Re: Building a map of habitable space

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 06:29:26AM -0500, Tom B wrote:

>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)

Somewhere between the two is another possibility: borderline-habitable
planets become regarded as "habitable" for lack of a decent alternative.
Sure, you have to stay in sealed buildings or wear a mask to scrub out
(most of) the sulphur dioxide, but once you get used to the smell it's
fine...

(While I think you're right, I believe it's also the case that we don't
really have the tech to detect earthlike exoplanets so far. The size
gate is gradually closing, but it's not quite there yet.)

>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.

Absolutely. A realistic setting needs realistic economics. (But I have a
degree in economics so I would say that wouldn't I?)

>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.

Value per mass, at least. And value will vary from system to system
depending on how available local resources are (cheap surface-to-orbit
probably means cheap asteroid mining too).

R