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| - You say, "Hi guys!" Mika says, "Hiiiiiiiiiiiii." Dice says, "Snazzy!" "Hello!" Volgavian calls as he goes to hog one of the larger sofa chairs. You say, "Take a seat, take a seat. Well. Don't take one, cause I'm loaning them from my imagination and I'm not sure what'll happen if that gets taken." Tiana does the hello dance. Kastaprulyi runs one off on the copy machine before taking it. You say, "Apparently, the only clock I own with an alarm was set an hour late, so we're all going to pretend like this is starting on time and nobody is going to draw any awareness to the fact that it didn't. Exellent." Mika jedimindtricks. Volgavian says, "So, where does this start?" Tiana curls up in Mika's lap instead of a smancy chair. For Mika is -better-. Mika brow-waggles. You say, "Hmm, where indeed? I guess I'll make sure we're clear on what this is. Kas, Eyota, the Osirian's and I have all been working on this cool little 'Save New Luna' plot for a while now, and it's presented a wonderful opportunity for us to... write a load of scientific sounding gobble that explains what we're actually doing to get around this. Most of the time, I'm quite happy to do this by myself - I'll look at random wikipedia entries so that I can boost up my lingo and vaguely stay near reality but we touched upon an interesting topic, terraforming, and in the spur of the moment I decided it'd be fun to get everyone together on something, as informal as you like, and just... chat!" Volgavian says, "Okay, what exactly about it are we trying to define, first? How it's done?" Dice says, "Hmmm. Has there been much terraforming in OS's history? Mars, I know for sure..." You say, "And a load of moons around Sol." Volgavian says, "Wasn't one of the Lunas?" You say, "Can we presume Waldheim? Or was that one of those one in a million planets that can support life?E" Mika says, "Several of the moons in Sol. Ganymede comes to mind." Dice says, "Plain Luna wasn't, and I don't thiiink New Luna had to be?" Mika isn't sure about Waldheim. Kastaprulyi says, "Portmeirion recently" Mika says, "Yes!" Dice says, "So since most of it's in the Sol system, I guess by 3008 it'd probably be pretty old technology, right? Pretty established?" Kastaprulyi says, "Terraforming Luna actually was debated in the 300 elections." Kastaprulyi says, "3000" Dice says, "Gee, that would have been a GOOD IDEA." Mika says, "It'd have to be pretty established. Pretty fine-tuned. Probably god-awful expensive to do, and requiring teams of thousands of people, but by now there are probably corporations specializing in it." Kastaprulyi says, "Kinda shortsighted, though, since you'd have to keep replacing the air." Martin says, "Isn't the moon too small to support an atmosphere and its soil dry and utterly useless for growing crap?" Kastaprulyi says, "True, Martin" Mika says, "Our moon? Yeah." Dice says, "I mean mostly it would have been a good idea so as to prevent that whole 99 percent of Luna dying. ;)" Mika hahahas Dice says, "But, yeah. I guess you'd have to make an atmosphere first?" You say, "Kas came up with the idea of an artificial gravity, that could sustain the atmosphere by itself." Kastaprulyi agrees with Mika on the established thing, except the corporation part. You couldn't have a corporation without more than one customer. Kastaprulyi says, "I came up with what?" You say, "Okay, maybe I came up with it and dreamed you came up with it!" Volgavian says, "See, that seems to make... rather little sense." Dement coughs. Tiana gives Dee some Halls. Dice says, "You wouldn't need much gravity to keep an atmosphere, would you? I mean, I'm no physicist." Volgavian says, "I'd imagine something powerful enough to act as an artificial gravity field for an entire planet to the point of giving it an atmosphere would be /way/ too energy costly, I'd think." Kastaprulyi says, "Depends on what gas you want, Dice." Dice says, "Well, it seems almost all of our races breathe about the same stuff." Kastaprulyi agrees with Volgavian Dice says, "Therefore we can assume an Earth-like atmosphere... I mean, hell, the name is TERRAforming." Mika says, "Well, ships have artificial gravity that sustains life in zero-gee and jumpspace. Perhaps that, on a larger scale." Dice says, "Won't most planets big enough to be worth terraforming HAVE gravity?" You say, "True, why terraform if you could just set up a 'moon-base'?" Kastaprulyi says, "However, you -could- dump so much oxygen into Luna's atmosphere that it wouldn't matter that most of it blew away every few decades (years?)" Mika says, "True. But perhaps not all of them. Terraformers would likely have a contingency plan. :)" Dice says, "Luna proved why moon-bases are inferior to full terraforming." Martin thinks that would be.. just the power needed to run one. I don't think it would be feasable. Dice says, "Technological failure=death." Ruin says, "Weren't there some bad freakythings that resulted from bad terraforming?" Dice says, "We can assume -most- terraforming probably takes place on planets with some gravity of their own. Why terraform a marble anyway?" Kastaprulyi says, "Nobody ever said Seale knew what he was talking about when he suggested terraforming. :)" Volgavian nods to Martin. Dice says, "If we don't assume gravity I think it gets to be a serious headache." Mika laughs. Martin says, "Probably be easier to build a Dyson or whatever Sphere then it would be to terra form the moon. Ring world anyone?" Tiana can check all this with her physicist friend after, if you all like, just for plausability's sake. Kastaprulyi says, "That'd be cool, T" Dice says, "So how do you make a breathable atmosphere?" Kastaprulyi says, "Yes Ruin, Portmeirion used self-replicating nanites (a bad idea in any case) in an attempt to terraform the moon quickly, rather than the century or more you'd expect. But it went very wrong." Volgavian says, "Well, you need a large enough planet first..." Dice says, "Assuming large enough planet, sure." Volgavian says, "So, /our/ moon might not work, but there are moons that already do have atmospheres." Volgavian says, "I think Europa, for one?"
* Reasons to Terraform
* Technology Behind Terraforming
* Limitations of that Tech
* History of Terraforming
* Current Situation
* Freaky Crap That Happens If It Goes Wrong (cheers Ruin)
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