How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Fri, 2010-04-23 15:29
Sunchaser said (in the Mars map thread): "I wish every sci-fi rpg included a first person common man perspective of his surroundings."
I think this is a very good point: making the setting come alive by the little details. We should try to fill in the details about the varied environments of the solar system. Maybe this is best handled as separate threads for different worlds.
Just selecting a place "randomly", consider Titan. How does it feel to be there?
The gravity is 0.14 g, slightly less than the Moon. If you drop something on Earth it falls to the floor in about half a second. On Titan it takes three times as long.
Ordinary walking is tricky unless done very slowly: on Earth ordinary walking speed is around 1.5 m/s. On Titan it will be about 0.6 m/s - a slow pace. On Earth we start to run when moving faster than 2.0 m/s, on Titan the shift occurs at around 1 m/s. So people will be loping or bouncing in everyday life, unless they try to preserve dignity by walking at a very slow and stately pace. See this essay, and for more science this article if you got Nature access.
Titan is rotating synchronously, meaning that Saturn always stays in the same place in the sky. On half the moon it is not directly visible. Although it might be hard to see it anyway. The atmosphere is so dense and opaque that it is hard to tell where the sun is; the light levels are probably dusk-like.
The normal temperature outside is −179.5 °C. A lot of the crust is ice, which means that buildings need to avoid leaking too much heat to melt their foundations. In addition there is an atmosphere that will easily be warmed by a building. Hence there is a need for plenty of insulation to avoid both losing heat for the inhabitants and unsettling the environment too much. A typical titanian arcology will still have a noticeable updraft of heated
The surface pressure is about 1.45 times that of Earth's. Since buildings are going to be heavily insulated and airtight, this might be a minor issue. Except that any leak will tend to suck in titan air into the building. Most of titan air (98.4%) is nitrogen, but there is methane (1.4%) and hydrogen (0.1-0.2%). Methane is flammable only over a narrow range of concentrations (5–15%) in air and hydrogen requires at least 4% to be explosive, so a leak will not be an immediate explosion danger. But it will be fiercely cold, freeze water vapour into mist and contains a lot of somewhat nasty chemicals like cyanogen and benzene. Most likely the leak smells like a sniff into a petrochemical factory.
The dense air and low gravity allows flying outside with very minor fins attached to a spacesuit, and with slightly bigger wings indoors.
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Sat, 2010-04-24 08:48
#2
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
At the distance from the sun Titan is, it receives about 1% of the energy per square meter as Earth does. This means that even in at noon on Titan the light level is close to Earth twilight. The surface can also be pretty dark thanks to tholin hydrocarbons covering the ice rocks and ethane mists. Going outdoors can be a pretty creepy experience.
The speed of sound is 192 m/s, about 57% of the speed on Earth's surface. So the sound from explosions will arrive even later than on Earth (but will be felt as a ground vibration quite soon; the speed of sound in ice is 3152 m/s), and a lot of sound-sources like musical instruments will sound very odd outside. According to
http://www.peppermintleafresearch.net/Andi/paper_icarus.pdf
the attenuation of sound is noticeably lower in Titan air than on Earth, especially for low frequency sounds and rumbles. Sustained sounds can also become stronger thanks to the greater acoustic impendance. Outdoor concerts with the right kind of instruments can be quite dramatic in the gloom and vibrating atmosphere.
By the way, explosions in the Titan environment will tend to melt or vaporise the ice in the ground which then refreezes to a slick crater. The titanian surface is sculpted (besides by cryovulcanism and occasional faulting) by erosion from methane rain and flows, digging channels and forming deltas, as well as wind-driven erosion that builds dunes of ice sand. Ice behaves as light but hard rocks. Tholin deposits may behave as mud, soil or minerals.
Titan is metal-poor but has lots of carbon: metal components are expensive since most metal has to be imported from orbit.
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Tue, 2010-04-27 11:05
#3
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
what does one requires to go outside?
a full EVA suit like in orbit? or an isothermic combi with exopack-like mask.
Aside from the temperature, the condition on Titans are similar to the one described in Avatar's Pandora. And Cameron did seek physics experts consultants for his movie
if there was a way to heaten Titan's surface (got that idea for a scenario in mind, called "Codename: Helios Project"), would just mask be enough?
Also, now that we know how things are outside, how's the life like in the Titanian arcologies?
Ever since the movie OUTLAND (with Sean Connery) and the videogame FLASHBACK was released, early 1990s, on Sega Genesis, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, I had a liking on colonies established on Titan.Not to mention Cowboy Bebop, in which Titan had some importance
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Tue, 2010-04-27 13:46
#4
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
what does one requires to go outside?
a full EVA suit like in orbit? or an isothermic combi with exopack-like mask.
Keeping the environment from freezing the morph is going to take some insulation and internal heating. The pressure is not bad (just like being under a bit of water), but any piece of tissue with direct thermal contact with the surroundings will freeze nearly instantly. So the suit will be full-body, carry a compact heat source and likely maintain a thermal gradient between the interior and the surface (otherwise touching things in the environment will tend to boil them and a stumble would produce a steam eruption). Excess heat is likely released from the backpack as heated Titan air forming a shimmering heat haze pillar above every person.
if there was a way to heaten Titan's surface (got that idea for a scenario in mind, called "Codename: Helios Project"), would just mask be enough?
Yes, but I guess a swimsuit would also be needed, since the surface would be an ocean of oily water.
Also, now that we know how things are outside, how's the life like in the Titanian arcologies?
My guess is that they are crowded and very 3D. While making more habitat bubbles is pretty cheap, the costly part is ensuring that heating, insulation and wiring is up to spec. The TC doesn't strike me as a place that would skimp on this, even if it means taking more time making them.
The low gravity makes it easy to go uphill, so people don't mind a far more 3D architecture than on Earth. But a fall can still kill if it is far enough, so all deep or very open spaces are filled with transparent netting to catch you. The netting also acts as airfilters and dust cleaning. Some kids and grown-ups likely find it fun to descend by falling from net to net rather than walking on ramps like normal people.
Elevators are somewhat slow when starting downwards or slowing when going up, since they cannot accelerate more than the local gravity: it is a bad thing is passengers and load drift up into the ceiling.
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Tue, 2010-04-27 14:59
#5
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Actually, for Codename: Helios, I was thinking of a temperature close to countries like Iceland, Alaska, Siberia
the water found on Titan could be taken to Mars for the terraforming process
on the arcology, I could see something akin to Zion in Matrix or the endo-cities in Metabarons
huge wells with appartent, stores, administrative and corporate centers, etc built on the perimeters, on hundreds of stories with huge lift to transport the vehicles from one level to the other
what's the everyday life on the people there?
Also, one of my future players asked me, what are the concepts they could play, depending on the world/habitat they come from?
after all, some jobs could be found on Mars that couldn't be found on Titan, Luna or Locus, and reciprokely
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Tue, 2010-04-27 19:04
#6
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Actually, for Codename: Helios, I was thinking of a temperature close to countries like Iceland, Alaska, Siberia the water found on Titan could be taken to Mars for the terraforming process
But those countries are know for having liquid ice in their environment! Just imagine what this will do to the methane lakes. Even if you "just" heat things to a balmy -20 degrees C, a lot of Titan's surface will radically remodel itself due to thermal cracking and cryovolcanism. We are talking about a 159 degree temperature rise. And removing the water implies that you want to remove the *crust* of the moon...
on the arcology, I could see something akin to Zion in Matrix or the endo-cities in Metabarons
huge wells with appartent, stores, administrative and corporate centers, etc built on the perimeters, on hundreds of stories with huge lift to transport the vehicles from one level to the other
Yes, the endocities and Zion are good models. On Titan there is less reason to dig deeply than in places with radiation and no protective atmosphere, so they could go up too. Big city cylinders, linked by occasional maglev bridges and constantly extended upwards. Some tricky anchoring and foundationwork down in the underground ice levels to ensure things remain stable - long nanofactured "roots" distributing the weight across vast volumes of reinforced ice.
what's the everyday life on the people there?
I think Titan is by far the most "inner" place in the outer system. It has a fairly strong government and large scale economy.
As I run it, it is a kind of extrapolation/parody of a Scandinavian welfare state. Given that my players are Swedes and some of them are active politicians and/or political scientists we have great fun coming up with details about the government, microcorps and the 'agile bureaucracy'.
Also, one of my future players asked me, what are the concepts they could play, depending on the world/habitat they come from?
after all, some jobs could be found on Mars that couldn't be found on Titan, Luna or Locus, and reciprokely
Hmm, what would be the unique titanian job? Actually, being a government employee or troubleshooter is quite unusual in the rest of the solar system. "My name is James Kashir, and I was sent here by the Department of Public Safety"
Titan has moved small moonlets for the defense systems and have the big orbital accelerator. I think that might lead to a concentration of megascale engineers.
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Tue, 2010-04-27 20:37
#7
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
I didn't mean just on Titans, but everywhere
my players are going to play Glory as first exposition to the gameverse, not yet members of Firewall
I'm starting it a bit like I would a game of Cyberpunk 3.0, a post-modern Kult or Cthulhu 2210, so to speak.
The tone I'm intending to give my little corner of the EPverse is a budding McCarthism, except instead of the commies, the big boogiemen are the TITANs and those who have supported them or still are, at least in the Inner Core. Only ten years have occured since the War, which I think, imprinted a deep traumatism in the people mind. It's like mid 1950s meet post 9/11 War on Terror with a dash of BSG for the drasticly downsized number of people. Razor gave a fairly good exemple.
the thing I want to drive home to them is that unless they want to play kids bellow 11, maybe even 14 or 15 (I'm not against it. Hell, it'd even rentabilize that WoD: Innocents book I got for Christmas!), they'll remember the War and the Fall, but they are now trying to live a normal life, and then BAM! that asian bloke contact them through friends of theirs for a favor.
In fact the very scene I'll have them play is their death on EArth during the fall, 2012 meets Terminator Salvation meets Matrix Revolution, and then, they wake up, stirred from their flashback from their Muse.
By the way, do kids still go to school? or are they schooled by their muses, their parents or through the Mesh?
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Wed, 2010-04-28 06:13
#8
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
I didn't mean just on Titans, but everywhere
I guess this kinds of gets outside the main purpose of this thread, but it is an important question. Giving a sense of the "look and feel" for a game world is crucial.
By the way, do kids still go to school? or are they schooled by their muses, their parents or through the Mesh?
A lot of education is from the muses (who link up to whatever educational programs exist in the polity where the child is - whether an EduCorp on Extropia, one of the Open Schools of Titan or the education server of the local Dominican monastery on some asteroid). I expect that there are plenty of education simspaces and other mesh activities too, and by succeeding at them you get "merit badges" that allow you to do other activities.
However, formal schooling probably exists too. Putting kids into a controlled, healthy environment regularly is a good way to ensure they develop real-world social skills, can be monitored for function (given how many parents might be more or less dysfunctional due to post-Fall chock this is sensible) and learn how to solve important stuff. This might be more prevalent on Titan than in the Belt or on scum barges.
Look at Vernor Vinge's short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High" to get an idea - it is a pretty good depiction of how I envision ordinary EP kids handling school.
The tone I'm intending to give my little corner of the EPverse is a budding McCarthism, except instead of the commies, the big boogiemen are the TITANs and those who have supported them or still are, at least in the Inner Core. Only ten years have occured since the War, which I think, imprinted a deep traumatism in the people mind. It's like mid 1950s meet post 9/11 War on Terror with a dash of BSG for the drasticly downsized number of people.
Yup. Although I don't think it is any *budding* McCarthyism. Millions of people regard a person somehow involved with whatever black projects led to the TITANs as a war criminal on par with Hitler. And given their experience, they are at least somewhat justified. Which of course doesn't prevent them from striking at the wrong people (and AIs) or getting paranoid.
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Mon, 2010-05-03 16:14
#9
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
By the way, do kids still go to school? or are they schooled by their muses, their parents or through the Mesh?
Play it Children of Men-style and say there are no "kids" anymore, just people in NeoTenic bodies.
That or Futuras, which I've been consider of having them more available, with the actual Lost being an isolated incident independent of the biomorph. However, the Futura has a stigma attached to it: people are recognizing that when sleeving or genetically reengineering a child into a Futura, the accelerated growth causes them to not have a childhood that would make them emotionally-stable, independent adults. They're literally becoming adults far quicker than their egos can mature. Futuras are a symptom of a larger problem, that of a generation that is being forced to grow up before they're ready.
Of course, the Jupiter Junta has children and they would pretty much taught like any American public school, with heavy doses of discipline; enforced gender roles and morphlogical identity; and civic responsibility. Think something out of a Heinlein book and use that as a starting point.
Mon, 2010-05-03 16:49
#10
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Well, there are other threads on the issue of how much reproduction there really is. Views seem to be highly divergent.
My own take is that children are rare, but enormously valued. Parents and their societies spend (to us) amazing efforts on giving them a perfect upbringing - not just the right genes and education, but the right mix of adventure, spontaneity, emotional contact, independence and security to create a "healthy" person. This doesn't necessarily work out well - the world is complex and changing so fast that many things that made sense a few years ago are now utterly contra-productive, and there are enough scary things out there to give any growing mind traumas.
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Tue, 2010-05-11 17:22
#11
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Excess heat is likely released from the backpack as heated Titan air forming a shimmering heat haze pillar above every person.
Yeah, and what happens the first time you fall over backwards? Rapid sublimation of the surface from ice to gas could propel or shred you.
Anyone ever read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman? Happens on a training exercise on Pluto (I know, colder there...)
Tue, 2010-05-11 20:23
#12
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
oh! right! I remember!
that had freaked me out, when i read that. the amount of death during the training was astounding. I remember reading it for school, way back.
Too bad, the graphic novel adaptation (drawn by Marvano, published under the French title "Guerre Eternelle" by Les Editions Dupuis, 1988~1989) didn't cover that passage, among several others (don't ask which, i haven't read either version in years!)
I think that on Mars and large colonies of the Consortium, including the extrasolar planets, a babyboom is encouraged by the hypercorps, each with their own agenda and protocol
In smaller habitat, birth control is strictly enforced or reserved to the rich people who can afford an splicer morph and fork themselves in them while keeping on working and/or having fun with their main Morph and Ego
the ultimate nanny: a copy of themselves
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Wed, 2010-05-12 13:14
#13
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Yeah, and what happens the first time you fall over backwards? Rapid sublimation of the surface from ice to gas could propel or shred you.
Anyone ever read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman? Happens on a training exercise on Pluto (I know, colder there...)
I wonder whether this is a real problem. If you fall on Titan you will most likely heat water ice, which is not explosive unless you have a ridiculously powerful heat source (just consider how intense flame you need to get ice to instantly boil off).
Falling into methane might be worse. Let's see now... one kilo of liquid methane has a volume of 0.002 m^3 and will turn into 1.4 m^3, an expansion of 518 times. Whoosh! But it takes 510 kJ/kg to evaporate. A warm human might release 200 Watts. That means she can turn 0.0003 kg liquid per second into gas, producing 0.00055 m^3 gas per second. Not much, not dangerous.
I'm starting to think Haldeman didn't do the math.
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Wed, 2010-05-12 14:08
#14
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Falling into methane might be worse. Let's see now... one kilo of liquid methane has a volume of 0.002 m^3 and will turn into 1.4 m^3, an expansion of 518 times. Whoosh! But it takes 510 kJ/kg to evaporate. A warm human might release 200 Watts. That means she can turn 0.0003 kg liquid per second into gas, producing 0.00055 m^3 gas per second. Not much, not dangerous.
I'm starting to think Haldeman didn't do the math.
While it's possible (likely) he didn't...you've also got the warmth from the body focused into a small area...
...and there's the other possibility he mentions...bending/breaking the venting mechanism and cooking in your suit.
Space is fun! 
Wed, 2010-05-12 18:11
#15
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
I think the real risk might be that the boiling methane obscures vision and makes it hard to get up again. I don't know how slippery the hydrocarbon soup would be, but I can imagine that it could be very oily and opaque. A fallen person is covered in boiling gunk, and when trying to get up a hot suit touching volatile methan could produce enough Leidenfrost effect to make everything slippery.
EP tech seems to be built with a lot of fail-safes and smarts, so I doubt the standard titanian suit has an obvious fault mode like a really hot heat exhaust grill. But that doesn't stop the environment from being dangerous or that mis-handling a suit could seriously hurt. Just a small rip and at the very least you get a deep frostbite in that body part within seconds.
A firefight outside might be quite deadly: "Bang - you're dead. Sure, I just hit you in the foot. But it is already freezing, right? Soon it will shatter if you put any weight on it. And the cold will be creeping upwards in the leg. You will not be able to get back to the habitat in time. Maybe you will kill yourself to escape the pain, or you will freeze to death. I'm not picky."
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Wed, 2010-05-12 18:38
#16
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Arenamonta, are you Quellist, by any chance? *grin*
for some twisted reason (read; "Quin is a sick bastard!"), that li'l firefight snippet of yours amuses me to no end!
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Tue, 2010-05-25 07:46
#17
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Hostile environment engagements are nasty, nasty affairs, be it space, extreme cold/heat, or hostile chemicals...
As a counterpoint, consider a similar occurance on Venus. Someone punches a hole in your pressure suit, and bam! superheated sufuric acid vapor starts cooking you.
Neither sounds to me like a pleasant way to go.
Tue, 2010-05-25 11:00
#18
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
A firefight outside might be quite deadly: "Bang - you're dead. Sure, I just hit you in the foot. But it is already freezing, right? Soon it will shatter if you put any weight on it. And the cold will be creeping upwards in the leg. You will not be able to get back to the habitat in time. Maybe you will kill yourself to escape the pain, or you will freeze to death. I'm not picky."
I've actually been wondering just how to handle this recently. (Admittedly, I haven't had time to actually search the rule book on this topic since I started considering it.) As often as players find themselves in vacuum or other thoroughly hostile environments, suit damage can be a hell of a threat. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are environmental suits that are smart enough to seal up relatively small punctures quickly, but what happens if an entire limb gets torn off? Or a massive rip in the torso?
I imagine that most rational people would do their best to avoid firefights in such places, but some of the enemies players can find themselves up against don't quite count as 'rational.' (Or 'people,' for that matter.)
Wed, 2010-05-26 16:12
#19
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Also, remember that most suits for those enviroments, (particularly military or paramilitary organisations will be using smart, self-sealing vacsuits (see the equipment section of the rule book), probably with a redundant skinsuit underneath. Kit like that would dramatically increase the odds of survival.
Vs mass trauma, the effect would probably not be instantanious, but fast enough to save the person's life. However, without other assistance, the victim is still probably combat ineffective, either writhing in pain from the injury, or doped up by the suit's med system whilst medical nanites try to put them back together.
Sure, enough damage should be able to override this, but at the same time, the odds of the person inside the suit surviving the impact (not the environmental damage) would probably be fairly slim. Getting cut in half by a monowire still kills, even if your nanosuit seals the gaps up afterwards (although it could lead to some creepy crimescenes :S ).
Wed, 2010-05-26 14:00
#20
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
I would think that the self-repairing/regenerative feature would make all crime scenes creepy, The spotless suit (repaired) concealing the extent of the owners damage. Perhaps the owner also acquired a suit that also cleans itself, making the suit, a crime-scene detectives worst obstacle.
Unconscious, injured or dead , their suit looks undamaged. What ever caused the damage may still be active, trapped inside due to its entry point repaired. It just hasn't had any reasons to burst out. Regular corpses sometimes causes scare when vermin have infested inside, undetected.
Similar scenario for morphs that regenerate, the repaired exterior, concealing the extensive internal injuries.
skeleton in a spacesuit (sort of related)
http://user9585.vs.easily.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/ep4x08.jpg
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Wed, 2010-05-26 12:00
#21
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
"Sir, the victim lies here... and here... and here... We think something stopped the suit heating, and he froze solid. Then something else hit him, and he cracked into pieces. The strange thing is that the suit healing system still worked, so most of the pieces are still covered by suit material."
"He was clearly iced."
Self-healing suits are likely built to handle most normal damage but will have trouble with extreme traumas. They also likely depend on somewhat smart materials, which means that there is hacking potential.
This might be the reason one shouldn't trust rapidly compiled suits: people downloading public domain components and linking them without thinking may get a far too "smart" suit. They will use the components that are easily combined and have nice user interfaces rather than doing the hard simulation work to check that the suit works well even when under EMP attack or does not have micromachines that can be suborned. A good suit design will have failsafes, but there are far too many "cool" suits people have uploaded onto the net.
A sensible suit design uses some physical process to seal itself: a venusian suit contains chemicals that foam up in contact with Venus air, sealing breaks and forming thermal insulation. No way of hacking that, but the right kind of damage will make the victim puff up and perhaps be unable to move. "Look! It is the popcorn man!"
A Titan suit might have several chemical emergency heating units. Of course, a hit or hack there might produce uncomfortable to deadly consequences.
Remember, kids: space suits are not toys!
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Mon, 2010-08-16 19:12
#22
Re: How different environments look (and feel, smell, taste...)
Just saw this:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100810.html
"Central Titan, it turns out, is covered by sand, some of which appears strange. Images from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn have uncovered long rows of huge sand dunes near Titan's equator that rise as high as 300 meters. Shadows indicate that most dune shapes are created by wind blowing from the west. The problem is, the typical wind at Titan's equator blows from the east. One recent hypothesis that might solve this grainy conundrum posits that the only winds strong enough to move sand and create dunes occur during rare equinoxes and blow strongly from the west."
Of course, much of the sand is ice sand. Hmm, getting buried under a slow sand avalanche might be a real problem for a person...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070530.html
What about sailing the hydrocarbon fjords of the Mayda islands?
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061214.html
Or slowly ski on the methane snow on the mountains of Adiri.
Actually, there is plenty of fun names in titanian geography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geological_features_on_Titan
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The titanian atmosphere experiences "superrotation", with westerly winds moving around the planet. Up in the middle atmosphere they are of hurricane strength, but near the ground they are much weaker. It also has somewhat weird electromagnetic resonance properties, with low frequency waves echoing around the world (noticeable to suitably equipped synthmorphs).
Titan takes 16 days to rotate around Saturn, producing week long "days" and "nights". There are common eclipses where Saturn occults the sun. Of course, the inhabitants seldom care about the outside environment.
The geology of Titan is dynamic, although slower than on Earth. Occasional cryovolcanism or titanquakes occur. There are also 15 year "seasons" where the wind and methanefall patterns shift from one hemisphere to the other.
The methane rains also bring other complex compounds. These tend to stain the outside of any building reddish brown unless protected by cleaning systems. The same is true for outdoors equipment and tools: they all tend to acquire an oily hydrocarbon film. Keeping the areas around airlocks clean is tricky business.