Building a map of habitable space

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http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-habitable-exoplanets-online-database
-worlds.html
http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/data

This is some interesting work. It might be interesting to have something
like this form a basis for some harder sci-fi gaming or at least for
picking out habitable planets.

Looking in NASA's expoplanet DB, of the expoplanets that had a Teff (K)
-
I'm thinking this is temperature in Kelvins - the lowest one with data
was
2290 K or so. That's a bit warm. But the catalogs above give some
choices
that are interesting. And the other interesting points is that it lists
interesting exomoons as well.

We'll keep discovering new expoplanets over the next decades and
learning
more about the ones we've already spotted and figuring out more about
foreign solar systems. But this sort of resource could be useful if you
are
crafting your own sci-fi setting in a game or writing some sci-fi and
want
to have it in the broad vicinity of Earth. Some of the data may end up
being drastically off (as we refine our knowledge... I get the
impression
from the list of false positives on exoplanets that this isn't
uncommon),
but it might do for some fiction or a fictional universe.

The one thing I take from this is that space is not likely to have all
that
many very closely Earth like environments. That means, in a scifi
setting
or gaming sense, that one of two things would seem likely:

A) That the few available habitable bodies would become quite valuable
(and
hence possibly fought over)
or
B) We'll have to reach some sort of post-singularity humanity that might
be
capable of shelling into different body forms (see any number of books
but
Peter Hamilton comes to mind as does the SF RPG Eclipse Phase)

Relevant to the GZG verse (or an alternate one), we don't normally
envision
the GZGverse as heavily towards B, so I suspect A becomes more likely.
Terrestrial or at least habitable (non terrestrial) planets may be
fought
over.

There will be the question of whether there is any sense in shipping
resources between systems; a lot would depend on how valuable they are
and
how cheap transport with jump drives and interface technologies of the
day.
If we're still using chem fuel to push mass to orbit, that makes every
pound worth quite a bit. So a resource would have to be damn valuable to
make intersystem transportation sensible.

That being the case, maybe then the only value in foreign living space
is
just that. Living space. A place to move populations off Earth, both for
the safety of humanity on the large scale and to alleviate crowding in a
crowded, resource limited Earth. That and any Imperial aims various
factions may have.

T.

-- 
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their
family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.* 
*--
Willa Cather (1873 - 1947)Solitudinem fecerunt, pacem appelunt
-- Publius Cornelius Tacitus (from the book Agricola, attributed to a
speech from Calgacus)