Ø That goes back to my assumption that in Traveller we are not really
thinking about native life. I know that we casually refer to native life
(and then ignore the animal encounter tables by flying over them in
air/rafts per recent discussions), but what Traveller is REALLY talking
about is starfaring races colonizing them in the last 8000 years, or
Grandfather plopping his experiments down 300,000 years ago, which is
still an eye-blink in stellar evolution. I assume that all of these
colonies are bringing their own seed corn and domestic animals with them
You can bring all of the seed corn and domestic animals to that nearly
airless rockball you want to, but you still arent going to get a breathable
atmosphere in the next 1000 years.
You can bring all of the seed corn and domestic animals to that world with a
type A atmosphere, but you arent going to get a breathable atmosphere in
the next 1000 years.
Instead, you are going to go to that atmosphere 4-9 world (*maybe* include
type 2-3, too) and settle there. Cool. I get that. But, where did all of
that oxygen in the atmosphere come from? Sure, you are terraforming that
planet by making it more Earth-like. But it was still pretty Earth-like to
start with. Where did that oxygen come from? It had to come from somewhere,
and has to have something that keeps it there. What was it? Maybe it was
life that sucks for humans, so you have to bring your own. Maybe it is
super-primitive life like early plants and lichen and alge. But something
needs to already be there to make that atmosphere type 4-9 to start with.
How did the oxygen get there first? Life. And it takes a long time for that
life to develop and change the atmosphere to type 4-9.
(And that is what Traveller means by terraforming, anyway. You go to a
world with a breathable or near-breathable atmosphere and a crappy [for
humans] biosphere and remake the biosphere to suit humans. But that still
means the world originally had both some kind of human-recognizable
carbon-based life *and* it had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Terraforming
doesnt make the atmosphere; it at best modifies it and changes the
biosphere.)
Again, you can put up all of the domes you want. I am not talking about
those worlds. I am talking about a world with a breathable (or close enough)
type 4-9 atmosphere. No human put that oxygen there. Did the Ancients have
enough time to put it there? I dunno.
Mike West
thinking about native life. I know that we casually refer to native life
(and then ignore the animal encounter tables by flying over them in
air/rafts per recent discussions), but what Traveller is REALLY talking
about is starfaring races colonizing them in the last 8000 years, or
Grandfather plopping his experiments down 300,000 years ago, which is
still an eye-blink in stellar evolution. I assume that all of these
colonies are bringing their own seed corn and domestic animals with them
You can bring all of the seed corn and domestic animals to that nearly
airless rockball you want to, but you still arent going to get a breathable
atmosphere in the next 1000 years.
You can bring all of the seed corn and domestic animals to that world with a
type A atmosphere, but you arent going to get a breathable atmosphere in
the next 1000 years.
Instead, you are going to go to that atmosphere 4-9 world (*maybe* include
type 2-3, too) and settle there. Cool. I get that. But, where did all of
that oxygen in the atmosphere come from? Sure, you are terraforming that
planet by making it more Earth-like. But it was still pretty Earth-like to
start with. Where did that oxygen come from? It had to come from somewhere,
and has to have something that keeps it there. What was it? Maybe it was
life that sucks for humans, so you have to bring your own. Maybe it is
super-primitive life like early plants and lichen and alge. But something
needs to already be there to make that atmosphere type 4-9 to start with.
How did the oxygen get there first? Life. And it takes a long time for that
life to develop and change the atmosphere to type 4-9.
(And that is what Traveller means by terraforming, anyway. You go to a
world with a breathable or near-breathable atmosphere and a crappy [for
humans] biosphere and remake the biosphere to suit humans. But that still
means the world originally had both some kind of human-recognizable
carbon-based life *and* it had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Terraforming
doesnt make the atmosphere; it at best modifies it and changes the
biosphere.)
Again, you can put up all of the domes you want. I am not talking about
those worlds. I am talking about a world with a breathable (or close enough)
type 4-9 atmosphere. No human put that oxygen there. Did the Ancients have
enough time to put it there? I dunno.
Mike West