Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Speculative biology is simultaneously a science and form of art in which one speculates on the possibilities of life and evolution. What could the world look like if dinosaurs had never gone extinct? What could alien lifeforms look like? What kinds of plants and animals might exist in the far future? These questions and more are tackled by speculative biologists, and the Speculative Evolution welcomes all relevant ideas, inquiries, and world-building projects alike. With a member base comprising users from across the world, our community is the largest and longest-running place of gathering for speculative biologists on the web.

While unregistered users are able to browse the forum on a basic level, registering an account provides additional forum access not visible to guests as well as the ability to join in discussions and contribute yourself! Registration is free and instantaneous.

Join our community today!

Username:   Password:
Locked Topic
Kurys
Topic Started: Feb 11 2013, 05:37 PM (1,327 Views)
Zirantun
Adolescent
 *  *  *  *  *
So in the topic "The Next 500 Years", I was trying to probe for likely scenarios that may fit into a certain set of guidelines that I've been given. Let me elaborate on those guidelines.

My friend, to whom I have contracted out certain evolutionary aspects of my own con-world so that I can focus on the cultures, has asked me in return to create him an inter-planetary/intergalactic lingua franca for his own books that take place 1500 years in the future. The history behind his setting involves the initial settlement of a single planet from which most other settlers on other worlds descend. In order to decide which language it was going to be or what languages would factor into the creation of a new language, we had to design on which countries on Earth are the superpowers running around space in the next 100-200 years. He expressed an interest in the idea of a Brazil-India dominated world, in which settlers from both countries and countries that they are economically tied to settle a new world, that we'll just call Kurys to keep his project anonymous. The idea then being to create a Hindi-Portuguese mix language that later becomes the inter-planetary lingua franca

Now, I have this language pretty well thought out by now. I wanted to get as close to the name of a Portuguese dialect in Guinea-Bissau called Ziguinchor as possible, so I called it Zuchechor (from Zuquete chora). Zuchechor is a mix language between a dialect of Portuguese that developed on Kurys called Sarraipense, and a primarily Hindi-Marathi based creole with other constituent languages (Arabic, Persian, Balochistani, Swahili) called Bochani (from Bambaiya Hindi bachchan meaning "talk"). All of that is pretty well laid out by now both on my computer and in my head.

The question then becomes, how do we get a world with India and Brazil as the dominant superpowers in 100-200 years?

Offline Profile Goto Top
 
Zirantun
Adolescent
 *  *  *  *  *
Nobody's interested? This topic was posted so that we could go into detail about possible political outcomes and argue about them. Meant specifically to attract a certain person... oh well.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
T.Neo
Member Avatar
Translunar injection: TLI
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
I suspect I know who your 'specific person' is. Hello...

If you're annoyed that I did not reply to this thread earlier, I'm sorry- I do not scan through this part of the forum as elsewhere. This subforum is meant to be dedicated to posting of stories, so perhaps this would be better suited to another subforum, such as General Discussion.

Quote:
 
The question then becomes, how do we get a world with India and Brazil as the dominant superpowers in 100-200 years?


The answer to your question is rather simple: balkanise the United States. :lol:

India is easy, all you need to do is give it a GDP per capita equivalent to that of Gabon, and it'll be the strongest country on the planet, economically speaking (a GDP of something like $19 trillion). With a GDP per capita comparable to that of a typical developed nation, it would tower over the rest of the world. Since it houses a considerable proportion of the planet's population (due to the King Effect), it's bound to be powerful, provided that it isn't stuck in poverty. While the population of other nations is increasing, India has a considerable head start, and indeed could become the most populous nation on the planet should current trends continue. Only an absurdly high population growth rate in a particular nation, or a union of several highly populous nations could topple India from its position.

Brazil is a little less convincing as a global dominance since it contains a 'mere' 194 million people (roughly 20% fewer than Indonesia). Superpowers have existed with similarly sized or smaller populations, of course (examples being the USSR and China), though during their reign the population of the planet overall was lower. Brazil does have potential to be a superpower, and is discussed in this regard. It could certainly be quite an influencial nation, but all other things considered equal, it simply can't compete with India. It could become larger and more powerful by merging with other South American nations, but then it won't exactly be Brazil, and even then it would likely have a considerably smaller population than India, even if it comprised the entirety of the continent.

Still, that doesn't stop India from co-conducting a colonisation effort with Brazil, just as the large size of the USA doesn't stop it from conducting space missions with smaller nations such as Russia or Japan. Of course there will likely be other powers present on the geopolitical scene; other populous nations, such as China, the US (even if magically split in half) Indonesia, Pakistan or Nigeria or descendants thereof, as well as more familiar powers such as Russia and the European nations.

I do think that English should constitute more of your Hindi-based creole though, considering the influence of English in India. Consider, for example, that one of your constituent languages- Swahili, is estimated to have roughly a similar number of speakers in total to that which English is estimated to have within India itself (~125 million, a number which is expected to increase). Hybridisation between English and Hindi is already occuring (see here, here). If some figures on the matter are to be believed, such hybridisation has already had a considerable effect on language in India. It makes sense; English isn't merely a international lingua franca or a language of trading partners, it's a historically relevant subsidiary official language in a lingually diverse nation.

I suppose there may be inter-linguistic influence on Portuguese in Brazil, too- especially if a disparity in economic development leads to considerable immigration from other (predominantly Spanish speaking) South American countries.
A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
Zoroaster
Member Avatar
Fecund Fundiment
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
There are Portuguese speakers in India, in the former Portuguese colony of Goa. I am sure Goan Portuguese is considered a "dialect" of the mother tongue, but I am not sure if Hindi is the predominant indigenous language at the environs of Goa (it could be a non-Indo-European Dravidic language?).

There's a world-wide diaspora of their descendants with Portuguese surnames in Malaysia, Singapore, Macau etc (I have quite a few friends of Goan descent, via Malacca in Malaysia to Australia)...
The Speccer Formerly Known As Magoo...
My exobio project(s) :
Hormizd / Zarathustra

Posted Image
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
Zirantun
Adolescent
 *  *  *  *  *
This is also the same world where we have cold-fusion and aquaponics farming. I probably should have mentioned that in the beginning.


Quote:
 
The answer to your question is rather simple: balkanise the United States.


The principal reason I wanted to balkanize the US in the first place is actually linguistic. In 1500 years, I had sort of envisioned at least 3 standardized languages descended from different varieties of American English. Languages descended from American English would be a much tighter knit group than say, the Romance languages, which bastardized from Latin before the days of telecommunication. As far as this area of the topic is concerned though, would you care to explain why you believe that the country will not have split in 1500 years time?

Quote:
 
Brazil is a little less convincing as a global dominance since it contains a 'mere' 194 million people (roughly 20% fewer than Indonesia). Superpowers have existed with similarly sized or smaller populations, of course (examples being the USSR and China), though during their reign the population of the planet overall was lower. Brazil does have potential to be a superpower, and is discussed in this regard. It could certainly be quite an influencial nation, but all other things considered equal, it simply can't compete with India. It could become larger and more powerful by merging with other South American nations, but then it won't exactly be Brazil, and even then it would likely have a considerably smaller population than India, even if it comprised the entirety of the continent.


I wouldn't exactly consider China a superpower right now, nor do I think that the country has that kind of potential. True, China is a major competitor in the global economy, but when they stop manipulating their currency their level of productivity is going to level out. Plus, I think that a lot of people tend to underestimate ethnic divides within China. There are a lot of Chinese people here in Vancouver and in Washington, and Mandarins and Cantonese have a very strict "we don't mix" policy. China also has a very privilege based society. We are often told here in the West about how Chinese students outperform us in a number of subjects on a number of scales, and I believed this until I started going to school at a college where probably a quarter of the student body are exchange students from China. Actually talking to Chinese people about their own education system instead of listening to what my teachers told me in class has been very eye opening. What I am told is that only a fraction of Chinese students actually make it into higher education because of how the system is set up, and not only is it only a fraction, but that fraction often has to do with either family connections (which I don't understand, since the extended family is virtually defunct) or friend connections. So Ping Wu tested higher than most of the students in his class, but out of 10 kids who did, he's the one who gets investigated for studying abroad because his dad Chi Wu has a job at the ambassador's office.

Anyways, China's entire political system is unstable because it is designed to accomodate Han Chinese (Mandarins and Cantonese) and pretty much dump on everyone else. China's 56 ethnic minorities for the most part live in total poverty, and on average each group numbers in the millions. Chinese society is therefore held together quite literally at gun point, with the majority of the country suffering silently.

Let me explain the scenario that I've been discussing with my friend though for Brazil and India. The basis of the two economies in the future would be asteroid mining of both gold (or platinum, should it replace gold as the world's back up precious metal) and rare earth metals. The only reason that Brazil gets to compete with India is because they are the only other people with the technology to transport the materials needed off planet. I forget how that part works, but my friend and I had a really long discussion about it once. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Anyways, that technology in this future scenario is guarded with the same vigilance that nuclear technology is guarded today. So, India and Brazil, as the only countries with that technology get to dominate the world economy as the major suppliers of rare earth metals and precious metals that back up currencies. Of course, in order to keep the value of gold or whatever precious metal is being used up, India and Brazil would then horde it, similar in fashion to how diamonds are horded today.

Now, outer space is considered to be international territory, so when India is the first to get off the planet and start mining asteroids, they can't say, "This area of space is Indian airspace". Instead, they claim asteroids on an individual basis, and India is able to claim a lot of the best ones for themselves before Brazil catches up. By the time Brazil has, the number of asteroids in the asteroid belt with the materials that they're after is so few that Brazil decides to send probes out to other systems in search of more asteroids or even planets to mine. So in this scenario, Brazil is actually the first to colonize another planet and not India because it's easier for miners to live in company housing on another planet than commute between another solar system and Earth to do their jobs.

After a collapse of the Indian and Brazilian market that is triggered by a global shift from precious metals to precious stones (specifically diamonds, as the technology now exists to profitably extract them from a number of places where they were virtually inaccessible before), the Indian miners find themselves essentially marooned, some light years away from Earth. That's when they settle on the planet that had already been colonized (although not entirely, it is a whole planet after all) by Brazilians.


Quote:
 
I do think that English should constitute more of your Hindi-based creole though, considering the influence of English in India. Consider, for example, that one of your constituent languages- Swahili, is estimated to have roughly a similar number of speakers in total to that which English is estimated to have within India itself (~125 million, a number which is expected to increase). Hybridisation between English and Hindi is already occuring (see here, here). If some figures on the matter are to be believed, such hybridisation has already had a considerable effect on language in India. It makes sense; English isn't merely a international lingua franca or a language of trading partners, it's a historically relevant subsidiary official language in a lingually diverse nation.


I had considered that, but I also question the importance that English will have over standardized Hindi in India after English-speaking countries are no longer the major players on the world stage. I did want to include some minor influences though, but not full on hybridization. My friend was much more keen on the importance of languages in the same geographical area making up the base of Bochani. Arabic specifically, but he seemed to like the inclusion of Persian, Marathi, and Baluchi (Balochistan is an independent country after India absorbs Pakistan). Perhaps English plays a role in the construction of Bochani grammar? Right now I'm stuck on Bochani as I'm learning to read Devanagari and Arabic.


Quote:
 
I suppose there may be inter-linguistic influence on Portuguese in Brazil, too- especially if a disparity in economic development leads to considerable immigration from other (predominantly Spanish speaking) South American countries.


I had thought that Sarraipense is primarily Brazilian Portuguese based, so it retains certain important grammatical shifts of Brazilian Portuguese like the use of
Quote:
 
você
over
Quote:
 
tu
and hence a shift in use of pronouns
Quote:
 
seu/sua
as meaning
Quote:
 
your
and saying
Quote:
 
dele/dela
for
Quote:
 
his/her
(which literally means "of him/her"). This new pronoun dele would then cause a shift in which pronouns and articles become attached to the end of the noun instead of coming before, something like Romanian. Thus instead of o meu pé (my foot) you get
péomeu, or saying o pé (the foot) you get péo. The nature of Portuguese definite articles creates a phonological problem in which nouns ending in o/a (which a lot of them do) seem to lose their definite articles (which are o/a singular). This would then be solved when Sarraipense starts to merge with Bochani by the Hindi definite article en- (which is prefixed, but in this case would be suffixed) which acts as a clitic, distinguishing the article from the word. Without the clitic en- attached to a word like pássaro, you're stuck with an extra /o/ on the end of the word that will just be pronounced the same as the /o/ on the end. With the Hindi definite article acting as a clitic, it becomes pássaroen or in IPA [pɒsɒɾʊin].

Anyways, the main constituents of Sarraipense as a unique dialect are southern varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, such as Portuguese as spoken in Sao Paulo, Northern varieties of Portuguese such as those along the Spanish Galician Border (included only to preserve the pronunciation of /ch/ as an affricate), Azorean (which affects the pronunciation of vowels /ou/ and /u/) and Catalan. That was the idea anyways... sorry to go on a linguistic tangent.

Quote:
 
There are Portuguese speakers in India, in the former Portuguese colony of Goa. I am sure Goan Portuguese is considered a "dialect" of the mother tongue, but I am not sure if Hindi is the predominant indigenous language at the environs of Goa (it could be a non-Indo-European Dravidic language?).


I wasn't able to find any material online about the Portuguese variety in Goa. Konkani is the official language in Goa as far I know.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
T.Neo
Member Avatar
Translunar injection: TLI
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Quote:
 
The principal reason I wanted to balkanize the US in the first place is actually linguistic. In 1500 years, I had sort of envisioned at least 3 standardized languages descended from different varieties of American English. Languages descended from American English would be a much tighter knit group than say, the Romance languages, which bastardized from Latin before the days of telecommunication.


To be honest I find that even less plausible than the balkanisation of the US in the first place. The creation of new languages would require isolation from eachother, a possibility that seems distinctly low when considering geographically close populations sharing a language in the presence of modern transport and telecommunications.

Quote:
 
As far as this area of the topic is concerned though, would you care to explain why you believe that the country will not have split in 1500 years time?


I suppose the best way to explain why I believe the country will not have split in 1500 years is the same way I would explain why I believe that by this time next year, Mars will not have exploded in a flash of gamma rays. The notion is so extraordinary and the evidence for its occurance is so nonexistant as to remove it from serious discussion.

There is no strongly divisive issue with a clear geographic association. The federal government is simply too relevant and its interest against balkanisation or secession too strong, alliegence to the nation as a whole too strong and sectionalism too weak.

Quote:
 
I wouldn't exactly consider China a superpower right now, nor do I think that the country has that kind of potential. True, China is a major competitor in the global economy, but when they stop manipulating their currency their level of productivity is going to level out. Plus, I think that a lot of people tend to underestimate ethnic divides within China. There are a lot of Chinese people here in Vancouver and in Washington, and Mandarins and Cantonese have a very strict "we don't mix" policy. China also has a very privilege based society. We are often told here in the West about how Chinese students outperform us in a number of subjects on a number of scales, and I believed this until I started going to school at a college where probably a quarter of the student body are exchange students from China. Actually talking to Chinese people about their own education system instead of listening to what my teachers told me in class has been very eye opening. What I am told is that only a fraction of Chinese students actually make it into higher education because of how the system is set up, and not only is it only a fraction, but that fraction often has to do with either family connections (which I don't understand, since the extended family is virtually defunct) or friend connections. So Ping Wu tested higher than most of the students in his class, but out of 10 kids who did, he's the one who gets investigated for studying abroad because his dad Chi Wu has a job at the ambassador's office.

Anyways, China's entire political system is unstable because it is designed to accomodate Han Chinese (Mandarins and Cantonese) and pretty much dump on everyone else. China's 56 ethnic minorities for the most part live in total poverty, and on average each group numbers in the millions. Chinese society is therefore held together quite literally at gun point, with the majority of the country suffering silently.


I agree that China probably isn't a superpower at current, but it's bound to be an influential nation based on its large population (even if it balkanised). Obviously it has problems, but it can, in time, work through those problems- even if "working through" its problems is not a pretty process. It isn't as if India lacks problems facing its further development either; indeed one could say that it has a longer way to go than India, with a lower HDI and GDP per capita.

Systems based on ethnic oppression are obviously unstable, but one would imagine that a system supported by a group with a considerable majority would be less unstable than a system supported by a minority in order to oppress a minority. Not that it is as if the stability of such a system helps a nation's development, of course.

Quote:
 
Let me explain the scenario that I've been discussing with my friend though for Brazil and India. The basis of the two economies in the future would be asteroid mining of both gold (or platinum, should it replace gold as the world's back up precious metal) and rare earth metals. The only reason that Brazil gets to compete with India is because they are the only other people with the technology to transport the materials needed off planet. I forget how that part works, but my friend and I had a really long discussion about it once. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Anyways, that technology in this future scenario is guarded with the same vigilance that nuclear technology is guarded today. So, India and Brazil, as the only countries with that technology get to dominate the world economy as the major suppliers of rare earth metals and precious metals that back up currencies. Of course, in order to keep the value of gold or whatever precious metal is being used up, India and Brazil would then horde it, similar in fashion to how diamonds are horded today.

Now, outer space is considered to be international territory, so when India is the first to get off the planet and start mining asteroids, they can't say, "This area of space is Indian airspace". Instead, they claim asteroids on an individual basis, and India is able to claim a lot of the best ones for themselves before Brazil catches up. By the time Brazil has, the number of asteroids in the asteroid belt with the materials that they're after is so few that Brazil decides to send probes out to other systems in search of more asteroids or even planets to mine. So in this scenario, Brazil is actually the first to colonize another planet and not India because it's easier for miners to live in company housing on another planet than commute between another solar system and Earth to do their jobs.

After a collapse of the Indian and Brazilian market that is triggered by a global shift from precious metals to precious stones (specifically diamonds, as the technology now exists to profitably extract them from a number of places where they were virtually inaccessible before), the Indian miners find themselves essentially marooned, some light years away from Earth. That's when they settle on the planet that had already been colonized (although not entirely, it is a whole planet after all) by Brazilians.


The rather large problem with asteroid mining is that spaceflight is so expensive as to make profiting from extraterrestrial resources mostly impossible. A reduction in the cost of spaceflight technology would not require some sort of science-fictional advance (i.e. magical technology) and could bring extraterrestrial resource utilisation into the realm of reality, at least in theory, though of course such developments not be without difficulty.

Such advances would likely also build on current space technology, which, while it is subject to certain restrictions and can be perverted for military uses (ballistic missiles being the most direct ramification of possessing space launch capability), is not nearly subject to the same international restrictiveness as nuclear weapons, nor do they hold nearly as much potential as weapons in the direct sense. In addition, while both Brazil and India possess space programs (India having placed a probe in lunar orbit), Brazil has yet to launch something into orbit. China, Russia, Japan, the US and Europe all possess a considerably greater knowledge of space technology and a development in revolutionary spaceflight ability would be more likely to stem from those nations.

Even if some sort of 'magic' technology were to be developed by India and Brazil and kept to themselves, it wouldn't stop others developing more mundane space technology- based on extrapolations of current understanding- to perform similar tasks. And of course, in a parallel with nuclear technology, a good deal of nations beyond the original nuclear powers did develop them- including paraiah states such as North Korea and South Africa (though our nuclear weapons program was abandoned before the end of Apartheid). And nuclear power, the peaceful analogue to the possession of nuclear weapons, is adopted in a wide variety of nations that do not possess nuclear weapons (see here). If India and Brazil are maintaining dominance over the rest of the planet to such a degree, their influence must be absolutely monumental.

Interstellar mining doesn't make sense unless you're content with waiting thousands of years for your goods to arrive. Even for a civilisation that can move considerable amounts of mass around a solar system economically at several km/s or even several tens of km/s, attaining the velocity needed to travel a single light year in a century would likely make things prohibitatively expensive (compare 112 MJ/kg of kinetic energy for 15 km/s velocity with nearly 4.5 terajoules/kg of kinetic energy for 0.01c velocity, and this is neglecting the inefficiencies of the rocket equation). After all, over 300 000 'minor planets' have been discovered up till now. One would suspect that even if India claimed all the best prizes long ago, Brazil would be far more likely (and able) to find less attractive (dV and resource concentration wise) targets within the solar system.

Diamonds are merely an allotrope of a common element; indeed, diamonds for industrial purposes are mostly artificial nowdays. If a civilisation could manufacture diamond for use as a constructon material, for instance, natural diamonds would be of not much more than a sentimental value to them. Platinum, on the other hand, is an element in its own; producing it would require the ability to transmute elements. Like diamonds, it has uses beyond simply being rare. One would imagine that the ability to access previously unreachable researves would revolutionise various mining industries.

In short... I don't think that your scenario for the history of space mining and its downfall makes much sense.

The same goes for the idea that clean energy would suddenly make the western world collapse, paving the way for other powers to emerge. Powers emerge by developing their economy and thus influence. In a world economy, the collapse of an influential nation or group of nations is going to come down on everyone's head like a ton of bricks. And while our civilisation as a whole is dependant on fossil fuels, the relationship of the economy to it is such that their disappearance would be far more problematic than their replacement. Obviously specific industries would be affected greatly, but I would imagine that the nations who would take the hardest hit would be those with oil exports as a large proportion of their GDP.

Quote:
 
I had considered that, but I also question the importance that English will have over standardized Hindi in India after English-speaking countries are no longer the major players on the world stage. I did want to include some minor influences though, but not full on hybridization. My friend was much more keen on the importance of languages in the same geographical area making up the base of Bochani. Arabic specifically, but he seemed to like the inclusion of Persian, Marathi, and Baluchi (Balochistan is an independent country after India absorbs Pakistan). Perhaps English plays a role in the construction of Bochani grammar? Right now I'm stuck on Bochani as I'm learning to read Devanagari and Arabic.


Likely more than languages like Swahili, I would imagine. It already has relevance within India itself, not simply in terms of a language useful for external communication. I agree it may not be a full-on hybridisation, I just couldn't find a better term to describe Hinglish. While such phenomena may only be temporary, their 'legacy' could continue to influence language in India.

Simply being in a similar geographical location does not make a language likely to influence another heavily. Indeed it may well be more likely for Indian language to influence those of other nations.

I'm rather curious at how India happens to absorb Pakistan...

Quote:
 
I wasn't able to find any material online about the Portuguese variety in Goa. Konkani is the official language in Goa as far I know.


Indeed, it seems Portuguese language influence in Goa is not particularly extensive.
Edited by T.Neo, Feb 14 2013, 10:58 AM.
A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
whachamacallit2
Member Avatar
Guy who yells at squirrels
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
About the asteroid mining, there's another problem with it as well. If someone was to mine a large amount of platinum from an asteroid and bring it back to Earth, the price of platinum would plummet because of the greater supply. This could-and probably would-mean that the nation in question will begin loosing money from this endeavor because of the outrageous cost of mining the asteroids in the first place. This is a real problem that economists are even thinking of today. How has India coped with this issue?
Click for shameless self plug!
Spoiler: click to toggle

Get you one at http://whachamacallit1.deviantart.com/

Learn the life, history, and fate of the tidally locked planet Asteria at: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5725927/1
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
bloom_boi
Member Avatar
What The?
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Well you can always keep prices artificially high.
The common plebeian might moan and grumble but sish for them.
"You shall perish, whatever you do! If you are taken with arms in your hands, death! If you beg for mercy, death! Whichever way you turn, right, left, back, forward, up, down, death! You are not merely outside the law, you are outside humanity. Neither age nor sex shall save you and yours. You shall die, but first you shall taste the agony of your wife, your sister, your sons and daughters, even those in the cradle! Before your eyes the wounded man shall be taken out of the ambulance and hacked with bayonets or knocked down with the butt end of a rifle. He shall be dragged living by his broken leg or bleeding arm and flung like a suffering, groaning bundle of refuse into the gutter. Death! Death! Death!"



Offline Profile Goto Top
 
T.Neo
Member Avatar
Translunar injection: TLI
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
That's if you mine enough platinum to depress the price, which is apparently what India is doing here, only it's also hoarding it to artificially keep the price up.

I do wonder though, providing that it is possible to run the mining operations at a profit at the depressed price, whether a nation could make more money by selling yet more metal.
A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
Zirantun
Adolescent
 *  *  *  *  *
Quote:
 
To be honest I find that even less plausible than the balkanisation of the US in the first place. The creation of new languages would require isolation from eachother, a possibility that seems distinctly low when considering geographically close populations sharing a language in the presence of modern transport and telecommunications.


Well you're entitled to your opinion. If anything is constant in life, it's linguistic change. It is a common misconception that American dialects are more homogenous than say, British dialects because they have been absorbed in our age of communication. American dialects are in fact less diverse because they have not had the same amount of time to develop. British dialects of English have already undergone a number of drastically altering grammatical and phonological changes that have been completed to differing levels in different areas. Just because a shift like the Great Vowel shift hasn't happened in some 500 years doesn't mean that it won't happen again. After all, Old English stayed very much the same for a similar amount of time, and that was before the age of telecommunication. American dialects are the most diverse where they have had the most time to develop, on the East Coast, where they have been in the making for 400 years. Still, One doesn't necessarily need that long for a distinct variety to arise, as is seen with New Zealand English, which is no more than 100-150 years old. It has developed the most during the days of radio, telephones, television, and the internet, despite having been actively persecuted in New Zealand media for much of the 20th century. So if I have to disagree with you anywhere, it's here. English will change, and it's changing geographically even though people are "close" to one another geographically and connected by social media.

Quote:
 
I suppose the best way to explain why I believe the country will not have split in 1500 years is the same way I would explain why I believe that by this time next year, Mars will not have exploded in a flash of gamma rays. The notion is so extraordinary and the evidence for its occurance is so nonexistant as to remove it from serious discussion.

There is no strongly divisive issue with a clear geographic association. The federal government is simply too relevant and its interest against balkanisation or secession too strong, alliegence to the nation as a whole too strong and sectionalism too weak.


I would understand if we were talking about balkanization within 100 years, which is still more of a possibility than you think it is, but in 1500? I know that this country, or a country that covers the same geographical area will not be around in 1500 years the same way that I know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. There are already geographically divisive structures within the country at play presently, and I imagine that those will only get stronger, especially when the USA loses its status as the dominant superpower. In 1500 years... think about the world 1500 years ago. There was no England, almost every single country in Europe did not exist as we know it, and a number of the ethnicities that we see as so central to what we consider to be European were not even complete yet. French did not exist, Spanish did not exist, Italian did not exist, English did not yet exist as distinct from continental Germanic groups, and the Scottish certainly didn't exist. The only people that I can think of that existed at all and have remained in the same spot off the top of my head are the Irish, because not even the Welsh had become distinct from Britons.

Just because we live in an age of technological superiority to that of those that lived 1500 years ago, does not mean that our place in the world is any less fragile than theirs. The political and ethnic scene in the world by then could be totally unrecognizable, especially in a time when we have the technology to wipe out entire nations in minutes.

Quote:
 
The rather large problem with asteroid mining is that spaceflight is so expensive as to make profiting from extraterrestrial resources mostly impossible. A reduction in the cost of spaceflight technology would not require some sort of science-fictional advance (i.e. magical technology) and could bring extraterrestrial resource utilisation into the realm of reality, at least in theory, though of course such developments not be without difficulty.

Such advances would likely also build on current space technology, which, while it is subject to certain restrictions and can be perverted for military uses (ballistic missiles being the most direct ramification of possessing space launch capability), is not nearly subject to the same international restrictiveness as nuclear weapons, nor do they hold nearly as much potential as weapons in the direct sense. In addition, while both Brazil and India possess space programs (India having placed a probe in lunar orbit), Brazil has yet to launch something into orbit. China, Russia, Japan, the US and Europe all possess a considerably greater knowledge of space technology and a development in revolutionary spaceflight ability would be more likely to stem from those nations.

Even if some sort of 'magic' technology were to be developed by India and Brazil and kept to themselves, it wouldn't stop others developing more mundane space technology- based on extrapolations of current understanding- to perform similar tasks. And of course, in a parallel with nuclear technology, a good deal of nations beyond the original nuclear powers did develop them- including paraiah states such as North Korea and South Africa (though our nuclear weapons program was abandoned before the end of Apartheid). And nuclear power, the peaceful analogue to the possession of nuclear weapons, is adopted in a wide variety of nations that do not possess nuclear weapons (see here). If India and Brazil are maintaining dominance over the rest of the planet to such a degree, their influence must be absolutely monumental.


See, this is why my friend needs to sign into Facebook, so I can ask him what he was talking about. I really hate the new private message storage system. Once upon a time you could actually search messages for keywords and turn up the exact conversation you were looking for. In this case, I'd just have to type in "nuclear", and I'd probably be able to find it and explain. Facebook keeps changing how pms are stored though, and that search option is no longer there :(

An idea I had though to alter the playing scene that my friend liked (since neither him or I like the idea of Chinese playing any role in the formation of Zuchechor) is to have the Hawaiian Lava Bench slip into the ocean possibly some time within the next 20 years from now. From my understanding, which was explained to me when touring Volcano National Park on my abysmal vacation there, a huge chunk of the southeastern portion of the Big Island is seemingly teetering on falling into the ocean. It could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, or it could happen in 1,000 years. Nobody's sure why it hasn't already gone. At least according to that park guide... also according to the park guide however, when it does go, the consequences for both the Mainland United States, China, and Japan will be pretty dramatic. It has the potential to knock out every major city on the western seaboard and every major city on China's east coast with devastating tsunamis. The population of Hawaii will also be completely decimated except the inland towns and the only military base left will be the one on the Big Island. Pearl Harbor will be totally destroyed. Which would leave Hawaii sort of up for grabs if anyone had the balls, which I don't think anybody would because that would be a direct act of war on a country that still has an absurdly large, and absurdly advanced military in comparison to anyone else.

The damage from such a natural disaster combined with our already present and likely to get worse economic problems will be too catastrophic financially for the US government to handle. Not that that would remove them as a military superpower, but it would take us a long time to recover in terms of our economy and money. China and Japan would be similarly affected. Shanghai would be pretty much gone. I don't know about Hong Kong though.

I am sure though that other nations would develop the technology to asteroid mine, but the question is are they able to do it fast enough? Really we're talking about a period of about a century here where India and Brazil dominate and you get the settlement of Kurys. So they don't have to be in total control of absolutely everything, just in control enough for their populations to make up the majority initially on the planet so that their languages are the most important to start out.

Quote:
 
Interstellar mining doesn't make sense unless you're content with waiting thousands of years for your goods to arrive. Even for a civilisation that can move considerable amounts of mass around a solar system economically at several km/s or even several tens of km/s, attaining the velocity needed to travel a single light year in a century would likely make things prohibitatively expensive (compare 112 MJ/kg of kinetic energy for 15 km/s velocity with nearly 4.5 terajoules/kg of kinetic energy for 0.01c velocity, and this is neglecting the inefficiencies of the rocket equation). After all, over 300 000 'minor planets' have been discovered up till now. One would suspect that even if India claimed all the best prizes long ago, Brazil would be far more likely (and able) to find less attractive (dV and resource concentration wise) targets within the solar system.


Even just mining the asteroid belt around us? I believe that he had a way to possibly make the ships go faster that was entirely theoretical, but he did admit that it probably fell under the category of 'magical' technologies. He has certainly gone into an enormous amount of detail in other areas that's quite impressive, far more so than other authors in the field, so I think that it's ok to write some things off once in awhile. Fiction can never be perfect, after all. If he would just SIGN INTO FACEBOOK though. Ah! Oh well. I will have the rebuttal here as soon as I can get it, I promise.

As far as claiming planets though, India is supposed to have gotten preoccupied in our own solar system while Brazil had to search elsewhere, and eventually found Kurys to both mine and move miners.

Quote:
 
Diamonds are merely an allotrope of a common element; indeed, diamonds for industrial purposes are mostly artificial nowdays. If a civilisation could manufacture diamond for use as a constructon material, for instance, natural diamonds would be of not much more than a sentimental value to them. Platinum, on the other hand, is an element in its own; producing it would require the ability to transmute elements. Like diamonds, it has uses beyond simply being rare. One would imagine that the ability to access previously unreachable researves would revolutionise various mining industries.

In short... I don't think that your scenario for the history of space mining and its downfall makes much sense.


Yes but all artificially made diamonds can still be distinguished by experts as artificially made. Still, platinum is more likely, I agree, so gold will have to have been the currency reserve that India/Brazil were hording to keep the price up.

Quote:
 
The same goes for the idea that clean energy would suddenly make the western world collapse, paving the way for other powers to emerge. Powers emerge by developing their economy and thus influence. In a world economy, the collapse of an influential nation or group of nations is going to come down on everyone's head like a ton of bricks. And while our civilisation as a whole is dependant on fossil fuels, the relationship of the economy to it is such that their disappearance would be far more problematic than their replacement. Obviously specific industries would be affected greatly, but I would imagine that the nations who would take the hardest hit would be those with oil exports as a large proportion of their GDP.


I think that Western powers are more likely to collapse because of a social/economic problems rather than problems concerning energy. The European Union is a very loosely held together house of cards that's on the verge of going bankrupt once it incompletely bails out the next country that needs it (presumably Italy, we'll see). People in Europe are only going to put up with an unelected body of people telling their governments what they can and cannot do for so long, or with them setting up puppet regimes like we've seen in Greece under Papademos. Not to say that the downfall of the West will result in an instant replacement by another superpower. On the contrary, I think the world would have at least half a century to go before someone else dominated the global stage, because as you said, their downfall will come down on all economies with which they are intertwined like a 'ton of bricks'.

Quote:
 
Likely more than languages like Swahili, I would imagine. It already has relevance within India itself, not simply in terms of a language useful for external communication. I agree it may not be a full-on hybridisation, I just couldn't find a better term to describe Hinglish. While such phenomena may only be temporary, their 'legacy' could continue to influence language in India.

Simply being in a similar geographical location does not make a language likely to influence another heavily. Indeed it may well be more likely for Indian language to influence those of other nations.

I'm rather curious at how India happens to absorb Pakistan...


Well, I had wanted Swahili because of its extremely complicated and interesting way of classifying nouns, and also to show the development of Africa. True that the national language of Mozambique is in fact Portuguese, but Swahili is the main indigenous language. You're probably right about including more English influence within Bochani though...

What I meant about the geographic location though is that India would be pulling employees from countries nearby as countries on the Indian Ocean become more developed. So Iran, the UAE (possibly merged with Oman?), an independent Balochistan, Mozambique, and of course, within India itself. Now how India absorbs Pakistan I haven't gotten into. I know that the two are deeply divided right now, but I also know that the people who drew the borders weren't paying a lot of attention. India and Pakistan share a common language over much of the country (be it Sindhi, Hindustani, or Punjabi) as well as a common history. Right now, religion seems to be the biggest thing keeping the two apart.

I also know that Balochis are mostly tribal at the moment. But if they modernized and organized themselves, an independent Balochistan has great potential as a country on the coast of the Indian Ocean just between the Persian Gulf and India proper.

Edit: To directly quote my friend he says the following:

Quote:
 
Well, to get off a planet
You either need an orbital elevator
Or a specially contained shuttle
Something with a fusion engine
I had some math that figured out how much fuel it would use, how long it would take, but the papers are at home
Basically 2 hours to get to 30000 km off the surface at 1 g effective (it's actually 2g, but you lose 1g due to its weight)
To go from planet to planet, rockets accelerate up to the asteroid belt
Trying to distance themselves from the sun and its gravity
There they can enter the enerverse to jump to the second system
But they only enter said system at about the same distance from the star
So they have to spend time travelling to the planet in question
The whole process takes about 3 weeks
10 days accelerating to the belt, about 1 day constant when you enerverse, another 10 days decelerating towards the destination planet
But 3 weeks is how long it takes now
When they first travelled to Kurys, it was 3 months
1.5 months accelerating to get to the belt and another 1.5 decelerating after you enerverse
(1000 years is a lot of time to improve your rockets)
Now, time decreased about 3-fold
But because distance and time in uniformly accelerated motion are related by a square, acceleration has to increase 10 times for this effect
So the rockets have actually improved by a lot more than first seems
Theoretically, acceleration could increase another 10-fold, reaching a full 1g, and time be sliced in thirds again
But this would be the ultimate limit
Past this acceleration is unsafe for human health
You'd have to spend the journey in some sort of specialized chair or suit; humans might even have to modify themselves to withstand it
You'd better specify that there is FTL in this universe
And that it only works some distance from the star


Edit #2: I swear to God T.Neo, it says that you're posting like 5 times before you actually post! It sooo deceptive!
Edited by Zirantun, Feb 14 2013, 04:38 PM.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
bloom_boi
Member Avatar
What The?
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Zirantun
Feb 14 2013, 02:53 PM
I would understand if we were talking about balkanization within 100 years, which is still more of a possibility than you think it is, but in 1500?





It would indeed change, but it wouldn't be standard balkanization. You need something social or physical to change for a state like the USA to change dramatically. I seriously doubt economic disaster would split it up, nor current political/social change.
If you want some balkanized USA, you need to come up with a decisive and alien change toa the political social trend.
America isn't bloody Yugoslavia, and for as long as modern civilization lasts, it wont be.

Quote:
 
Now how India absorbs Pakistan I haven't gotten into. I know that the two are deeply divided right now, but I also know that the people who drew the borders weren't paying a lot of attention. India and Pakistan share a common language over much of the country (be it Sindhi, Hindustani, or Punjabi) as well as a common history. Right now, religion seems to be the biggest thing keeping the two apart.

And it will be for a long time to come yet. You underestimate the power of religion over people.
In fact, it may very well start a nuclear war! Which would of course throttle any Indian Superpower.
"You shall perish, whatever you do! If you are taken with arms in your hands, death! If you beg for mercy, death! Whichever way you turn, right, left, back, forward, up, down, death! You are not merely outside the law, you are outside humanity. Neither age nor sex shall save you and yours. You shall die, but first you shall taste the agony of your wife, your sister, your sons and daughters, even those in the cradle! Before your eyes the wounded man shall be taken out of the ambulance and hacked with bayonets or knocked down with the butt end of a rifle. He shall be dragged living by his broken leg or bleeding arm and flung like a suffering, groaning bundle of refuse into the gutter. Death! Death! Death!"



Offline Profile Goto Top
 
Zirantun
Adolescent
 *  *  *  *  *
Quote:
 
It would indeed change, but it wouldn't be standard balkanization. You need something social or physical to change for a state like the USA to change dramatically. I seriously doubt economic disaster would split it up, nor current political/social change.
If you want some balkanized USA, you need to come up with a decisive and alien change toa the political social trend.
America isn't bloody Yugoslavia, and for as long as modern civilization lasts, it wont be.


I think that everyone always assumes that if the United States breaks up, it means that it's going to be bloody. Countries can split without it being a bloody mess.

Quote:
 
And it will be for a long time to come yet. You underestimate the power of religion over people.
In fact, it may very well start a nuclear war! Which would of course throttle any Indian Superpower.


Yes but the people right over the border share that religion in many instances. Still, I had envisioned a more peaceful transition in that region of Asia from religion as the centerpiece of politics. Right now, I think that Islam is going to take over a lot of the states within the Arab world that had previously been more "secular". Lebanon, perhaps Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, etc. While the Arabs practice Shar'ia Law in the belief that Islam will solve their problems, other non-Arabic countries might be able to watch the failure of religion-dominated politics. Iran is already at the verge of a huge societal change. We'll have to see how the elections play out this year, but I hope a reformist like Mohamed Kavakebian gets elected. It all depends on how much longer the theocratic government can continue cheating in elections.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
Venatosaurus
Member Avatar
HAUS OF SPEC
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Im late but within this amount of time the English language will change - words have new meanings placed daily and new slang is created. Spelling will change and take on different meanings. Daily new words arise - Hell ratchet was a tool now it means ghetto



Offline Profile Goto Top
 
Zirantun
Adolescent
 *  *  *  *  *
Quote:
 
Im late but within this amount of time the English language will change - words have new meanings placed daily and new slang is created. Spelling will change and take on different meanings. Daily new words arise - Hell ratchet was a tool now it means ghetto


How that ever happened... lol.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
T.Neo
Member Avatar
Translunar injection: TLI
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Quote:
 
Well you're entitled to your opinion. If anything is constant in life, it's linguistic change. It is a common misconception that American dialects are more homogenous than say, British dialects because they have been absorbed in our age of communication. American dialects are in fact less diverse because they have not had the same amount of time to develop. British dialects of English have already undergone a number of drastically altering grammatical and phonological changes that have been completed to differing levels in different areas. Just because a shift like the Great Vowel shift hasn't happened in some 500 years doesn't mean that it won't happen again. After all, Old English stayed very much the same for a similar amount of time, and that was before the age of telecommunication. American dialects are the most diverse where they have had the most time to develop, on the East Coast, where they have been in the making for 400 years. Still, One doesn't necessarily need that long for a distinct variety to arise, as is seen with New Zealand English, which is no more than 100-150 years old. It has developed the most during the days of radio, telephones, television, and the internet, despite having been actively persecuted in New Zealand media for much of the 20th century. So if I have to disagree with you anywhere, it's here. English will change, and it's changing geographically even though people are "close" to one another geographically and connected by social media.


Simply because languages evolve does not mandate them to speciate. I did not try to claim, nor do I believe, that the presence of social media has prevented the development of dialects in the US. I'm simply saying that a geographical connection combined with modern technology is an impetus for a population to maintain a mutually intelligle language.

Quote:
 
I would understand if we were talking about balkanization within 100 years, which is still more of a possibility than you think it is, but in 1500? I know that this country, or a country that covers the same geographical area will not be around in 1500 years the same way that I know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. There are already geographically divisive structures within the country at play presently, and I imagine that those will only get stronger, especially when the USA loses its status as the dominant superpower. In 1500 years... think about the world 1500 years ago. There was no England, almost every single country in Europe did not exist as we know it, and a number of the ethnicities that we see as so central to what we consider to be European were not even complete yet. French did not exist, Spanish did not exist, Italian did not exist, English did not yet exist as distinct from continental Germanic groups, and the Scottish certainly didn't exist. The only people that I can think of that existed at all and have remained in the same spot off the top of my head are the Irish, because not even the Welsh had become distinct from Britons.

Just because we live in an age of technological superiority to that of those that lived 1500 years ago, does not mean that our place in the world is any less fragile than theirs. The political and ethnic scene in the world by then could be totally unrecognizable, especially in a time when we have the technology to wipe out entire nations in minutes.


I do not know, nor do I claim to know, whether the US will balkanise by 3500 CE. I simply consider it highly unlikely. I find that contrast with your claim to know what will occur to be highly odd. You've stated that there are geographically aligned divisive issues in the United States- where? What are they? Even in the bluest and reddest states, a considerable fraction of the population voted for the other guy. In the states with the highest proportions of specific ethnic groups, there are significant numbers of people from other ethnic groups. America has railways, it has highways, it has air travel. It's considerably more difficult for people to be disconnected from those in the next state over, or on the other side of the country, than it was 200 years ago.

Yes, the political climate 1500 years ago was radically different to the one today- but it wasn't just a matter of who had a border where. Much of the world 1500 years ago was inhabited by nomadic, tribal people who didn't form nation states at all. If anything the level of organisation in political entities has increased throughout history, and that level of organisation should confer durability to a nation's existence. Even far later than 500 AD, monarchy, feudalism and soforth were the basis of nations, whereas today democracy is widespread. Industry is totally different today (industrial revolution), agriculture is totally different today (commercial vs. subsistence). Transport is much faster and much more available- a personally owned vehicle can travel across a distance in a day that would take weeks to traverse through much of human history. Communication is vastly more advanced- one can hold a real-time conversation with someone on the other side of the planet, and entire books can be transmitted over the internet (compare with most of history when books needed to be copied by hand). News travels faster. The average person in a developed nation today knows far more than their equivalent in 500 AD. Many simple scientific facts today were unknown back then even to the pinnacle of science. Population densities are much higher, dependance on infrastructure is much higher, etc. The same goes for the differences in conflict, which I explained elsewhere. Modern war is nothing like war in AD 500. It's considerably different from war in AD 1900.

Do the differences between the modern and ancient world make our nations immune to catastrophe? Do they make our world unchanging and solid? No. But they do heavily effect how things progress.

I'm not disagreeing that the world will change. I'm disagreeing that it will change in the manners you believe it will.

Quote:
 
The population of Hawaii will also be completely decimated except the inland towns and the only military base left will be the one on the Big Island. Pearl Harbor will be totally destroyed. Which would leave Hawaii sort of up for grabs if anyone had the balls, which I don't think anybody would because that would be a direct act of war on a country that still has an absurdly large, and absurdly advanced military in comparison to anyone else.


One wonders who would be in shape to take Hawaii by force at that point, if this tsunami has heavily affected the entire Pacific region. Though such a disaster would punch the first, second and third (as well as the 11th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th) current largest economies in the face. I'd imagine that'd be pretty... painful to the global economy.

Quote:
 
I am sure though that other nations would develop the technology to asteroid mine, but the question is are they able to do it fast enough? Really we're talking about a period of about a century here where India and Brazil dominate and you get the settlement of Kurys. So they don't have to be in total control of absolutely everything, just in control enough for their populations to make up the majority initially on the planet so that their languages are the most important to start out.


It may be somewhat of a stretch, but maybe you can do something similar to what China did in the past- steering away from interstellar colonisation and focusing on terrestrial or solar exploits, just as they did oceanic exploration for a land-based empire in their history?

Quote:
 
Yes but all artificially made diamonds can still be distinguished by experts as artificially made. Still, platinum is more likely, I agree, so gold will have to have been the currency reserve that India/Brazil were hording to keep the price up.


Why should it be a different metal? If India and Brazil hold a monopoly on space mining (which is rather unlikely possibility), and deep-crust resource extraction becomes possible, then theoretically, everyone can do it, everyone has access to deposits, and their monopoly- and thus power- is considerably reduced. Heck, it may not be an issue of monopoly, but how much of an economy is based around space mining. Perhaps India and Brazil's economies are, for whatever reason, heavily based in space mining, and they're just hardest hit by the development of new technology.

Quote:
 
As far as claiming planets though, India is supposed to have gotten preoccupied in our own solar system while Brazil had to search elsewhere, and eventually found Kurys to both mine and move miners.


That's a gross misunderstanding of the scale of the solar system though. To claim every known asteroid, India would have to claim nearly four asteroids a week for the next 1500 years, starting today.

Quote:
 
I think that Western powers are more likely to collapse because of a social/economic problems rather than problems concerning energy. The European Union is a very loosely held together house of cards that's on the verge of going bankrupt once it incompletely bails out the next country that needs it (presumably Italy, we'll see). People in Europe are only going to put up with an unelected body of people telling their governments what they can and cannot do for so long, or with them setting up puppet regimes like we've seen in Greece under Papademos. Not to say that the downfall of the West will result in an instant replacement by another superpower. On the contrary, I think the world would have at least half a century to go before someone else dominated the global stage, because as you said, their downfall will come down on all economies with which they are intertwined like a 'ton of bricks'.


I would concur, but only because the notion of the introduction of a clean energy source destroying the economies of nations based on how western those nations are makes no sense whatsoever.

The fact of the matter is that the best way to surpass America and so on as a superpower is simply to develop. If a catastrophe sets back their economy, their economy will regrow, and unless it wreaks something like a ten-fold reduction or higher in GDP per capita, it's going to put the US in a better place than many third world countries would have been before the catastrophe affected their economies secondarily.

Quote:
 
Now how India absorbs Pakistan I haven't gotten into. I know that the two are deeply divided right now, but I also know that the people who drew the borders weren't paying a lot of attention. India and Pakistan share a common language over much of the country (be it Sindhi, Hindustani, or Punjabi) as well as a common history. Right now, religion seems to be the biggest thing keeping the two apart.


Indeed, religion seems to the be the biggest separating factor, but these are countries that have been in conflicts with eachother several times, and have engaged in a nuclear arms race. I suppose in several hundred years animosities created by these conflicts would be so deep in history as to not be a considerable barrier to unification though.

Quote:
 
Well, to get off a planet
You either need an orbital elevator
Or a specially contained shuttle
Something with a fusion engine
I had some math that figured out how much fuel it would use, how long it would take, but the papers are at home
Basically 2 hours to get to 30000 km off the surface at 1 g effective (it's actually 2g, but you lose 1g due to its weight)
To go from planet to planet, rockets accelerate up to the asteroid belt
Trying to distance themselves from the sun and its gravity
There they can enter the enerverse to jump to the second system
But they only enter said system at about the same distance from the star
So they have to spend time travelling to the planet in question
The whole process takes about 3 weeks
10 days accelerating to the belt, about 1 day constant when you enerverse, another 10 days decelerating towards the destination planet
But 3 weeks is how long it takes now
When they first travelled to Kurys, it was 3 months
1.5 months accelerating to get to the belt and another 1.5 decelerating after you enerverse
(1000 years is a lot of time to improve your rockets)
Now, time decreased about 3-fold
But because distance and time in uniformly accelerated motion are related by a square, acceleration has to increase 10 times for this effect
So the rockets have actually improved by a lot more than first seems
Theoretically, acceleration could increase another 10-fold, reaching a full 1g, and time be sliced in thirds again
But this would be the ultimate limit
Past this acceleration is unsafe for human health
You'd have to spend the journey in some sort of specialized chair or suit; humans might even have to modify themselves to withstand it
You'd better specify that there is FTL in this universe
And that it only works some distance from the star


From what I can gather, they're talking about some sort of cheap FTL jump? That may make interstellar mining feasible, but in that case you'd likely have a whole bunch of other locations beyond Sol available and you wouldn't need to bother mining planets.

At that point you might well be colonising planets simply because you can. If a habitable world were in 'easy' reach of Earth, our interests in space colonisation would probably look considerably different.
Edited by T.Neo, Feb 14 2013, 07:17 PM.
A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Café Cosmique · Next Topic »
Locked Topic