun, my recommendation is either a fusion/fission mix, probably just past the orbit of the moon, rotating quicker than moon.

A Rosetta pattern, multiple worlds orbiting a single (possibly fake) star at an equal distance, at equal speed, in the same "sweet spot" for the race. The sun pulls the planets along as it slowly accellerates, driven by pinpoint fusion torch. (I believe this was shown very accurately in Ringworld Engineers)

As for PL levels? Well, it's not so much that, but more along the lines of how many resources they are willing to allocate to such a project. I'd say you could start this with PL 6.5


Hope that helps.

 

[deranged DM]

PL6 (fusion age) as long as you're willing to go slow and be really ambitious.

Howard Tayler was kind enough to give directions...

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030803.html

 

[Jack of Shadows]

Moving a planet safely would be prefered. Why do you think that D20 Future couldn't handle this?

Well my thinking was that you were refering to an earth like body. Moving it is easy. Moving it without disturbing the atmosphere, techtonics, tides, flora and fauna is entirely a different matter. Quite frankly it makes my head hurt to just think about the massive number of different technologies you would need to accomplish that. It would actually be easier to move an entire solar system in my mind.

Jack